Grain-Free Pumpkin Cranberry Bread

This Grain-Free Pumpkin Cranberry Bread mixes two of my favorite fall fruits: cranberries and pumpkin.  Well, technically pumpkin is not a fruit, or is it? When I think of fruit I think of the sweet kind that grow on trees or bushes, but I recently visited a local organic farm and while taking a guided tour they explained to us that the difference between fruits and vegetables is that fruits have seeds. This was a little bit confusing to me because I have seen lettuce and herbs seeds sold at the store.

I came back home to do further research and realized that different sites have different definitions for fruits and vegetables. One of the more convincing source defines a vegetable as edible roots, tubers, stems, leaves, fruits, seeds, flower clusters, and other softer plant parts… wait a minute so a vegetable is a fruit??? I am not making it up, see the sources cited at the bottom.

What gets really confusing is that since a grain is described as the dry fruit of a cereal grass, so then we can classify a grain as a vegetable too. That means that when congress decided to consider pizza and French fries as an acceptable vegetable for school lunches, they may have been on to something…or not.

The next explanation I read about the difference between fruits and vegetables talked about ovaries of seed-baring plants, which got even more confusing. Someone needs to sit down and talk to me about the birds and the bees.

For now I’ll just stick to my original definition of fruit or should I change this recipe name from Grain-Free Pumpkin Cranberry Bread to just “Vegetable Loaf”?

Ingredients:
½ cup of coconut flour
½ cup pumpkin puree
½ cup of pitted dates (about 12 deglet dates)
6 eggs
1/3 cup of coconut oil, plus more for greasing the mold
1/3 cup of fruit sweetened dry cranberries
1 tsp of vanilla extract
1 Tablespoon pumpkin pie spice (or a combination of cinnamon, nut meg, clove and dry ground ginger)
1-2 tsp of cinnamon powder
½ teaspoon baking soda

Preparation:

• Preheat oven to 375 degrees F
• In a food processor, combine the dates with the eggs and coconut oil and blend until smooth.
• Pulse in the rest of the ingredients, except for the cranberries
• Mix in the cranberries by hand using a spatula or spoon
• Grease a 5.00″ w x  8.50″  bread loaf mold pan
• Pour the batter inside the mold and bake for 45 minutes, or until a knife inserted in the middle of the bread comes out dry.

For other pumpkin recipe ideas, try my pumpkin spice creamer, pumpkin muffins or my paleo pumpkin cheesecake.

Sources:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45306416/ns/health-diet_and_nutrition/t/pizza-vegetable-congress-says-yes/

http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/1611/whats-the-difference-between-fruits-and-vegetables

http://ask.yahoo.com/20010411.html