If you have a sweet tooth, I’d like to share a treat.

A few weeks ago, my colleague Emma Willingham wrote about the nutritional benefits of pumpkins. I’ll sum it up to say they’re packed with good stuff.

And they go quite nicely with sugar and fat!

Below is the banana bread recipe from my cookbook, Nourishing Your Whole Self: A Cookbook with Feelings. I think it’s a moist and yummy recipe, and in this iteration, I subbed pumpkin puree and added chocolate chips. It was delicious.

Last year, after writing about how doing fall right involves cooking with at least one pumpkin (a measure that means I’ve mostly done fall “wrong,” but that apparently sounded right to me last November), a reader wrote in with one of the best cooking tips I’ve gotten so far.

Pam Grossman suggested cooking pumpkins in the microwave.

I’ve found this method way better than oven roasting. There’s no difficult cutting and it’s surprisingly quick. She said:

“Just wipe off the outside [of your sugar pumpkin] and stab it with a knife, making sure to pierce through to the inside. The cuts need to be near the top, about 2 to 3 inches from the stem. Put it on a microwave-safe plate or a casserole lid. Bake at 50 percent power for 20 to 30 minutes. Let it cool and remove the stem and skin around the top. Scoop out the seeds and then get the pulp.”

Now here’s that treat. Click here for the recipe.

Happy fall!

WP-Backgrounds Lite by InoPlugs Web Design and Juwelier Schönmann 1010 Wien