If quality of life is our intention when we discuss healthy foods we should understand that healthy is as much about tasting good as it is being good for us. Too often we consider healthy food to be low in calories or fat or sugar and end up with horribly tasting food the leaves little mystery as to why "we can't eat healthy". Healthy foods give us useful and timely nutrition above all else but truly healthy food also tastes good and adds the experience of our lives. Let me repeat that, healthy foods give us the useful and timely nutrition and contribute to an experience of not only surviving but thriving. Simply preventing us from consuming something “bad for us” can no longer be a strategy for healthy eating or healthy living. It is so important for us to use good ingredients in all of our cooking, baking or any other food prep because if the ingredients don’t have nutritional value then the end product - our daily lives - won’t have the value we seek either. We need to change the way we look at the opportunity food provides to truly change the way we benefit from our health.

Today we will consider a simple reduced sugar snack recipe that tastes great and is generally good for us. Like any recipe we should consider allergies or foods that we should be reducing or avoiding within our personal health program.

We hear regularly about the phytonutritional benefits of walnuts as brain food with their healthful oils, good quality dark chocolate for heart health and cinnamon benefitting our heart, blood sugar and blood circulation. This recipe offers a simple amalgamation of these ingredients in a tasty snack along with a comparison to a typical pecan praline recipe. Give ours a try and see if you miss all the sugar.

Pralines

• 2 cups sugar
• 1/2 cup evaporated milk
• 2 tablespoons butter
• 1 1/4 cups pecan halves
• 1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract

* Estimated total calories from sugar – 2000 for 1 ¼ cup of pecans

Honey Fried Walnuts w/Dark Chocolate and Cinnamon

• 3 cups walnuts
• 2 tablespoons honey
• ¾ teaspoon cinnamon (increase as desired)
• 1 oz grated/finely chopped dark chocolate (I used Callebaut Dark very nice!)

* Estimated total calories from sugar – 200 for 3 cups of walnuts

Instructions

• Using a wok or large frying pan begin heating the walnuts over medium low heat. While heating the walnuts the skins will begin to flake off. Toss the nuts to stir them and help the skins fall off. Remove the nuts from heat from time to time to separate the shed skins from the walnuts, lightly rubbing them will help. Put them back on the heat and continue until the skins that are left seem stable. At this point the batch should be warmed evenly through.
• Clear a space in the pan to add 1 tablespoon of the honey, let it melt, be ready to stir the nuts right away to make sure the honey doesn’t burn. Coat the nuts as best as possible and use the remaining honey to repeat the process to make sure the nuts are coated. They will be shiny when they are fully coated.
• Using the cinnamon (about half) liberally coat the walnuts in the pan.
• Sprinkle grated chocolate and stir the walnuts until thoroughly but thinly coated
• Using the remaining cinnamon coat the walnuts again
• Place on a sheet pan to cool and separate the nuts as best as possible.
• Once cool/dry, finish separating the nuts