The elusive brownie

A long, long time ago, in a land far away, we were graduate students, living in an apartment on the second floor of an old Victorian house in Rochester, NY. The first year we lived there, a young college student by the name of Matthew lived below us. He had an old Honda, but the remarkable and unusual thing about the car is that it had been entirely painted in psychedelic spray-painted designs. He was an unusual character--he would meditate in the hallway by the front door to the house, causing us both to do double-takes every time we happened upon him in the cross-legged position at the bottom of the stairs. He had a crazy-hyper black lab he'd walk with a rope. Sometimes he smoked things at night (use your imagination), and the smell would rise up through the huge, wrought-iron vents along the baseboards. He would often park behind us in the one-car driveway and then disappear on foot, without a care in the world, and then Scott would have to walk around the downtown part of our neighborhood, checking record stores and coffee shops until he found him. Then Matthew would take his time to get back and move his car, leaving us fuming with impatience--all ready to go somewhere but no way to get there. But this post isn't actually about him, because a year later he moved out, taking his car, his pot, his dog, and his incense with him. Then, a friend and fellow graduate student moved in below. She was the complete opposite in every every way from Matthew, right down to the Honda--her Honda was new and fire engine red. I still miss her, and wonder what she's up to these days. This time of the year, though, I always think about her especially, as my mind turns to pumpkin this and pumpkin that, and the fall leaves, and how everything bakes tastes so much better when there's a nip in the air and the promise of a cold night. When Scott and I found out I was pregnant with L., it was a week in October, right about now, in fact. Not long after spilling the beans to our downstairs neighbor/friend (we had trouble keeping it to ourselves), she appeared at our front door with a congratulatory plate of...brownies. Only these weren't ordinary brownies. They were half-chocolate and half-pumpkin--not, I have to add, pumpkin with chocolate chips, but pure delicious chocolate swirl paired with pure, delicious pumpkin-pie swirl, like a yin-yang square, with a delicate, thin, crunchy brownie-crust on top. They were amazing. They melted in my mouth. They were THE BEST brownies I have ever, ever tasted. And I have never been able to find the recipe. I asked her for it, of course, but sometimes people guard their recipes and don't share them. I don't know if she was keeping this one close to her chest, or if she just never got around to passing it on, but there are etiquette rules out there preventing you from asking too many times for a recipe, and so I let it go. Ever since then, every fall, I launch a search for those brownies. Most of the time I find recipes like this one, and I almost react violently against them because they are so not the brownies I remember. Smitten Kitchen posted a recipe from Martha Stewart for some swirl-like brownies, but they don't look right in the photo and I haven't tried them. While they are probably scrumptious, our neighbor's brownies were half-and-half pumpkin and chocolate, and I won't take anything less. These look good, but where's the pumpkin? And while I like the look of this vegan pumpkin-chocolate brownie for other reasons, it's just not those brownies. This weekend I'm on a mission: to create my own veganized replica of those elusive, dreamy brownies I still remember. I'll be back Monday with the results. And if you know of a recipe that sounds like the one I'm still obsessing over, feel free to post--I'd love to try it. Happy Weekend!