Spiced Nuts

Hide-ho their neighborino,

I always have a hard time coming up with things to make for the male people in my life, such as my dad, my uncle Tim, my boyfriend's dad, and my aunt's boyfriends. I tend to hand make a lot of things right now due to my limited funds being in grad school and all, and the things I make tend to be a little girly. So You can never go wrong with nuts....unless someone is allergic then you are just being a jerk.  I had made one recipe before and it turned out fabulous. This was a different recipe that was really good, but I had to add some extra of the heat because it was lacking in spicy department. The recipe for the nuts can be found here.

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 I was lucky to get a 1lb bag of mixed nuts at Meijer for cheap instead of the pecans alone. I have 4 lbs here. I did not use as much salt as they said because I did not realize the nuts were pre-salted.

 

I also could have taken the nuts out a little sooner than they said. Some of the nuts got a little burnt. surprisingly the hazelnuts tasted really good with the savory seasoning. 

I got great reviews from this. I will admit I did steal a few also. They were pretty yummy, but I think I liked the other recipe I made for father's day better. 

Do you have a go to nut recipe?

Happy eatings,
Smashley

SOUP!!!

I went from from grad school last week and cooked my parents dinner. I was inspired by some Thai ingredients I had bought at a local international market and Vietnamese pho I tried in Chicago last summer. The soup was a semi-home made stock...I didn't have enough chicken to make strong enough stock so I had to add two bullion cubes to the pot of 11 cups. I sauteed some garlic, 2 fresh Thai red chilies, onion, and lemon grass  in some sesame oil (def need a little more next time). I used three chicken thighs, a couple of dashes of soy sauce and fish sauce,  and plenty of ginger in the stock. The stock was pretty tasty at this point, but made like 10 times better with the addition of a can of coconut milk. After taking the meat off the chicken and returning the soup to a biol, I added chopped shitake mushrooms and some green similar to Bok choy. The plate in the middle had lime, bean sprouts, cilantro, and Thai basil. All in all, a pretty darn good soup for no recipe and all imagination. Guten A petite.