Part of my morning routine involves browsing food blogs and copying recipes that look really good. The fact that I will have to live to be 300 years old to try every recipe that I’ve copied doesn’t deter me in the least.

One of those blogs is written by Mark Bittman. Besides being a cookbook author, Bittman also writes a food column for the NY Times. His recipes are usually quick and easy; I don’t think I’ve tried a bad one yet. So, when I saw the video and recipe for his Parmesan Cream Crackers, I didn’t even try to resist. Next thing I knew, I was in the kitchen dumping flour, salt, parmesan and butter into the food processor. Add some milk, process a bit and less than 5 minutes later, I had cracker dough. Five minutes after that, I had the dough in the oven. Seriously, it was that easy.

I took some liberties with the recipe. First, I thought I had cream but I didn’t. So I used milk. I also added some dried rosemary to the dough and sprinkled coarse salt on top. The only issue I had with the recipe is it says to roll the dough out to a 1/2-inch thickness. I thought that was way too thick for crackers, so I went to about 1/8 of an inch. I probably should have cooked the crackers a little longer; the ones in the middle weren’t quite crunchy. However, that didn’t stop us from eating them all for lunch.

Obviously, this isn’t from the grains cookbook, but if you try these nuts, I don’t think you’ll mind the diversion. In fact, you might just get down on your knees and thank me. What can I say? I simply can’t stop baking sweet things (or eating, them, either)!

If I ever get motivated to hand out little Christmas presents to friends, these nuts will have a starring role. I found this recipe on smittenkitchen.com, one of my favorite food blogs about a month ago. I immediately earmarked it, went out and bought a bunch of almonds, and then proceeded to let the almonds languish in the cupboard for a month.

Sigh! If I had only known how good these were going to be. They are sweet, salty, cinnamony and just a bit spicy. They are dead easy to make and even easier to eat. They are good as is, but I’ve already got some changes in mind. I would have liked more of the salty, so I’ll increase the kosher salt to 2 teaspoons. Neither Bryan nor I could really taste the cayenne pepper. This time, I used 1/8 teaspoon. Next time, I’ll go up to 1/4 teaspoon. I’m also curious to try different spices. But first, I think I need to go eat some more of these.