percinnamon chips

This is kind of cheating because it's not really baking and it only takes 1.5 minutes to prep and 3 minutes to cook. But it's tasty and healthy, so hey - that's fun!

Our very sweet neighbor, Stan, rang our bell last night and delivered a bag of fresh oranges and persimmons from their machatootsies (our family's bastardized version of machatunim, which is Yiddish for your kids' in-laws... so Josh's parents and my parents are machatootsies). Anyway, their daughter's husband's mother brought them from Riverside, they had a ton, and they wanted to share with us. They have been so thoughtful since we moved in, and this is the second time they've brought us treats for no reason.

Now, I've never eaten a persimmon and had no idea what to do with it. I washed it, sliced it open, and surprisingly, both kids and Josh were willing to try it! It was sweet, but kind of unexciting. Bug Bug ate the whole thing even though she professed not to like it. Boy-o gave me back the skin, as he does with apples. Josh just ate his but turned up his nose a little.

I looked up some recipes, but I wasn't really feeling up to persimmon cookies, cake or bread. But I spotted this super easy recipe and figured it was worth 5 minutes. Basically, you slice the persimmons as thinly as possible (same way you'd slice a tomato, but paper thin), lay them on a toaster tray, sprinkle them very lightly with cinnamon, and toast them. It's just enough to heat/bake them through. As it says in the recipe, they're good warm. The cinnamon brings out the natural sweetness in the persimmon. They are soft, but not dry or chewy like dried fruit. It's possible that if you toast them a second time, or bake them for the approximately 10 minutes recommended in the recipe, they would get drier. But I liked them just like this - a really nice sweet bite, and full of fiber, so quite good for you.