Curry flavored Roasted Mixed Nuts

Roasted nuts are my husband's favorite go-to snack. He is the snacker in the house, grabs a handful every time he walks into the kitchen. I don't like snacking, I'm more of a 'eat a full meal and wait for the next meal' kind of a gal. Even when I snack, it has to be in a proper bowl, I don't do handfuls, I only have bowlfuls :-)

Anyway, my husband has been asking me to make roasted nuts for a long time and I finally made him these curry flavored roasted mixed nuts. Recipe courtesy Ellie Kreiger's Food Network show.

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Overnight Pecan Sticky Bread for #BreadBakers

This month's theme for BreadBakers is Overnight Breakfast Breads. Our host for the month is Holly Baker and she wanted us to come up with either a yeasted or quick bread that can be prepared the night before and then baked off in the morning. December being a busy time for celebrations and getting together with family and friends, it is always nice to have these overnight breads in your repertoire, so that you, the bake, can enjoy the fruits (or breads!) of your labor with your loved ones. Scroll to the bottom to get more ideas for overnight bread from my fellow Bread Bakers.

Initially I wanted to prepare a no-knead bread, but then I realized that it involved shaping and baking in the morning which didn't really fit into theme. I couldn't really find any bread that was appropriate for the theme and I almost panicked.

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Wild Rice Salad with dried Cherries and Pecans

Hope all of you had a fun filled Thanksgiving weekend. Like always it felt really short and went by in a hurry. We had quite a busy weekend with family and friends -- lot of food and some shopping.

Here's a Wild rice salad recipe that I brought to the Thanksgiving party at our dear friends home. Recipe is from Cooking Light magazine. I tweaked it just a little bit to make it a little more tastier. It is colorful and festive looking. It is great addition to the holiday buffet table or as a filling weeknight meal.

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Sweet Potato Pecan Pie

Bake-a-thon 2014: Day 9

Bake of the Day: Sweet Potato Pecan Pie

I recently took a 'Pie making' class along with a dear friend at Chef Central. The class was the day before Thanksgiving and the 3 pies we brought back from the class were served for dessert on Thanksgiving day.

The crust is the foundation of any pie or tart. A good crust can enhance and elevate the resulting dessert. Conversely, a bad crust can make a wonderful filling lose its appeal. We learnt 3 different types of pie crusts: 3-2-1 Pie dough, Pâte sucrée and a simple cookie crust.

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Pecan Shortbread Cookies

For this month's Home Baker's Challenge, our host Sharanya Pathmanathan @ Just Not the Cakes has chosen a very interesting theme -- American food holidays for the month of January. She gave us 6 food holidays to choose from and I picked National Shortbread Day which is celebrated on January 6th. I didn't know that there were so many food days, so big thanks to Sharanya for introducing us to these mouth watering days. Here are the other food holidays that were on Sharanya's list:
January 16 -- National Fig Newton Day
January 21 -- National Granola Bar Day
January 22 -- National Blonde Brownie Day
January 23 -- National Pie Day
January 29 -- National Corn chip Day
Aren't those totally awesome days, what a great idea to enjoy food!!
I wanted to bake Fig Newtons and Granola bars too, but as usual time was short and I made only the shortbread cookies.

Shortbread cookies have become my new favorite kind of cookies to bake. They are so quick and easy to put together -- combine all the ingredients and that's it, you are good to go. Dough either goes into the fridge for chilling or straight into the baking pan for baking. Also the resulting cookies have a great texture and they just melt in your mouth.

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