Cinnamon

It looks great written down, it smells lovely, it comes in strange stick things (why?), it reminds you of Christmas. You can put it in pot pourri (haw hee haw) and Neil Young and le Stone Roses liked it muchly too.

Yes, it’s my favourite spice.

But I really want to know, why the sticks?

A quick reccy online tells me, Cinnamon comes from the brown bark of the cinnamon tree. When dried, cinnamon will roll into tubular sticks known as quills. Aha.

There’s more. It’s sweet and nice, that probs why people like to sing about girls being like cinnamon and so of course you can eat it, in certain contexts.

Eating *and drinking* Cinnamon:

Cinnamon is used in a all kind of dishes. While most commonly used in baking (I put it in a treacle cake recently, just because I could, dammit), cinnamon is also used in Middle Eastern and North African dishes. A variation of it is in curry dishes (cloaked as garam masala). In Mexico (hear that Chris?), cinnamon is drank with coffee and chocolate and brewed as tea.

Cinnamon and YOU:

Cinnamon isn’t just something to suffix Sally with you know. It can HELP you. These rolls of loveliness have unique medicinal properties. All *through* ‘history’, cinnamon has been linked to anti-clotting actions, anti-microbial activity, boosting brain function and aiding digestion.

It can also reduce blood sugar, cholesterol and triglyceride levels in people with type 2 diabetes.

Oh and this Christmas, do splash out two earth pounds in Marks and Spencer and purchase its ‘Christmas room spray’. I’m *just* *waiting* for it to hit the shelves…

~ by Suzy Norman on 25/10/2008.