Sunday, October 14, 2012

Mix Masta Sara

I've made some yummy things over the past few weeks which I want to tell you about, but today I tackled a super-easy trail mix.  I stay far far away from most things labeled trail mix because I am allergic to tree nuts.  I CAN eat peanuts, but not pecans, almonds, walnuts, hazelnuts, etc.  Even my mother doesn't always remember this, but after years with dealing with this allergy I've gotten pretty good at it. 

But sometimes I would like a trail-mix like snack.  For awhile I was mixing honey sesame sticks from Trader Joe's with wasabi peas and this was heavenly.  Slightly sweet, a little spicy and salty.  Almost perfection...until Trader Joe's stopped carrying the honey sesame sticks.  The regular sesame sticks don't have quite the same attraction.

 Anyway, somewhere in the interwebz this past week I saw a fall-themed trail mix, but of course it was loaded down with walnuts.  I decided to let this inspire my own walnut-less mix.  I started out shopping for caramel bits, cinnamon chips, and dried apple slices.  Then I couldn't find caramel bits.  So here is what my snack mix ended up with - dried granny smith apple slices (I have a dehydrator and will make my own next time), cinnamon chips, toffee roasted peanuts (I got toffee bits when I couldn't find caramel bits, then I saw these peanuts and decided to kill two birds with one stone), roasted pumpkin seeds and orange cranberries from TJs.  If you were trying to do no-nut at all you could do pretzels to get your salty in.  Or the pumpkin seeds are pretty salty, you might not even need to replace the peanuts.  You could also certainly use Craisins if orange cranberries aren't your thing or you don't have a Trader's nearby.  The only thing I did in to prepare, other than pouring everything in a large container, was to break up the apple rings a bit to make the size more uniform with the other ingredients.  Seems to make a better mouthful.  And I put the entire bag of cinnamon chips in and that seems a little crazy in hindsight.


So go forth and make autumn-inspired trail mix and tell me what you would put in there.  I'll admit it was hard to leave any sort of chocolate out, but I didn't want to completely override the other flavors. 

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