Do you love those spinach salads with cheese crumbles and strawberries and those little heavenly nuts?

Good, glad I am not the only one fantasizing about nuts salads.
I promise this won’t get too raunchy but there are some jokes I can’t pass up.

This year I have tried to eat less processed and more natural.
Salads only made sense.

I went on the hunt for a heavenly nut recipe.

Good news:  There are lots of them.
Bad news: They are all too complicated.

Almost all of them called for eggs, which we never have because T is slightly allergic.  Then you had to do things like “roast the nuts” and “wash in brown sugar mixture” and time tables were looking just a little too long for my tastes.

So I did something crazy.  I “winged” it.

I am pretty impressed.  And yes, I could be missing out on the worlds greatest nuts by not including the egg and cinnamon and wasabi sauce or whatever.  But for two ingredients and five minutes…I’ll take it.  Especially when I am just going to toss them in dressing and attack them with strawberries on a fork.

You want in on this?

Ok, so you probably have sugar….now go buy some nuts. I used pecans because my heart belongs to pecans forever and ever amen.

Now dig out your non-stick skillet and toss them in.  I sprinkle a pinch of salt in there, I bet cinnamon would be tasty too.  Put your stove on medium heat and casually stir.  After a couple of minutes the sugar will start turning into a syrup. You heard me right….stir like crazy.

You want to make sure all the nuts get a nice sugary coat on it, plus they can burn if they sit on the bottom too long.  That’s not the worst thing in the world, Tim and I both agree the burnt ones are the best. Once most of the sugar has melted get ready to plop them on a cookie sheet sprayed with non-stick spray.  I always set the lubed up cookie sheet and two forks out before I even get started so I don’t get all frazzled. Make sure you let them cool for a bit before you start munching.  Throw them in salads or ice cream or if your name is Tim then just eat them straight up as a snack.  Yummm.

Have you ever made candied nuts?  Am I missing out on the egg whites?  Ever added cayenne pepper?