I am so upset about the situation with cinnamon that it took me two weeks to publish this post.
Yes, I had to re-read and edit out the disappointed tone, to be fair and balanced and not storming around making big businesses "wrong" for no longer carrying the type of cinnamon we are used to, and instead carrying an inferior variety that makes my desserts taste like cheap candles.
Yep, you thought you had grown out of liking cinnamon, right? But it isn't you, they changed the cinnamon on you, and you didn't read the fine print!
The same thing happened with Heinz ketchup. In recent years I decided I had grown out of liking ketchup. I used to dip my fries and burgers into it back in Junior High School. I used to LOVE it. But lately I've felt it had a harshness to the flavor and decided I just didn't like it anymore. Until my husband came home with "Simply Heinz" -- which is made with the old recipe using sugar instead of the high fructose corn syrup they use in their recipe today.
Well, one taste of that ketchup and I was transported back to MacDonald's with my girlfriends after school, when we used to go to the library and do our homework, once we were fortified with those 99-cent burgers and fries. I realized, I still liked ketchup, just, they changed it under our noses and we didn't read the label! Go, buy some "Simply Heinz" and see if you don't agree!
But back to the cinnamon. It all started one night when I couldn't sleep. So I sat in the semi-dark, listening to Christmas With The Rat Pack "...maybe just a cigarette more..." and digging in to the holiday issue of Saveur which has cookies on the cover, when I spied an ad for McCormick spices.
Specifically, Saigon cinnamon and roasted Saigon cinnamon.
I couldn't keep reading the magazine. I was so upset, I had to put it down. I was thinking, if this doesn't convince Somervillians that they need to have a grocery store to balance out Stop-n-Shop and Whole Foods, I don't know what could.
Did you know that the Vietnamese cinnamon being sold at these stores (called "Saigon" cinnamon even though it isn't grown near Saigon) is not the cinnamon that was used to create all those traditional recipes you love? Did you know that it is not even "true" or "real" cinnamon?
For people who only bake banana bread when they have time for such things, Vietnamese cinnamon is fine. It tastes great with bananas. But to my taste buds, paired with anything else such as fruit crisps and carrot cake, it just tastes like cheap candles.
Remember, in the 1970s, those dark red, apple-shaped scented candles? Like that smell. That's what it makes things taste like.
I found out when I got hooked by King Arthur Flour's catalog, which sells not one, but eight different forms of vanilla, yet sells only one form of cinnamon -- Vietnamese -- which they say is a "Baker's Secret."
I was intrigued. After all, I studied pastry at The French Culinary Institute and was never told of this secret. Also, my mother's family was in the pastry business for at least a couple hundred years, and she never said anything.
So I bought some. And ruined my mother-in-law's birthday cake, which came out tasting like the cheap 70s candles mentioned above, instead of the most delectable layered carrot cake you've ever tasted (I'll publish the recipe later if you promise not to bake it using Vietnamese cinnamon, okay?).
A baker's secret, KAF? Really? I think not!
Maybe, a baker who wants to cut costs because you have to use less of it (so it doesn't ruin everything), but not a baker who really wants that flavor that we all remember when we were children. No, Vietnamese or Saigon cinnamon is not even real cinnamon, it is considered a 2nd-tier cinnamon by spice merchants.
But today, it's the only cinnamon you can buy at Costco, Stop n Shop and King Arthur Flour. Even Fairway, my favorite grocery store, now sells Vietnamese cinnamon for its store-brand cinnamon. FYI, the most common store-brand cinnamon you could buy used to be Korintje cinnamon from Indonesia. For this reason, it is an excellent cinnamon to bake with because all those recipes you have from the 1970s through the 1990s were created using it.
What gives, Fairway? Which used to be all about quality products?
Apparently Ceylon cinnamon, which is also called "true" cinnamon, has curative properties, like thinning blood and helping the liver flush fat. It's good to put into tea when you're coming down with a cold. Is that why they won't sell it? It helps people have healthy blood and bodies?
By the way, when you buy "Mexican" cinnamon, you're buying Ceylon cinnamon. So, when you bake a chocolate dessert with cinnamon, Ceylon would be the one to use, for authentic Mexican flavor.
Do not you think, this is why we need to have co-operative grocery stores? After all, it stands to reason, if we let big business decide what cinnamon we can bake with, our carrot cake and apple crisp will remain inedible.
I, for one, am not going to take it any more! Who's with me? Is this the future you want to live in? I'm sure you're saying no, right now!
So do the right thing, stop buying it! Instead, go to Penzey's and get Ceylon Cinnamon for apple, peach and pear dishes, and Korintje cinnamon (what used to be store-bought cinnamon) for everything else. Except banana bread and muffins -- go ahead and use up the Vietnamese cinnamon you have in your kitchen for anything with bananas, it will taste fine.
[UPDATE December 19: Frontier, a brand of organic spices sold at Whole Foods, Fairway and other gourmet stores, now puts on their label that their normal cinnamon is Korintje. So, you don't have to have a Penzey's in your town to have good cinnamon!]
Aren't you glad I got this out before Thanksgiving?
Happy Holidays!
Yes, I had to re-read and edit out the disappointed tone, to be fair and balanced and not storming around making big businesses "wrong" for no longer carrying the type of cinnamon we are used to, and instead carrying an inferior variety that makes my desserts taste like cheap candles.
Yep, you thought you had grown out of liking cinnamon, right? But it isn't you, they changed the cinnamon on you, and you didn't read the fine print!
The same thing happened with Heinz ketchup. In recent years I decided I had grown out of liking ketchup. I used to dip my fries and burgers into it back in Junior High School. I used to LOVE it. But lately I've felt it had a harshness to the flavor and decided I just didn't like it anymore. Until my husband came home with "Simply Heinz" -- which is made with the old recipe using sugar instead of the high fructose corn syrup they use in their recipe today.
Well, one taste of that ketchup and I was transported back to MacDonald's with my girlfriends after school, when we used to go to the library and do our homework, once we were fortified with those 99-cent burgers and fries. I realized, I still liked ketchup, just, they changed it under our noses and we didn't read the label! Go, buy some "Simply Heinz" and see if you don't agree!
But back to the cinnamon. It all started one night when I couldn't sleep. So I sat in the semi-dark, listening to Christmas With The Rat Pack "...maybe just a cigarette more..." and digging in to the holiday issue of Saveur which has cookies on the cover, when I spied an ad for McCormick spices.
Specifically, Saigon cinnamon and roasted Saigon cinnamon.
I couldn't keep reading the magazine. I was so upset, I had to put it down. I was thinking, if this doesn't convince Somervillians that they need to have a grocery store to balance out Stop-n-Shop and Whole Foods, I don't know what could.
Did you know that the Vietnamese cinnamon being sold at these stores (called "Saigon" cinnamon even though it isn't grown near Saigon) is not the cinnamon that was used to create all those traditional recipes you love? Did you know that it is not even "true" or "real" cinnamon?
For people who only bake banana bread when they have time for such things, Vietnamese cinnamon is fine. It tastes great with bananas. But to my taste buds, paired with anything else such as fruit crisps and carrot cake, it just tastes like cheap candles.
Remember, in the 1970s, those dark red, apple-shaped scented candles? Like that smell. That's what it makes things taste like.
I found out when I got hooked by King Arthur Flour's catalog, which sells not one, but eight different forms of vanilla, yet sells only one form of cinnamon -- Vietnamese -- which they say is a "Baker's Secret."
I was intrigued. After all, I studied pastry at The French Culinary Institute and was never told of this secret. Also, my mother's family was in the pastry business for at least a couple hundred years, and she never said anything.
So I bought some. And ruined my mother-in-law's birthday cake, which came out tasting like the cheap 70s candles mentioned above, instead of the most delectable layered carrot cake you've ever tasted (I'll publish the recipe later if you promise not to bake it using Vietnamese cinnamon, okay?).
A baker's secret, KAF? Really? I think not!
Maybe, a baker who wants to cut costs because you have to use less of it (so it doesn't ruin everything), but not a baker who really wants that flavor that we all remember when we were children. No, Vietnamese or Saigon cinnamon is not even real cinnamon, it is considered a 2nd-tier cinnamon by spice merchants.
But today, it's the only cinnamon you can buy at Costco, Stop n Shop and King Arthur Flour. Even Fairway, my favorite grocery store, now sells Vietnamese cinnamon for its store-brand cinnamon. FYI, the most common store-brand cinnamon you could buy used to be Korintje cinnamon from Indonesia. For this reason, it is an excellent cinnamon to bake with because all those recipes you have from the 1970s through the 1990s were created using it.
What gives, Fairway? Which used to be all about quality products?
Apparently Ceylon cinnamon, which is also called "true" cinnamon, has curative properties, like thinning blood and helping the liver flush fat. It's good to put into tea when you're coming down with a cold. Is that why they won't sell it? It helps people have healthy blood and bodies?
By the way, when you buy "Mexican" cinnamon, you're buying Ceylon cinnamon. So, when you bake a chocolate dessert with cinnamon, Ceylon would be the one to use, for authentic Mexican flavor.
Do not you think, this is why we need to have co-operative grocery stores? After all, it stands to reason, if we let big business decide what cinnamon we can bake with, our carrot cake and apple crisp will remain inedible.
I, for one, am not going to take it any more! Who's with me? Is this the future you want to live in? I'm sure you're saying no, right now!
So do the right thing, stop buying it! Instead, go to Penzey's and get Ceylon Cinnamon for apple, peach and pear dishes, and Korintje cinnamon (what used to be store-bought cinnamon) for everything else. Except banana bread and muffins -- go ahead and use up the Vietnamese cinnamon you have in your kitchen for anything with bananas, it will taste fine.
[UPDATE December 19: Frontier, a brand of organic spices sold at Whole Foods, Fairway and other gourmet stores, now puts on their label that their normal cinnamon is Korintje. So, you don't have to have a Penzey's in your town to have good cinnamon!]
Aren't you glad I got this out before Thanksgiving?
Happy Holidays!
I promise not to bake the carrot cake with the wrong cinnamon!! Please publish
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