sugared nuts

Ok, I'm a little behind (again) on Good Food Friday. Do not despair, the recipe you've been waiting for is here!

On the real Good Food Friday my sister-in-law, The Ubermom, planned a fun and educational family trip to the local Cave of Wonders.

We had to leave our house at 7:30 AM in order to make our tour time. Mind you, my kids have not seen 7:30 in the AM for about 4 weeks now. They have mastered the fine art of sleeping in. (Do I hear a Hallelujah? Yes, and Amen. Kids sleeping in is a marvelous work and a wonder. I have waited more than a decade for that.)

In order to be ready to leave the house at such a bright and early hour, some advanced preparation and packing was needed.

Sunscreen. Check.
Jackets. Check.
Clean socks. Check. (Yes, boys, you have to wear clean socks.)
Water. Check

And then a there were few questionable items:

Would we need snacks? The hike is only 1.5 miles.

And, given the Oldest Carrotsticks affinity with nature, and the fatal bear attack that occurred last year in the same canyon as the Cave of Wonders, would Bear Bells be in order?

And then again, what about the snacks?

I knew Ubermom would be well prepared for every contingency. She would have snacks. And since I didn't want my kids to show their true grumpy/whine-y nature to the Ubermom, I decided I had better have snacks on hand, in order to bribe them into being well-behaved. And to keep them from begging snacks off of her.

Since we were going to be in the mountains, at one with the flora and the fauna, I decided the situation called for a lovely natural snack. Like nuts. Nuts are good. Bears like nuts. Squirrels like nuts. And so do I. Especially sugared nuts. Because sugar, as you know, makes everything better.

And so, for Good Food Friday, here is my healthy-concious recipe for

Sugared Nuts Au Natural

1/3 c sugar
1 cup nuts


Heat a medium frying pan and add sugar and nuts. Stir constantly over medium heat until nuts are coated and slightly browned. Remove from heat and set aside.

Add these nuts to any boring old salad and you will have a culinary work of art. The trick is keeping everyone from eating all the nuts before dinner is served.

Anyway. Back to the hike.

In the end, I decided against getting up early to make lovely, luscious, crunchy and sweet, sugared nuts and settled instead on High Fructose Artificial Peanut Butter flavored Granola Bars (with nuts).

And, in case you were wondering, the Cave of Wonders was wonder-ful.


My kids were un-naturally well behaved. (Ubermom's daughter is always well-behaved.)

And no bear bells were necessary.
The only grizzly we saw was this Grizzly Adams wannabe -- that's PB&J sporting the beard. Our Stake is going on a Handcart Trek this week and PB&J, thespian that he is, is getting in character.