These are sweet & spicy walnuts. I make them at least once a week and they serve as both a snack and a salad topping. The boyfriend frequently asks me to make them for him to eat on a salad (note: his salad consists solely of lettuce and these walnuts). More often than not, he won’t ever get around to eating them with lettuce…instead he’ll eat them straight out of the Tupperware container. We don’t keep a lot of pre-packaged store bought snack food around the house so I guess I can’t fault him for it.

The boyfriend loves walnuts. Other nuts are okay but the walnut is his clear favorite. When we first started dating, we lived in apartments across the hall from each other. I learned of his love of walnuts pretty early in our relationship and I quickly learned that I would have to hide the walnuts in my pantry from him. If he knew I had them and/or he could find them, he would eat them. All of them. If I hadn’t learn to hide them, I probably would have spent $30 a month on walnuts.

Now we live together and share the cost of walnuts (and other groceries). I no longer hide the walnuts from him…I simply diligently buy more whenever we run low. He’s worth the extra expense.

The recipe below is a general idea of how to make these. Tweak the recipe to your own personal tastes. More spice, less sugar. Or vice versa. Or add entirely different spices to the bag. Heck, you could even (gasp!) use another nut instead of the walnuts. Do what you want with these…they’ll probably be delicious.

Sweet & Spicy Walnuts

Ingredients

• 1 1/2 cups walnuts (halves or pieces or both)
• 1 1/2 tablespoons Paul Prudhomme’s Blackened Redfish Magic (or another blackening spice mix)
• 1 1/2 tablespoons granulated sugar
• 1 teaspoon coarse salt
• 1/2 teaspoon ground pepper
• 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
• 1/2 teaspoon onion powder
• 1 1/2 tablespoons olive oil

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line a cookie sheet or baking pan with aluminum foil.

2. Add walnuts and all other ingredients to a gallon-sized Ziploc bag. Seal the bag and shake everything together until thoroughly mixed. This should only take a minute or two.

3. Dump seasoned walnuts onto foil-lined baking sheet, spread them out and bake for approximately 5-7 minutes. The walnuts should be lightly browned.

4. Cool on baking sheet and store in airtight container. If you want them to last more than a day or two, keep them well hidden from the walnut crazed member of your household.

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It’s been brought to my attention that I should continue to write blog posts despite not having internet access at home. This is a good point. A point that I am going to attempt to put into practice. Starting with this very post.

I really should be writing posts while I’m without the internet as I have a lot of old food pictures to blog. If I don’t post them soon, I may very well never post them. That would be a waste.

The pictures in this post are the results of my copying dinner directly from another food blogger’s post. Over at A Good Appetite, they posted the pulled barbecued chicken sandwiches with rice and fennel salad recipes. I found a picture of the rice and fennel salad on Food Gawker and immediately wanted to make it in the near future. Upon visiting the blog, the pulled chicken sounded pretty tasty as well. I had to make dinner that night and prior to visiting A Good Appetite, I didn’t have a clue what to make…so all credit for this lovely meal goes to them!

The pulled chicken was pretty easy. I used 4 or 5 chicken breasts. I brined them for an hour or two in a mixture of salt, brown sugar, red pepper flakes, garlic powder and chili powder. After the brining, I cooked the breasts on my charcoal grill with some hickory chips to add some smokiness. I then shredded/pulled the chicken with my hands and tossed it in a light mixture of sugar and cider vinegar with a hint of chili powder.

The boyfriend absolutely loved the chicken. He thought it was better than my pulled pork…which is fine by me as the chicken is far quicker and easier to make…not to mention, chicken breasts are a lot healthier than fatty pork butt. We put some store bought barbecue sauce on the sandwiches but the chicken would have been fine on its own without the sauce.

Just in case you were wondering, I also made the wheat buns for the chicken sandwiches. It was a very productive day in the kitchen.

I made the rice and fennel salad pretty close to the original recipe. I used a mixture of brown and jasmine rice. I didn’t have any fennel seeds so I skipped them entirely. I also added some toasted and chopped walnuts for crunch.

I loved this rice salad but the boyfriend preferred the wild rice salad I made twice earlier in the summer.

Thanks again to A Good Appetite for a great blog post and a delicious dinner!

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Rice, Corn & Black Bean Salad Wrap, originally uploaded by the boastful baker.

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