Holidays are nuts. In this Feed Your Fire podcast episode, we share a few unforgettable experiences as we explore the polarities of the holiday season and prepare a delicious recipe of sweet and spicy nuts. Join us as we dig in.
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Episode Transcript:
Hello and welcome to Feed Your Fire. I'm Kim Baker, founder of Kim Baker Foods. I don't know about you, but this holiday season has been bananas. I think the holidays are filled with this duality, combining love and peace with chaos and the complexity of family. And so in today's episode, we're going to dig into that polarity as we enjoy and prepare some spiced holiday nuts in recognition of the craziness that the season often holds.
The holiday season, for me, has often been the catalyst for some real character building. There was the year that I had baked cookies to give out as presents for hours upon hours only to wake up the next morning to find the hundreds of cookies that I had baked covered in ants. My sister Danielle, to this day, still does a very good impression of me when I discovered the ants that morning, and it always makes us laugh wildly.
And I remember that morning finding myself having to decide between whether I would simply toss the cookies in the trash and move on, or I would re-bake them and start afresh. Yeah, I might have cried a tear or two, but I went on to re-bake them, and everyone got the cookies that I planned to give out that Christmas.
I have wonderful memories of the holiday, and then there is often these streaks of chaos that are interlaced with it. I remember the first Christmas after my brother died, and I had just gotten divorced, I couldn't muster up the energy to decorate. I was just surviving. My parents showed up in my apartment in Virginia and had brought from New York this little Christmas tree and all types of decorations that they put out for me and my son. That support smoothed out the edges of an otherwise really difficult season.
And interestingly, last year, when my boyfriend and I spent our first Christmas together, we shared an evening and lit the tree that my mother had given me, bringing the moment kind of full circle.
There was another year where my grandmother actually died at Christmas—sort of. She came back to life, but it was a moment that we all remember.
These moments may shape our narrative, but we have the opportunity to decide how we respond and how they shape our identity. Some test our will, others open our hearts and others like the one when grandma died, just create experiences that are unforgettable.
It reminds me of that iconic episode in The Bear where the chaos of family creates both discomfort and connection. And so I offer a recipe for some spiced holiday nuts. If your family is normal, it'll give you a taste of something a bit salty. And if your family is bananas, then it'll feel a bit like home.
This is a very simple recipe. I want you to go ahead and preheat your oven to 300 degrees. We're going to keep the temperature low. Now this recipe is sweet and savory, and so the first thing we're going to do is grab a spice grinder and add in some fennel seeds, I like to use about two teaspoons.
This flavor combination was inspired by this Italian dessert called struffoli. They’re these honey balls that are often flavored with anise and orange, and sometimes cinnamon, and then they're covered in these nonparallel sprinkles. They very much remind me of my childhood. Not many years ago, my friend joy and I made them using her grandmother's recipe. These nuts have a lot of those same flavors.
Now I want you to take the fennel seeds from the grinder and put them in a medium bowl. Add in the zest of one orange, and then a quarter cup each of maple syrup and brown sugar. Add in a little smoked paprika and a pinch of cayenne pepper. Lastly, we're going to add in about two tablespoons of melted butter. Then give it a taste. Do you like it?
Adjust the heat if you need to. That's our spice mixture. If you want to add even more savory elements, you can add in some chopped rosemary and or thyme.
Then you're going to toss in your nuts. I like to put in almonds, pecans and cashews, and I like them to be unsalted and roasted. I also like to add in some pepitas for texture and color. Toss all that together really well and then put it on a baking sheet that's lined with parchment paper and sprayed with cooking oil. Then pop it in the oven for about 15 minutes.
The savory elements will really create a wonderful fragrance and a beautiful contrast to the sweetness from the brown sugar and maple syrup. Once the nuts come out of the oven, sprinkle them with salt. Once the nuts cool, you can either serve them or put them in an airtight container. They'll last for weeks. They make great gifts, and rest assured, if the ants come like they came for my cookies, making these is a whole lot easier than rolling out dough.
What I've learned about the holiday season and most experiences in life is that there's no “OR”s. There's only “AND”s. Did moments like receiving that Christmas tree from my parents help create a strong foundation. Yes, does the Christmas dinner where grandma died and then came back to life reveal its insanity? Yes, to that too.
And what I love about this recipe as a metaphor in today's episode is that the nuts are not a defining element in the meal. They're just a part of it. They certainly add texture and spice, but they're not the centerpiece as we gather around a holiday table.
The Christmas holiday itself brings together two very different ideas, the commercialism and gift giving with spirituality and faith. The pairing of these ideas really makes no sense, but we're able to hold space for both of them to celebrate and enjoy it. And maybe that's what we're called to do this holiday season— to try to expand, to hold that dichotomy, those gaps, those differences. And even when what's in front of us is truly nuts, to recognize that it's only part of what's been set on the table. Until our next episode, I say so long.
Feed Your Fire, where food nourishes growth.