Sunday, November 28, 2010

Thanksgiving pudding



















If I named this according to the ingredients, it probably wouldn't be as appealing (mashed carrots and bananas anyone?). But this is super easy and for me, as yummy as pumpkin pie. This was inspired by a couple of other recipe ideas: A reader of this blog pointed out that she likes using steamed carrots rather than canned pumpkin in her Thanksgiving desserts. Well, we get really good local (sweet) carrots here so I thought that is a great idea! And a recipe on the Fuhrman forums uses banana instead of dates as a sweetener so I thought I'd try that.

Ingredients:
2 large carrots, steamed until tender
1 very ripe banana
1/2 oz chopped walnuts
pumpkin pie spice or cinnamon to taste (about 1/4 tsp?).

Mash the carrots, banana and spice with a fork. Stir in the walnuts. Eat heated or cooled. If you want it sweeter, add some date syrup (or dates soaked in water and mashed). This will probably be a weekend treat for a while.

3 comments:

Darryl said...

I like your use of banana in place of dates. I'm rather down on dates--- they are close to being just an added sweetener, and I've been looking for more nutritionally dense substitutes. I've had good luck using organic grapes or frozen sweet cherries as the sweet component of dressings. They sweeten just as well as dates, and often add some very nice flavor. I should experiment with bananas, too.

kneecap said...

I agree Darryl. I think my main use for dates is when I blend them into a large soup dish where they are a good salt replacement and their effects are very diluted. I also put them in housemate's and guest's smoothies since it's an easy way to add sweetness to match their preferences.

-barb

Darryl said...

Yes, sometimes it's hard to imagine a good substitute. I still use dates in my dijon-pistachio dressing, as I don't think that a fruit taste would fit at all with its concept. Still tweaking the recipe, though. I'll probably try a fruit some time just to see what happens, but I hate to risk any of those wonderful NutOnLine pistachios.