Spiced Almonds Recipe

This is such a busy time of year. I feel like I’m really busy but nothing is getting done. Here is a list of things I’ve been working on:

-We hosted Charlie’s office holiday party here last Thursday and I got the most beautiful flower arrangements from Winston’s. Here is close up of the white amaryllis:

-I’m also working on a gift basket for his office. I did one last year and it was a lot of fun and pretty well-received. I just put the cookie dough in the fridge for a few hours. I want the cookies to look like this (I clipped this picture from a magazine a while ago)

and I’m making the orange pound cakes tonight. My house smells so wonderful right now because I just took the spiced almonds out of the oven.

Spiced Almonds

This recipe is super – give it a try:

1 egg white
1 pound raw almonds
1/3 cup sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons kosher or coarse salt
1/2 teaspoon chili powder
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon cocoa
pinch cayenne (optional)

Heat oven to 300 degrees. In a medium bowl, whisk egg white until foamy. Add almonds and toss to coat. Transfer to a colander to drain. Meanwhile, wipe out bowl and add remaining ingredients and whisk to combine well. Add nuts and toss to coat evenly with spice mixture. Place nuts on parchment or aluminum foil (dull side up) lined baking sheet and spread in one layer. Bake for 20 min. Using spatula stir the nuts and spread again into single layer. Bake until nuts are dry and mahogany colored, about 20 min. more. Cool completely before serving.

-We went to Modhaus this weekend for their holiday open house and bought a bunch of terrific mid-century furnishings. This rocker will go in the new baby’s room for about a year and then will move into the living room.

This side table is for the living room, too.

Plus, we got Roxy a Heywood-Wakefield dresser and mirror for her room (her changing table is going into the new baby’s room shortly). And we got a few other housewares, some of which will be gifts so I won’t post them here.

-And, of course, there is always crafting going on. I started a log cabin quilt square.

I so love the ones Lisa makes and I got a book of quilt square patterns from the library last week that included one for log cabin squares. This was a lot of fun to try.

-I’m reading Handmade for Profit by Barbara Brabec and learning a bunch.

-And I’m finallly teaching myself to use Adobe Illustrator.

And even though that’s a lot, it’s really only half of what I’m up to. Whoa. And yet, I feel like nothing is getting done. Weird.