The easiest of easy lunches!

Whole Foods makes a tuna and cranberry salad that I absolutely love. But it's also... tuna salad, and I just can't get myself to spend $5 on a little container of TUNA. So I recreated it at home for a fraction of the price. It really couldn't be easier. One day I might try re-hydrating the dried cranberries by soaking them in water but this way is so delicious, it's like- why bother? And since I had a huge bag of mini sweet peppers, I stuffed some tuna in them and called it lunch. This would be perfect for those days when I'm at the office and need to eat at my desk.

1 can drained tuna
handful of dried cranberries, roughly chopped
mayo (I go super easy on it because mayo is gross, you could use olive oil here, too)
garlic powder
onion powder
dash of red pepper
s&p

Mix together and stuff!

Just a regular carrot in a baby sized body

Some people fall into Wikipedia rabbit holes, I fall into Pinterest ones. Tonight, after clicking through from blog to blog to blog, I discovered how baby carrots were born. I haven't ever put much thought into the mini veggie's origin but it turns out, they're just regular old carrots whiddled down to the 2 inch size we all know and love. They were created to reduce waste since funny shaped carrots don't sell well- the knobby, bendy ones were being chucked. To avoid having to throw so many perfectly good, if unusually shaped, carrots away, the rejects were cut down and packaged as babies. Which is all well and good, but they cost so much more! For the same thing! Just smaller.

The USA Today article on the creator of the baby carrot can be found here: http://www.usatoday.com/life/lifestyle/2004-08-11-baby-carrot_x.htm

A Little Nutty, A Litty Spicy

There is really no way to say this without inducing snickers but, I love nuts. I especially love them when they're spiced and roasted. I made spiced pecans for the holidays and then selfishly squirreled away half the batch for myself. This time I decided to branch out a bit and added almonds and cashews to the mix. I also made this batch more spicy than spiced. How delicious do these look??

And they are! But I also learned a few things with this batch. Most importantly: pecans are the perfect nut for spicing. They get amazingly crispy and the ridges are little nut ditches just waiting for spices to pool. Cashews, on the other hand, are so flavorful all on their own. Their flavor fights with the spices and the result is just not what I was looking for. The almonds turned chewy after their times in the oven. And chewy is not what you want in a nut.

Don't get me wrong, I'm going to eat all of this. But this isn't a recipe I want to share. So I'll just keep spicing some nuts and eating them- for the greater good. You're welcome.