Day 8.I had to hurry and take this picture before the kids gnawed my arm off to reach the rest. It's okay to eat trail mix for all meals for 2 days, right? I think I read that it was okay in some parenting magazine.
Being gluten-free and all, it's difficult for our family to find a store bought trail mix that we all enjoy and isn't reminiscent of guinea pig food. This did the trick.
One of my library finds was America's Best Slow Cooker Recipes by Donna-Marie Pye. I may just have to buy this book when the library figures out that I keep renewing it. I followed this recipe to a T. Except for that I didn't have all the stuff she told me to have and I apparently read the directions wrong so I didn't actually follow what she said to do. How on earth did they ever let me out of school? Seriously.Oh! If you get the book, it is called Winter Trail Mix. But growing up my mom and grandma called stuff with pretzel sticks Nuts and Bolts, so I changed the name.
The Ingredients:
2 1/2 cups of unsalted nuts (I used almonds and walnut halves)
1 1/2 cups pretzel sticks (Glutino makes these awesome gluten free ones; Whole Foods carries them or you can buy from Amazon)--1 cup dried fruit (I used only cranberries because that's all we had. I would have loved to include dried blueberries and apricots)
2 tablespoons melted butter
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1 1/2 tablespoons water
The Directions:
--Dump dry ingredients in the stoneware.
--Mix the melted butter, water, vanilla and sugar in a bowl.
--Pour butter and sugar mixture on top of the dry ingredients and stir well to coat.
--Cover and cook on high for 2-3 hours, stirring every 30 minutes or so.
Dump out on a prepared cookie sheet (I used Release foil) to cool.
I was worried that the pretzels would taste stale after being coated, but once they dried and cooled they regained their rightful crunch.
Quick, go hide some.
It will disappear.
other fun crockpot snacks:
