Category Archives: Cinnamon

YOUR HEALTHY PLATE: Pumpkin Pudding

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Here’s a special and unusual recipe for what has always been my favorite time of year. It makes a spectacular addition to a brunch, but it’s also the perfect shortcut to a uniquely delicious and cozy dinner. When my children were young, they loved this pudding and asked for it often once the leaves began falling from the trees. It’s not that I couldn’t make it at other times of year, it’s just that they associated it with autumn. I think they also loved how it warmed them from the inside. I wish I could tell you where the recipe comes from, but I honestly cannot recall. All I know is that I began making it a very long time ago.

The children would get home from school, run outside, and spend a few hours creating and then jumping in leaf piles. When I started to see that, I knew it was time to make pumpkin pudding. I have always made it in the same large, blue bowl with broad, shallow sides. No particular reason, I just like the way it looks and cooks in that bowl. I wish you the same kind of simple pleasure. 

Ingredients
4 eggs
1 one-pound can of pumpkin pureé
1/2 cup molasses
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ginger
1 tiny pinch of powdered cloves
1 cup (organic) whole milk

Preheat oven to 350F. Prepare a casserole dish or large beautiful pottery bowl by greasing with butter or butter substitute. 

Break the eggs into a large bowl, and beat well with a fork. Add the pumpkin first, followed by the milk, molasses, and spices. Stir well.

Bake 1 hour until the pudding is firm in the middle and a cake tester comes out clean.

You can serve it hot, warm, or cold, and with or without whipped cream. Honestly, it doesn’t much matter, because there won’t be any left.

 

 

Your Friend, Dark Chocolate

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A few years back, I stopped in at Fantasy Candies (on Mayfield Road, for any Clevelanders out there!) to pick up some cashew bark, and to say thank you for the confections. Back when Fantasy Candies’ Dark Chocolate-Chia Seed-Cinnamon bar first came out, I went through a phase of eating a piece every day. This went on for weeks. Also, unrelated, I once ate a piece of leftover cashew bark for breakfast, and then polished off the last bits of a bar of almond bark with my lunch the same day. According to me, Fantasy Candies’ blueberry bark is in the running for one of the great inventions of the 21st century. Of course, there are many other bark flavors at the counter and, yes, I’ve worked my way through quite a few of them. Not just me. Sometimes, dessert consists of a plate of berries sprinkled with bites of dark chocolate. Continue reading →

YOUR HEALTHY PLATE: Grain Bowls, Your Way

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I figured I would share some strategies for grain bowls.

Start by choosing a grain. It could be something as simple as rolled oats, but it might also be something slightly more adventurous—like steel-cut oats or millet or even the brown rice left over from last night’s dinner. I happen to be a fan of kasha, a nutty tasting grain also known as buckwheat groats, and which my family ate often when I was growing up.  Continue reading →

YOUR HEALTHY PLATE: Tsimmes

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Preparing for the holidays with my mom was a major highlight of my childhood. Although my father was the main cook in our family, my mother took over the kitchen on the holidays, and dad’s primary responsibility was to make the brisket.

Like many other special dishes that we ate on dedicated holidays throughout the calendar, my mother made tsimmes twice a year, in the fall for Rosh Hashanah (it is traditional to eat sweet foods on Rosh Hashanah), and in the spring, for Passover. She never used recipes, preferring instead to combine ingredients as her grandmother and mother-in-law did. Truthfully, though, tsimmes is one of those dishes that probably doesn’t really need much of a recipe anyway. Continue reading →

Is Cinnamon Still Safe?

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Recent Awareness of Cinnamon Contamination  

A few weeks ago a reader wrote in to ask specifically about whether it is still safe, in light of recent events, to eat cinnamon. I spent some time researching the issue.

In October 2023, lead and chromium poisoning was diagnosed in 519 children. It was traced to consumption of specific brands of cinnamon apple puree and applesauce, and a major recall was initiated. The cases were traced to the cinnamon, which was found to have originated in Ecuador, from where it had been supplied to the apple puree and applesauce manufacturer. Continue reading →