Tag Archives: salty

Nuts For The Holidays

A couple months ago my friends Erin & Rachel hosted a little West Coast IG meet up with Canadian and Arizonian friends, Melisa & Rachel.

Seven of us sat around a beautiful gold & mint themed dining room chatting, noshing, making all kinds of hot nut jokes and giggling like a bunch of tweens.

Erin made an old Marta Stewart nut recipe and we all immediately spooned another helping on our plates after the first sample.

The flavors in this are indescribable. They mesh together amazingly.

nuts

Here is what you’ll need…

5 cups mixed nuts, such as walnuts, cashews, almonds, pecans, and hazelnuts {I subbed peanuts for the pecans and used 1 cup of each nut}

Note: use unsalted nuts

1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil

  • 2 small shallots, thinly sliced crosswise into rings to yield about ¼ cup
  • 3 garlic cloves, thinly sliced lengthwise
  • 2 tablespoons unsalted butter
  • ¼ cup coarsely chopped fresh rosemary
  • ¼ teaspoon cayenne pepper
  • 1 tablespoon firmly packed dark brown sugar
  • 1 tablespoon kosher salt

Here is what you’ll do…

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Arrange nuts in a single layer on baking sheet and toast until golden…8-12 minutes.

Transfer to a large bowl. Add shallots and garlic to hot olive oil in a small skillet over medium heat.

Fry until golden brown. Remove to paper towels and set aside.

Pour melted butter over nuts. Stir in rosemary, cayenne, brown sugar, and salt. Add shallots and garlic and combine well.

Serve warm. Nuts can also be reheated in a 300 degree oven for 8-10 minutes but watch carefully.

Store in an airtight container….that is IF there are any leftover.

*****

I haven’t started my holiday baking yet, but I did make a batch of these to take to our PTA Teacher Appreciation brunch last week.

Several people asked for the recipe so I know they were a hit. I mean, why wouldn’t they be?

I served in a bowl with a big spoon with some fancy ziploc bags on the side so they could take as a snack to their classroom.

I cannot wait to make these to snack on while our house is full of holiday visitors.

They’d be perfect for neighbors or as hostess gifts, too!

Enjoy. And let the hot nut jokes begin…..

Crispy, Crunchy, Salty, Sweet {And Shoes!}

Last night I threw together a test batch of another Pinterest find.

I made a joke on a recent Facebook status that Pinterest needs to require that for every recipe pinned a {fitness} pin must follow! I mean really….give me something to DO to work off all these goodies!

I love that Jess is hosting PinterTest Kitchen…because apparently every pin that pops up is not worthy! So far I have been lucky and everything has been scrumptious and this Sweet Salty Snack Mix is no exception:

{my apologies for the 6:21am cell phone pic}

The moment I spotted this I knew I was going to make gobs of it for Christmas and hand it out to everyone, but then I thought it’d be cute with Halloween m&m’s.

Here is the line-up:

Pretzel twists or sticks would be fine, too

Small Fritos {original}

UNsalted roasted peanuts or nut of choice

m&m’s {you could certainly kill two birds with one stone and get peanut or almond m&m’s. I had a bag on-hand and weeded out all the orange, brown and green ones for this. I also threw on a few candy corn so they wouldn’t feel left out!}

White chocolate chips or Wilton candy melts

Dark or milk chocolate chips or Wilton candy melts

Just throw down a layer of pretzels and Fritos then {glue} those together with white chocolate {after you’ve melted of course ~ 30 second intervals in the micro at 50% power [VERY IMPORTANT], stir and repeat until smooth}. For me, white chocolate does not melt as smoothly as milk or dark…I found that I had globs of the white chocolate and had to smooth it out with a butter knife a little. Then toss on some peanuts and the m&m’s and {glue} those down with some milk chocolate drizzle! Put in the fridge to set up and then break into chunks and eat share.

Crispy, crunchy, salty and sweet!

I picked up some purple plastic tumblers with spiders on them at Dollar Tree {4 for a buck}, washed them {!!!} and then filled with the snack mix.

Done and done! {I’ll try and post a pic later, but wanted to share this with you ASAP so you could make some this weekend!}

*****

Lately my Ross has had great shoes! Today I found these {Simple Weegee Booties} for a very belated gift for a very special little guy:

{are they not adorableX100?}

And I picked up these Blowfish ballet flats for Elliott for just $12.99…

{wish they came in my size}

*****

Well, that’s it…a couple new recipes in the works for this weekend along with some housework and pumpkin patch action on the agenda.

What about you? What are you up to?

XO