I love Nuts

Many arabs like to offer guests that visit a cup of tea or coffee and oftentimes bowls of salted or raw nuts for  snack with fresh fruit or sweet pastries. I get bored offering my guests the same thing as all the neighbors, so I have a little twist to make my snacks memorable and unique.

Roasted nuts with a little attitude.

So nuts, though they are high in fat, are also very healthy. You'll obtain from them alpha-linolenic acid (ALA), a plant-based omega-3 essential fatty acid, required by the human body. Many people take Omega-3 or Omega complex pills made from fish oils as a supplement for heart health. This type of fat aids in improving the HDL (good) cholesterol, and some studies suggest it helps the brain development of the fetus during pregnancy. Of the nuts, walnuts are particularly high in these fats, and are also high in antioxidants and provide a convenient source of protein and fiber. I prize walnuts as essentially the king of nuts for this reason, and I'd encourage using primarily these in recipes involving nuts. Also high in these healthy fats are almonds and cashews, which can also be used especially in families where a walnut allergy is an issue (like for my niece).

Sugar-and-Spice Candied Nuts

Makes approx 16 1/4-cup servings

Ingredients

• 1/4 cup dark-brown sugar
• 1/2 cup white granulated sugar (or splenda)
• 1 Tsblespoon paprika
• 2 Tablespoons ground cinnamon
• By replacing the first 4 ingredients with 2/3c white sugar and 1/3c unsweetened cocoa powder, you can create some chocolate-candied nuts that are also quite amazingly delicious.
• 1 pound walnuts, pecans, cashews, or raw almonds
• 1 egg white, room temperature
• 1 tablespoon water

Chocolate/sugar powder (left), and cinnamon/sugar powder after coating some pecans (right)!

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees. 
2. Mix sugars and spices in a large bowl that has a lid; set aside. 
3. Beat egg white and water until frothy but not stiff. Add nuts, and stir to coat them evenly. 
4. Remove nuts from the egg white, strain them momentarily to make sure they are not too drippy. 
5. Place them in the bowl of sugar and spices, put the lid on, and shake or toss until evenly coated. 
6. Spread sugared nuts in a single layer on a cookie sheet fitted with parchment paper or foil. Bake for 15 minutes, shaking the sheet occasionally to stir up the nuts. 
7. Remove from oven, and separate nuts as they cool. When completely cool, pour the nuts into a bowl, breaking up any that stick together.
8. And now munch delightfully!

Nutrition Facts for 1/4-cup of candied walnuts:
202 total calories, 10g total carbohydrate, 2g fiber, 4 g protein, 16g fat
(0.5 Carbohydrate, 3 Fat, and 1 protein exchanges)

Oranges and Dark chocolate

Do you want a low sugar, low fat dessert that is healthy for a diabetic as well as someone with heart disease? Do you want more antioxidants? Are you wishing there were healthier desserts and snacks out there?
I peeled a few oranges removing the white rag with the peel, and sliced them horizontally into rounds, arranging them nicely on a plate. After which I simply took a bar of dark chocolate with orange flavoring and grated it over the orange slices using a micro-planer. Ohhh, I love this little tool for grating parmesan, or for micro-grating/zesting orange or lemon peels. It is also handy in making little chocolate and white chocolate shavings over coffee or as a topping for cakes.

I decided to add a bit of color, also because I was overambitious ran out of oranges! So I used some grapes that a farmer from my work gave me as a centerpiece.  Because my dad was watching his sugar intake, I made him this instead of an extravagant cake, and we shared it family-style with appetizer forks.

My saving graces: by using high quality chocolate, freshly picked fruits, and having a pleasing presentation, this light dessert satisfied our sweet tooth, gave us antioxidants in the form of dark chocolate and vitamin C, and was very well loved.

Ingredients:

• 4 oranges peeled with white outer rag peeled off
• 1/4 bar of Lindt 'Intense Orange' dark chocolate
• Garnish as desired. I would prefer mint leaves or halved green grapes

Arrange orange slices on a plate in whatever pattern you desire. Grate chocolate directly over the slices, making sure chocolate stays cool and is grated quickly.
Yum!


Nutrition facts for 3 orange slices:
40 total calories, 10gm total carbohydrate, 1 gm fiber, 0.25gm fat  (0.5 Diabetic carbohydrate exchange)

And here's version 2, adding chunks of chocolate and brighter fruits provide more contrast and a beautifully delicious display. Add a mint leaf to the center strawberry for added color and appeal.

A tribute to Chocolate and Peanut butter

So just to provide some foreclosure: most, not everything on my blog will be healthy, nor middle eastern. After all, I love food, be it raw, cooked, natural, processed, eastern, western, healthful, or sinful. I love food so much that I had to become a dietitian and fitness enthusiast to keep myself in check. :-D

My brother's favorite candies growing up have always been Reese's peanut butter cups. So to give him the caloric indulgence he so deserves, I decided to make him a giant one!

Bwaahahaha... No. Bigger! Much bigger!

So with all my concentration, I set out to defy my principles of health and fitness for the most luxuriously fattening creation that my kitchen and my conscience could muster...

Taking notes from many different websites, I created 2 layers of chocolate cake, making the cake less fluffy and more like fudge, and adding a layer of peanut butter fudge in between. Later covering the cake in a shell of chocolate I made especially to be soft-solid at room temperature, and covering the cake in crumbled Reese's peanut butter cups. The neighbor's little girls came over just as I was decorating and insisted to wash their hands, get aprons and help. Those are 8-year-old hands, decorating and stealing extra bites of candy every time my back was turned.

 For the chocolate fudge cake, I adapted a recipe from a recipe on the Whole Foods website for Chocolate Mint Fudge Cake (the recipe is here). I modified it by using 1.5 cups of whole wheat flour instead of 2.25 cups of white flour, double the amount of chocolate and butter, using bittersweet chocolate instead of the unsweetened, and adding less sugar, and of course no mint, to create a more rich fudge-like consistency (plus adding antioxidants and fiber, if you really stretch your mind) for fudgey centers of the cakes, I decided to use metal pans only for baking. This helped the surfaces of the cake to cook a bit better than previous attempts using glass. A nonstick pie plate may also work just as well.

For the Peanut butter fudge, I adapted this recipe to be more fudge-like also, adding double the amount of peanut butter and a little less of the sugars. The original recipe tastes actually way too sugary to tolerate eating with such a rich and dense chocolate cake. I also used a natural peanut butter from whole foods containing only peanuts and flaxseed. Hooray for omega-3 fatty acids! Overall, being less sugary, and more healthy fat content than the original recipe.

The funniest thing happened. I miscalculated the amount of fudge I would need and made a half-batch extra. So I just added more peanut butter and more butter, chilled the remaining mixture until it was thick, then rolled them into 1/2-teaspoonful balls and froze them as little peanut-butter candies.  The result of my leftover meanderings was also a huge hit!

For the chocolatey fudge I melted semi-sweet chocolate chips with a little added coconut oil (solid at room temp, but never as solid as butter it seems) to my melting chocolate. It makes the chocolate shell of the cake softer so its easier to cut after being in the fridge, and won't chip off in huge chunks. Plus, it adds a slightly different aroma and mouth-feel to the chocolate, assisting its transformation into a more Reese's-like chocolate coating.

So for the sake of keeping this post short, the recipe is attached HERE...

Meanwhile, Happy 35th bday, Blub! Please enjoy, and not all at once! (The poor guy has a dietitian as a sister, but also another Dietitian in his life as an even more influential girlfriend. Sorry buddy, but you'll be stuck eating healthfully for a very long time!)

PS. If you think I'd be so self-loathing to count the calories in this, you'd be insane. I'll just eat it little by little while it taunts me in the refrigerator... A piece a day, every day, until it magically disappears.

Perhaps if I eat it while hanging upside down it counts as negative calories? lol.

Enjoy! :-)