Sweet and Spicy Nuts

I had such a wonderful weekend.  After how busy I’ve been at work, it was nice having four days off in a row, and other than going to my sisters house for Thanksgiving, I had no where to go.  So I spent my weekend making gifts from my kitchen!  One of them was making a cranberry jalapeno jelly – which is going to be posted on The Chopping Blocks blog in a couple weeks. . . stay tuned for that because its an amazing jelly.  Another thing I made over the weekend (specifically to go onto my charcuterie board for my sisters house) that I now want to give everyone, is these sweet and spicy nuts.

These are like crack people! I used everything but the bagel seasoning and sriracha pepper.  So flippin good.

I found that sriracha black pepper at Walmart – go find it because its amazing!

I used 20 ounces of mixed nuts, so feel free to use any combination you like.

So notice that first picture above of the nuts?  See how you can kind of see the crystalized sugar on the nuts?  And some nuts were still a bit sticky after baking and cooling, so I threw the batch in the oven for another 20 minutes at 275 and they turned out amazing – almost a bit peanut brittle tasting on the bottom. 

They fit nicely on my charcuterie tray that I took to my sisters house.  I love the pre-sliced Cabot cheese!   For some reason, no one ate much of that tray, except my niece loved the fluffy mixture, which is the best fruit dip ever!

Just mix 1/2 a container of Cool Whip with a jar of lemon curd.  Mix and that’s it!  You can find that lemon curd dip at any grocery store, but it is the cheapest at Walmart for $2.28 a jar.

My sister and her husband did a great job hosting – I think for the first time ever?!

My plate – no one in her family can eat meat off the bone, and in fact their middle son made himself a pizza!  So the turkey wing was all mine.

Hannah and Jacob went to Jacob’s grandparents house this year.  Jacob still wanted me to grill a turkey for him, and you know, how could I say no to that?  I cooked mine on my Weber grill, with coals on either side and the turkey in the middle.  It was just under 13 pounds.  I cooked it on high heat (450 degrees) for the first 25 minutes.  I stuffed the bird with sliced lemon and rosemary and did a creole seasoned butter for the bird to get that gorgeous crispy skin.  I put a tight lid on the grill to cool the coals down a bit, but this only took about 90 minutes to cook.  I pulled it at 170 degrees, knowing that the residual heat would bring it up to 180.

It was so juicy!  I hope you let your turkey rest at LEAST  30 minutes before carving.

I was sad to leave this turkey behind when I went to my sisters, but Jacob said it was delicious.  I have leftovers too!   Thanks for hosting this year!

My Timehop reminded me that Tony “decorated” my apple pie 5 years ago.  This always makes me laugh.  Hard to believe this is the third Thanksgiving without him already.

And thanks to Jacky (check out her latest blog post – after a two and a half hiatus!)  inviting me to her sisters house for a pre-Thanksgiving cocktail hour.  It was great to see you!  That’s her daughter in the middle – who thinks I am famous because I have a lot of Instagram followers.

Since I didn’t weigh in at Weight Watchers the weekend before since I was in Dallas, I went to the meeting on Saturday.  I think I mentioned the last meeting I went to there were about 70 people there making me think I woke up on New Years Day!  There may have been 25 people there?

Not surprising that I had a gain.  Truth be told I haven’t really tracked my points religiously in a while.  Too long, which is why the pounds have just crept up these last several months.  At the end of February I was 157 – the lowest I had been in a long time, and well, if you don’t pay attention to all the licks and tastes, weight gain is going to happen.  I am hoping to lose 5.8 by the end of the year so I can at least have a 10 pound loss for the year.  I could just kick myself because my goal weight is only 140 and at 157 I was only 17 pounds away and could have easily hit goal by now.  Oh well!  Can’t undo what I’ve done, just dust myself off (again) and move on.

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Tony and I rarely argued, but when we did, can you believe it was over Christmas decorations?  I literally wouldn’t let me put much out or even put our tree up until December 20 (sometimes I put it up before then, but wouldn’t put the ornaments on yet) and then the day after Christmas wanted it all taken down – or at the very latest, New Years Day.  Bah humbug!  We had to buy a new tree this year because my 16 year old prelit tree got ruined in our basement flood this past summer.  This was “T-25” at Walmart (we decided not to get a prelit tree and buy strand lights) and it was only $89.

I think my brother told me one time to see if your lights are arranged properly is to take off your glasses and you’ll see the gaps – so true!  I didn’t see the gap at the bottom until I took this picture, which is basically the equivalent of what the tree looks like to me without my contacts – I am blind as a bat!

Question of the Day:  When do you officially put up and take down your holiday decorations?!

Also:  MY PINTEREST PAGE was hacked by someone from Bangladesh – I was immediately notified by Pinterest and changed my password, so if you got some message from me from Pinterest, please disregard it, it wasn’t me.

Make it a great day!