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No. 375759
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>>375743
There are lots of "negative calorie" fruits and vegetables you could look up as well, which is to say, foods that take more energy to digest than they actually provide, actually lowering your calorie intake for the day just by eating them. Only one I remember off the top of my head is celery, which I personally hate, but I mean, if it's your thing, go to town, you're allowed and encouraged to eat as much celery as you could ever want.
And one thing that fixes my sweet tooth and need for crunchy stuff at the same time is a recipe for glazed nuts that I found a while back, that actually uses a pretty low amount of sugar for how much it makes.
RECIPE TIME WITH SLOWPOKE
First set your oven to be pre-heating to 350 degrees, it'll probably be done preheating way before you're done with all the other steps, but I'd rather an extra 3 cents on my electric bill than standing around for 10 minutes waiting for it to heat up cause I forgot to set it to preheat.
Next, measure out 2 cups of raw, unsalted whole nuts. I use almonds cause I'm p sure they're the healthiest, and even if they're not, almonds da bes, but you can use any nuts really. Actually I'm pretty sure you could dry roast some chick peas and use those, I should try that sometime, chickpeas are so good. Yeah, preferably almonds, but you can use cashews or w/e if you can find a raw unsalted version. 2 cups of them.
Put those 2 cups of nuts into a metal/heatproof mixing bowl.
Sprinkle on 1/4 teaspoon of cayenne pepper, and then 1/2 to 1 teaspoon of whatever other seasonings you want. I used another 1/4 teaspoon each of dried chipotle pepper and smoked paprika this morning, and they bit back a bit, but weren't as hot or smokey as I was hoping for, up the ratios as you see fit once you try a batch.
Once you sprinkle that on(doesn't need to be perfect or even, just get the spices in the bowl), grab your smallest pan and put it on the stove over medium heat. Throw in 1/4 cup of sugar, 1/8th of a cup of water(that's about a tablespoon and a half, I never properly measure it, I just fill my 1/4 cup measuring cup about halfway up, it's not that important), and about 3/4 of a tablespoon of butter. Bring that to a boil, stirring it to get the sugar dissolved, and let it boil for exactly 60 seconds. About 50 seconds in, I add a half teaspoon of salt and start stirring(I prefer adding the salt to the syrup instead of the nuts cause I really want to make sure I get it evenly distributed--a nut with a little more spice than the others is fine, but a nut with too much or not enough salt is blech). Once the 60 seconds are up, pour your syrup over your nuts, and be careful, melted sugar's like napalm, get that stuff on you and it ain't coming off, and third degree burns are not fun. Stir your nuts for a minute, making sure the syrup and spices evenly cover the nuts, they'll get all glossy and pretty.
Pour them onto a parchment paper-lined sheetpan once you're sure it's about as evenly mixed as it's gonna get, and spread them out into a more-or-less single layer. Don't spread them to the edges of the pan or anything, you definitely want them in one big close-together group, you want your nuts touching each other, that's more important than the single layer part for now. Bake them for exactly 10 minutes, then take them out and stir again, keeping them on the pan. There'll be a lot of the syrup that's run off of them onto the parchment, but by stirring, you'll get this back on the nuts. Basically just keep stirring until they start sticking together a lot and all the syrup is back on the nuts. Spread them back out into a single layer, and this time the single layer part is more important than keeping them all nestled together, so you can spread them out a bit if you want, and bake again for 6-8 minutes depending on how toasty you like your nuts being. I'd go with 6 the first time you make them and adjust the time on later batches.
And that's it. Take them out, give them another stir, let them cool on the pan before moving them into storage containers. Not only are they really healthy and yummy and surprisingly low-cal (it's something like uuh 350 calories per 1/4 cup serving if you use almonds which is actually quite a bit as long as you eat them one by one instead of by the palmful, I don't remember, do the math yourself, I'm too tired) but they are fancy as hell, makes for really impressive little gifts or snacks to set out when guests are over. They're sweet and spicy and salty and crunchy and really I don't know what else you want from me.
Sorry, this post was written basically immediately after waking up halfway through my sleep cycle, so basically I'm tired as hell, apologies for any tangents or really dumb typos or poor explanations or general grammatical mishaps.
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