Your Friend, Dark Chocolate

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A few years back, I stopped in at Fantasy Candies (on Mayfield Road, if you’re a Clevelander) to pick up some cashew bark, and to say thank you for the confections. When their Dark Chocolate-Chia Seed-Cinnamon bar first came out, I went through a phase when I ate a piece every day for weeks. Unrelated, I once ate leftover cashew bark for breakfast, and polished off the last bits of almond bark after lunch. The blueberry bark is in the running for one of the great inventions of the 21st century. There are many different kinds of bark behind the counter, and I’ve worked my way through quite a few of them. On occasion, our family desserts consist of a plate of berries, such as strawberries and blackberries, and then sprinkled with bites of dark chocolate.

I have long maintained that dark chocolate is nourishing. It’s not candy; it’s food. It’s not a treat, it’s actually good for you. It’s nourishing. Eating it for breakfast is not something I do often, admittedly. Actually I only did it once, when it was on the kitchen counter, and I knew it wouldn’t be there for long if I didn’t claim the bounty. But there is no need to make an excuse. It was delicious, filling, and satisfying. Truthfully, I would eat dark chocolate for breakfast again. In a happy heartbeat.

I’m not going to restate the myriad benefits of dark chocolate here. There are flavonoids, antioxidant phytonutrients, nourishing fatty acids, even anti-depressant compounds. And all that is before we even get to the flavor. If that’s not enough, and you’re looking for a more comprehensive list, click here. Fantasy Candies shares a list of benefits on their website.

Joel Fink, “The Candy Man,” was not there the day I visited, but I did get to see him on a prior visit, when we had the opportunity to talk. Dark chocolate is a good choice for people with a sweet tooth, for those who are unusually sensitive to grains, sweets, and fruit (which limits your afternoon snack options), for folks avoiding stripped carbohydrates. The dried fruit, nuts, and seeds in some versions are also nourishing.

If you aren’t sure about this, and you happen to have access to a glucometer, you can check your blood sugar 90 minutes after finishing your snack. If your blood sugar is at baseline, you’re fine. If it’s higher than ideal, eat a smaller serving another day, and check again. Figure out how much is too much, and how much is the right amount. The research points to a total daily recommended serving of one to two ounces. I suggested that Fantasy Candies offer 1-ounce individually wrapped servings. For patients, for friends, for me.

YOUR HEALTHY PLATE: Scrumptious Seed Crackers (NF, GF, DF, vegan, grain-free)

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A couple of months ago, my friend Michele shared with me a jar of the ingredients for this recipe. This is just the most recent recipe she’s shared with me — there have been quite a few over the years, and all of them have been fantastic.

Since receiving this most recent gift, I’ve gathered together my own little permanent collection of seeds and I’ve made the recipe probably half a dozen times already. Now that I have everything I need, I can throw together the recipe and get it into the oven in a very short time. As Michele emphasized to me, it is an extremely forgiving recipe. I’ve tried it with the addition of an herb mixture in place of black pepper, without the sesame seeds once (guest’s allergen issue), with flax seeds sometimes and flax meal other times. It always comes out great no matter what. If you decide to share a jar of ingredients with a friend, do what Michele did: Add the flax and chia to a cupcake liner, and lay it on top of the other dry ingredients. Then print out this recipe and tape it to the jar.

These crackers are delicious plain, but I’ve also eaten them along with hummus, cheese, soup, scrambled eggs, a bowl of salad, and any other way you can think of to enjoy crackers. Believe it or not, each batch makes approximately one hundred one-inch-by-one-inch crackers. But that doesn’t mean they will last long. They won’t.

#1
1/4 cup flaxseeds (optional: blended into meal)
1/4 cup chia seeds
1 tsp. Kosher salt
1 Tbsp. garlic powder
2 tsp. black pepper
2 Tbsp. olive oil
1 cup hot water

#2
1/4 cup hemp seeds
1/2 cup sunflower seeds
1/4 cup sesame seeds
1/2 cup pumpkin seeds

1) Preheat oven to 350F. Cover a cookie sheet in parchment paper and set aside.

2) Blend together the flax meal, chia seeds, and spices with the hot water and olive oil in a medium-sized mixing bowl. Allow to rest 10 minutes.

3) Add hemp, sunflower, sesame, and pumpkin seeds to the mixing bowl. Stir well. The mixture will stick together, slightly more solid than liquid.

4) Pour the mixture onto the prepared cookie sheet, and use a spatula to spread it all the way out toward the edges while keeping the batter continuous (without holes). Sprinkle the tops of the crackers with a little more coarse salt at this point if you like.

5) Bake 25-30 minutes until beginning to turn golden, remove from oven and score into squares. Return to oven, turn off heat, and allow to cool in the oven. They will become crisp as they cool.

YOUR HEALTHY PLATE: Chickpea Chica’s Summer Salad

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This week I am all about this summer salad, created by our very own Chickpea Chica! Chickpea Chica has a gift for creating dozens of recipes that showcase bright flavors you would never have thought to combine. If you have one can of chickpeas, a single peach, and a few herbs out back or on the sill above your kitchen sink, then you probably have everything you need to make this recipe. Continue reading →

The Heat of Summer, with a Recipe for Hot Peppers

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My love of spicy food goes back a long way, to when I was a child. My parents had friends, Ted and Freida Roland, who grew acres and acres of hot peppers on their farm in Muncie, Indiana. We drove out to visit them one summer, and I earned the nickname “Hot Pepper” after completing a careful comparison of all the various types laid out for me on the kitchen counter by Ted. Continue reading →

Dunn with Ultraprocessing

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Some years ago, the science writer Rob Dunn published in Scientific American an article called The Hidden Truth About Calories. The article explained why two people could gain different amounts of weight even while eating the same diet. Visible differences do not begin to scratch the surface. There is a lot more going on underneath. For example, I recently read that the intestines of individuals of Russian descent appear to be five feet longer, on average, than those whose ancestors hail from Italy. That’s interesting… Continue reading →

Dried Fruit–The Original Fast Food

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People frequently mention that they are unsure about whether they should eat dried fruit. They are usually worried about the amount of sugar. There are a number of ways to approach this issue. One would be to ask yourself if your great-grand ancestors ate dried fruit, if they would have considered it food. The answer to this question would, of course, be yes. You could also ask yourself if dried fruit was invented in the 20th century. And the answer would, of course, be no. Continue reading →

Chocolate Mousse

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What follows is a true story. It really happened, and you can draw your own conclusions.

Many years ago, my daughter and I ventured out on a snowy evening in January and returned home with the sweetest, gentlest, eight-week-old Labrador Retriever puppy. We named our new chocolate lab Mousse. Mousse played ball; Mousse cuddled with the children; Mousse helped me weed the garden; Mousse stole food from the kitchen table when she thought no one was looking; Mousse hung out with the chickens and enjoyed visiting with our friends and neighbors, both human and canine. Mousse became family, and all was well. Continue reading →

Big Cereal Gives Frooty Words the Business

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I have written in the past about the high margin-to-cost of the breakfast cereal business. I also think a lot about the words Big Cereal uses to sell its product, specifically the pervasive use of fruity words in naming breakfast cereals. Continue reading →

YOUR HEALTHY PLATE: Apple Pie Muffins for the Fourth!

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If you’d like to make a dessert that captures the feel of July fourth, try these apple muffins from Honest Cooking and Travel. They have a streusel topping reminiscent of some fancy apple pie recipes I’ve seen, but feel free to substitute graham cracker crumbs if you like. Save one for yourself for breakfast tomorrow morning, along with your cup of tea or coffee. Continue reading →

Chemistry Experiments Disguised as Food

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It’s not always easy to figure out what’s food and what’s manufactured calories. Some items have the best names, names that make it seem as if the product is definitely food, and quite nourishing at that. So I didn’t realize that Nutrigrain bars had 52 ingredients until someone pointed it out to me. That’s not food, that’s a chemistry experiment. Continue reading →