nuts – Loving Food, Fashion, & Life

Honey Toasted Pecans

Posted on March 28, 2014 by LFFL

Oh, man! You all better hurry and get to your local Whole Foods Market for these delectable buttery honey flavored pecans! How you can pass these things up, I’ll never know.

I was over in the bulk bin section of the store and my eyeballs spotted what was labeled “Honey Toasted Pecans”. Hmmmm, I just had to have a look-see—and look-see I did with my nosy self.

They looked so shiny good in the bin. The honey just made them glisten like diamonds. I figured they’d taste similar to the cinnamon sugary nuts you’d find being sold in a kiosk in the middle of a mall.

Well, BOY, these are SO much better! I fell in total love after I ate the first pecan. Of course, I devoured them all as soon as I got home. They’re like potato chips—you can’t each just ONE. It’s impossible.

The sad thing is, I had only bought a handful for my first go ’round. So needless to say, I had to make a plan to trek all the way back out to the store a couple of days later to get an entire pound at the very least.

These delicious pecans cost $10.99 per pound—so they weren’t cheap. But they were worth every bit of love on my tongue. Happy days!

So, if you have nothing else to do today, run to your nearest Whole Foods Market and grab a pound or two of these lovely honey toasted pecans. Your taste buds will thank you.

Take-Away Life Lesson: Savor every bite of every morsel of these pecans. You really appreciate the taste even more when you realize you just paid $10.99 a pound for these things! Ahhh, the good life.

No-Bake Cookies

Posted on March 3, 2014 by LFFL

Made with butterscotch chips, crunchy peanut butter, peanuts, and crispy rice cereal (Special K cereal or Rice Krispies).

So, I was craving the taste of something sweet and I started thinking of these no-bake cookies. I’ve made and posted about this particular cookie before—but, oh, how I had to make them another go round.

These took all of five minutes to make. The time-consuming part was sitting around the house waiting for them to harden enough so I could pick them up.

Naturally, I’m impatient when I’m hungry and had to have one straight away. So I had no choice but to use a fork to eat the last one I was scraping from the pan. That bad boy never even made it to the cookie sheet.

Have a little more class than I did, folks, and just wait for the hardening process to take effect.

Melt butterscotch chips & peanut butter.

Stir to creamy goodness.

Add peanuts.

Stir in crispy rice cereal.

Recipe for—Special K No-Bake Cookies

1 pkg (11 oz) butterscotch chips
1/2 cup crunchy peanut butter
2/3 cup peanuts
3 cups Special K cereal

Melt butterscotch chips and peanut butter in a saucepan over low heat.
Stir until melted.
Mix in peanuts and cereal and stir until coated with mixture.
Spoon out into individual cookies onto a cookie sheet covered with wax or parchment paper.
Let sit an hour or longer until hardened.

So, if you have nothing else to do today, spend five minutes making any variety of assorted no-bake cookies. The best part is you don’t have to bake them.

Take-Away Life Lesson: It’s always better to wait for the cookie hardening process to take effect so you’re not holding a saucepan to your face while you scrape the last bits of cookie gump into your mouth. It’s not a good look.

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And The Desserts Just Don’t Stop

Bananas Foster—My Favorite Topping Ever

Posted on February 15, 2014 by LFFL

Made with butter, dark brown sugar, heavy cream, bananas, pecans, and cinnamon; served with vanilla ice cream.

Oh my, oh my, oh my, oh my, oh my, oh my, oh my, oh my, oh my. Wow.

Brown sugar into melted butter.

Add sliced bananas and pecans.

Stir all that goodness together.

The combination of all that warm butter and brown sugar just made me swoon—and then have the nerve to add bananas and pecans into the mix! Just throw all that warm goodness on top of vanilla ice cream and you’re pretty much done for the day.

The actual recipe also calls for dark rum, but I skipped that part of it. For all you rum lovers out there, you’ll be adding a few extra “oh my’s” to your dessert should you add the rum.

Earth Balance Butter — The, oh so, delicious butter I used.

Recipe for—Bananas Foster

So, if you have nothing else to do today, get yourself a pot of bananas foster going on the stove.

Take-Away Life Lesson: You can pretty much say you’ve lived a long fulfilling and happy life after a bowl of this.

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I Could Live On Desserts Foreveeeeerrr!

Roast Turkey, Fennel & Onions

Posted on September 16, 2013 by LFFL

Made with roast turkey breast, extra-wide egg noodles, white wine, chicken stock, Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese, heavy cream, extra-virgin olive oil, chopped fresh thyme leaves, sliced garlic cloves, fennel bulbs, onions, flour, fresh flat-leaf parsley leaves, salt & pepper, and topped with pine nuts.

I don’t know what to say other than it did not make the cut into my recipe binder. It was ”meh” at most for me.

Recipe for—Roast Turkey, Fennel & Onions with Buttered Egg Noodles

So, if you have nothing else to do today, find a way to turn a “meh” meal into an OMG meal.

Take-Away Life Lesson: Sometimes you just gotta grin and bear dinner.

And The Desserts Just Don't Stop

Posted on April 25, 2013 by LFFL

Made with gingersnap cookies, sweetened shredded coconut, melted butter, half-and-half, egg yolks, sugar, cornstarch, pure vanilla extract, and whipped cream.

I love a good coco pie! Who, in their right mind, doesn’t? Now, I’ve had some great coconut cream pies in my life before—like at The Capital Grille, for instance. Needless to say, theirs was so good I decided to try and make my own homemade coco pie to see how it’d turn out—and, I have to say, I’m proud of myself.

Let me tell you, I definitely deserve this kind of lovin’ in my life. When you have a hard time getting the kind of love you want from a decent human being—go straight to the coco pie, my friends! It’ll make up for it many times over.

Try making yourself this uber coconut cream pie and just set it on your lap and eat it while you watch a good action flick. And if you didn’t already know, I’m a big believer in—if you’re just going to go back for a 3rd and 4th slice anyway—just eat straight outta the pan and save yourself some time.

Recipe for—Coconut Cream Pie

Made with canned biscuits, sugar, brown sugar, cinnamon, and melted butter.

I still haven’t figured out why this is called Monkey Bread, but whatever. All I can say is—it’s sticky. It’s just one big doughy, sugary, cinnamony (probably not a real word, but I can’t be worried about it) mess. Help yourself.

Recipe for—Monkey Bread

Made with butterscotch chips, crunchy peanut butter, peanuts, and Special K cereal.

You really need yourself some milk with these cookies—they are that sweet and good. But, once you have your milk in hand, you can easily just eat one right after the other back-to-back. Next thing you know, you look around and realize you probably should have tripled the recipe to begin with.

The simplest cookie you could ever make with only 4 ingredients:

butterscotch chips
crunchy peanut butter
peanuts
Special K cereal

That’s it! Aaaannnnnnd, we’re done. No baking, no nothing. Just warm, mix, shape into cookies, let them sit a couple of hours, then devour them. How hard is that?

So, if you have nothing else to do today, stuff that hole in your face with every one of these desserts after you’ve made them and make sure there’s ice-cold milk nearby.

Take-Away Life Lesson: Everyone at least deserves some coconut cream pie lovin’ in their life many times over. Ooooo and aahhh.

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No-Bake Cookies

Homemade Dessert Goodness

Posted on April 23, 2013 by LFFL

Butterscoth Apple Crisp — Butterscotch Apple Crisp

Made with Granny Smith apples, butterscotch chips, light brown sugar, flour, ground cinnamon, ground allspice, juice of a lemon, butter, quick oats, salt, and chopped pecans; served with butter pecan ice cream.

OH – MY – WORD! Talk about yummy fabulousness! I absolutely loved this Butterscotch Apple Crisp so much I made it several times over within a matter of weeks. It’s what I do when I love something and it disappears too quickly. Now whether it disappearing quickly is my fault alone or several other people’s fault that have shared this with me is up for debate.

But if sweetness isn’t your thing, don’t bother. It’s yummy sweet! I always throw in some extra butterscotch chips when I make this. I mean, the butterscotch combined with the Granny Smith apples and the crispness of it all—oooohhhh, man! And then to have the nerve to serve it with Butter Pecan Ice Cream—HEAVEN! Say it with me now.

It’s hard to share something like this when you realize you can only get 2 or 4 slices out of it. That the pan is a 3-quart 9″ x 13″ is neither here nor there. It’s all in how you decide to slice it up.

Who came up with what a serving size should look like anyway? My serving sizes NEVER look the same as what the so-called “experts” say a serving size is. They really need to rethink that whole thing.

Made with sliced peaches, almond liqueur, nutmeg, brown sugar, corn starch, flour, granulated sugar, salt, baking powder, butter, buttermilk, and egg white.

Moving on to the Peach Cobbler. Wow! I loved this, too! The almond liqueur is what sets it off. And, as per usual, I could only see getting 2-4 servings out of this at the most. So share as you see fit.

If you ever need:

a way out of a traffic ticket
a way to get a man or a woman
a discount on your groceries
front row concert seats
a job promotion
free gas refills for your car
to prevent someone from shooting you

THIS IS THE WAY TO GO, my peeps!! Always keep a slice of this peachy bad boy on you for situations such as these and you’re good-to-go!

Made with graham cracker crumbs, melted butter, chopped pecans, butterscotch chips, semisweet chocolate chips, shredded coconut, and sweetened condensed milk.

These Five-Layer Bars were ok to me but I didn’t really want a lot of this. Kids would probably like it more than I did. It was good, but not good enough for me to keep the recipe in my permanent recipe binder that I have going.

If a recipe can get a permanent spot in ‘the binder’, it’s doing pretty good—because that means I think it’s fabulous enough to keep and make again one day.

So, if you have nothing else to do today, definitely make yourself some of that Butterscotch Apple Crisp and Peach Cobbler because you’re really missing out on life if you don’t. (See the links above for the recipes.) And if that’s not your thing, just head towards the kitchen and make any dessert you’d might like to have or try. Most importantly, don’t be afraid to keep the whole 9″ x 13″ tray for yourself.

Take-Away Life Lesson: Where one person sees getting 20 servings out of a dish to serve—another may see only 2 or 3 servings coming out of it.

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A Peachy Breakfast