Candied Spiced Nuts

When Hubby and I lived in Germany, we fell in love with their traditional candied spiced nuts.  They are really amazing, but seemed impossible to make at home because of the specialized equipment they used: a special cooker shaped like a bowl with a spinning paddle that got hot enough to fully melt and cook the sugar.  In Germany these treats were relatively easy to find, inexpensive and super tasty.  I'd buy several bags of them every time the vendor made the rounds.  They are much harder to find in the States, usually only at special fairs or something similar, and when I can find them, they are pretty expensive.  But then I ran across a recipe to make them at home!  I was super excited and made some right away.  We enjoyed the results, but I've tweaked the recipe to fit our tastes better.  I increased the spices, because we love the flavors and they weren't quite coming out enough in the original recipe.  I also added a bit of maple syrup, to help the sugar melt and coat the nuts better.  Lastly, I used bowls instead of the plastic bags the original author used, because it is much easier to work with bowls, and it doesn't waste 2 bags for every batch!

Candied Spiced Nuts

4 cups of nuts, whatever you like.  We like cashews, so I use those.  A great place to get inexpensive nuts are indian food markets.

1 egg white.  You can grease a small container with a few drops of oil and put the yolk in it to use for something else later.
1 T water
1 T maple syrup, or if using white sugar substitute molasses instead

1 C sugar, preferably brown sugar or sucanat.
1 T cinnamon
1 tsp salt
1 tsp ginger
1/2 tsp nutmeg

Preheat oven to 250.

Put nuts in a bowl large enough to stir everything together.  Measure the sugar and spices into a medium sized bowl and whisk until combined. 

Whisk egg white and water together until a little foamy, then add maple syrup or molasses.

Drizzle over the nuts and stir until coated.

Pour sugar mix over the nuts and stir until all the sugar is moistened and coats the nuts.

Pour the nuts onto a lined baking tray and spread them out.  Don't forget to scrape all that tasty sugar out of the bowl too!

Bake for about an hour to an hour and 15 minutes, stirring every 15 minutes.  When stirring, make sure you scrape all the melted sugar off the bottom of the tray and mix it back into the nuts.  I've found it helpful to just kind of pile everything in the center of the tray, use the spatula to scrape up the sugar and dump it on top of the pile, then spread everything out again for further baking.

The nuts are done when the sugar is dry and they break apart easily.

Set on the counter to cool, then store in an airtight container.  These don't last all that long around here, but I imagine they would stay good for several months.

Yield: 4 cups

No ED Today

Well, I'd intended to start again today, but I didn't sleep well at all and have no energy or motivation, so hopefully tomorrow.

Elimination Diet Day...?

Well, I was sick with a pretty bad cold.  The bad symptoms didn't last too long, maybe 4 days.  The congestion held on for another week and a half.  But I have such problems with having enough energy to do things, and being sick just wipes me out.  I've been too tired to really focus on doing the ED, because it is very labor intensive.   So I decided not to stress about it and just do what I could.  I've been having my green smoothies almost every day.  I've made several meals that lasted me several days, but I don't really remember what they were anymore. One of the reasons I do a Daily Diet Update every day is just to help me keep track of what I've done!  I've also been eating plenty off the diet, but still researching and thinking about what I want to do when I get back on it.

Biggest thing I've finally decided:  I really don't like kale.  I've really tried to learn to like it, but I just don't.  I don't like it as chips, I don't really prefer it in soup, it's fine as baby kale in smoothies because I don't really taste it.  I find mature kale to be too much though, even in a smoothie.  But I think that except for smoothies and the occasional hash where it can be nicely blended in, I'm just not going to be having a lot of it.  I will still get plenty of the cruciferous compounds in my smoothies.  Broccoli sprouts and baby kale are about 2/3 of the greens I put in there and, when I can find them, dandelion greens fill out the rest.

Health Update:
I have some improvements to my health, even after being mostly off the diet for the last 2 weeks.  My stomach seems to be slowly healing.  It doesn't react to things quite as strongly anymore, and I notice that my back isn't getting yanked out of place by the diaphragm cramps quite as much.  Another thing I've noticed is that my hips are hurting less, and I have fewer cramps in my legs when I'm laying down.  I've definitely lost 5 lbs since I started, and I fluctuate another 5 lbs depending on the day.  I was sleeping better, and my digestion was very much smoother, but that improvement has reduced during the last few weeks.

I'm planning on starting back on the diet tomorrow.  I'm not going to do the fast, that really made me feel very bad the last time.  Just gonna get started on porridge and tacos again!

Plans for the week: Make sweet potato chips (with guacamole!) and fries.  Make turkey jerky.  Plan out what I wanna do with a leg of lamb next week.

Elimination Diet Days 13-16

Being sick sucks.  So tired, can't sleep because I can't breathe, etc, etc.  So yeah, having problems being motivated to do anything, much less stay on the diet.  So I've been halfway ignoring it for the last few days.  I've been eating a lot of the food I had prepped, but I've also eaten out several days too, just because I was out anyways and it was easier than trying to figure out what to take with me.

But I'm feeling better already!  Part of it I think is because I really concentrate on not doing more damage than the cold already does, and part of it because my body was already settled into detox mode because of the diet and so I was able to detox the sick out faster.  I also focused on eating my fermented foods like kim-chi, water kefir and some fermented okra I put up this fall.  I've read that if you gargle and swish the contents of a probiotic pill before bed, it helps out compete the bad bugs in your sinuses.  Figured it would work with probiotic fermented foods too. 

I made chicken and rice soup today that was easy and tasty.  Looking forward to getting back in the groove in a few days, but not going to stress about it until I have a bit more energy.