November: Pumpkin Scones
In November 2008 I started taking Celexa and found myself wanting to die less. Somehow I'd hurtled through my late teens and early twenties thinking depression was something that happened to everyone, and it wasn't until I was sober that my depression suddenly had a name, a solution, and an orange prescription bottle.
I remember being twenty-five, sitting in the office of a psychopharmacologist, someone with more syllables than I knew you could cram into a noun. While we talked about my depression, I looked out the picture window across from the couch. You could see part of the Empire State Building, the office lights white against the quickening dusk. I was wearing a v-neck black dress that I wore at least once a week as a teacher, too tired and too lazy to find more than my week's worth of appropriate teacher clothes.
Well, I thought, looking at my sad reflection while the doctor wrote my first prescription. Here I am. My first anti-depressant.
It turned out that many people I knew and loved also took anti-depressants. There was a huge stigma that I had to get by, and talking about the medication, its name, its side effects, helped me to normalize. A few weeks before I'd ended up in the psychopharmacologist's office, something in me had snapped, and I cried all the time. It was like waking up one day with a constant fog in my brain. Friends and people who loved me were there, were present, but I couldn't quite get through to them. I startled one afternoon in the mid Manhattan public library when someone asked me if I needed help. I had begun to think of myself as invisible, as slowly disappearing, ever since my brain had coaxed me into being someone who wanted to sleep all day, who cried constantly, who began to think dying was easier than putting on clothes and going to work.
The Celexa, thankfully, helped.
I have come to take the pink oval for granted, now that it's been so long. I tapered off a few years ago, and made it through the summer before autumn descended and that part of my brain grew dark again. It was so hard to return. It was so hard to ask for help. But what kind of stubbornness makes it so you know what will fix it and still resist the solution?
I'd forgotten about my anti-depressant origin story until someone on Twitter this weekend asked people to share their experiences with medication. All things considered, my story felt mild. I tried something. It worked. On days when I forget to take it, I feel spaced out, like my brain is blinking, trying to remember something. But on most days, I just get to be me.
This has nothing to do with pumpkin scones, the recipe I've been planning to share all month long. It comes from the front pages of an old issue of Bon Appetit, and I've made it so many times that the magazine pages are stained with streaks of grease and flour stuck in between the pages. The magic trick is that the butter is grated on a cheese grater, which makes those delicious pockets and layers develop in a pastry. That they're made with pumpkin, and (essentially) pumpkin pie spice, and served with a butter that's been mashed with maple syrup and cinnamon, just makes them a dream.
It's going to start getting darker earlier. It's going to be colder outside. It's going to that season where I waiver, just for a moment, wondering if the depression will come back or if will be an uneventful winter. There's no control over that part. But there are these scones to make.
xo,
c
Pumpkin Scones with Cinnamon Butter
adapted from Bon Appetit, November 2014, as provided by Beauty & Essex restaurant
1/2 c. sugar
2 tsp. baking powder
2 1/2 tsp. pumpkin pie spice [the original recipe calls for a mix of 1 tsp. ground ginger, 1/2 tsp. nutmeg, 1/2 tsp. cinnamon and 1/4 tsp. cloves, but the pumpkin pie spice is my cheat]
1/2 tsp. salt (less if your butter is salted, obvi)
1/4 tsp. baking soda
2 cups flour (plus more for rolling out)
3/4 c. chilled butter (1 1/2 sticks)
1 large egg
1/2 c. canned pumpkin
1/4 c. buttermilk, plus more for brushing
2 TB. raw sugar
Whisk sugar, baking powder, spices, salt, baking soda and flour in a large bowl. Using the large holes of a box grater (I have a larger hole microplane that fits handily over a bowl, and is my favorite) grate in butter, tossing to coat in the flour mixture as you go. Mix in egg, pumpkin and buttermilk.
Transfer dough to a lightly floured surface and pat into a 1 1/2" thick disk. Cut into 8 wedges. (A bench scraper works beautifully for this.) Transfer to a parchment lined baking sheet. Freeze until firm, 25 - 30 minutes.
Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Brush scones with buttermilk and sprinkle with raw sugar. Bake 25-30 minutes.
Serve with cinnamon butter (1/2 stick butter, 1 tsp. maple syrup, 3/4 cinnamon, mashed together to become magical.)
P.S.
* The Hustle returns on November 13th with Amani Al-Khatahbeth (author of Muslim Girl: A Coming of Age), Bridgett M. Davis (author of Into The Go Slow), and Nicole Dennis Benn (author of Here Comes The Sun). This is our tenth Hustle (what!), and I'm so excited to host these three incredible writers. See you there!
* If you want to read something powerful on the cusp of the election, I just finished the March graphic memoir trilogy by Congressman John Lewis, Andrew Aydin & Nate Powell. In a season that's been thick with despair, this incredibly moving memoir has given me some hope and some much appreciated history. It truly puts into context where we are now and what we can do about it. I can't recommend it enough.
* Save the date: the National Book Awards are November 16! You can cozy up and home and watch via livestream at 7:40PM EST and see who will win.
* Some writer friends and I have reunited for a reading at Cornelia Street Cafe on November 29th! We promise good company, good laughs, a book giveaway and maybe, just maybe, I will bake something.
* Cat in a flip flop = me so busy this month <3