Whiskey Sriracha Caramel Corn

I can’t believe it’s the week before Christmas and I haven’t put my tree up yet!  I probably will tonight, while Tony watches his Monday night football.  I had hopes of doing it yesterday, but since I worked in the bar area, I didn’t get home until after 1 a.m.  Tony waits up for me, which I love.  I don’t know if you’ve ever worked in the restaurant business, but while you would think that you would just come home and fall right into bed, it’s hard to settle down.  You are tired and still awake at the same time if that makes any sense.

After eating a late breakfast out Saturday, that was my breakfast and lunch and I only had time to scarf down some broccoli cheese soup and some bread before the bar got busy.  We had live music and had a Rod Stewart impersonator.  He was actually pretty good!  Up close though he was probably the same age as Rod Stewart is in real life, but he had a following and everyone had a great time – lots of dancing!

I am not sure if you can see the quote to the right of the singer – it says “Music washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.”  It made me happy to see all these people just let loose and dance away, whether they were good or not.  No matter what was going on in their daily life, Saturday night, they had fun!  Love it.  Sadly, what happens is that I am STARVING by the time I get home.  I don’t really notice since I’ve been on my feet for 7.5 hours, but once I sit in the car on the drive home, I’m hangry!   And the result is this – a glass of wine and reheated pizza!

It got my thinking yesterday morning that I really needed to meal prep this week – that way I don’t have to worry about anything – just grab and go.  I bought a cantaloupe on the dollar rack – so good!  Cut that up and added some black grapes for fruit with breakfast.

The fruit tasted so good, I incorporated it into my brunch – fried egg, some leftover hash browns, bacon and fruit.  I showed my breakfast plate to Tony and he said “wait a minute!  I thought you only liked scrambled eggs!”  Nope, I like fried eggs too, but they have to be cooked all the way through – no runny yolks for me.  I just LOVE Tony’s scrambled eggs so much, I always like them!

Also on my lunch menu this week is stir fry – it’s just such an awesome way to get a ton of veggies in.  I made three servings – each one had 1 cup of cooked brown rice, 3 ounces of chicken and 2 cups of mixed veggies.  Tony said he’ll make me soup to round out the other two lunches.  Love!

Check out the sauce I used for the stir fry!

With all the talk about a shortage of sriracha, I got emails from blog readers telling me to stock up!  And I got quite a few sriracha recipes – one that Aimee sent me for a recipe for Whiskey Sriracha Caramel Corn.  What?!  Yes please!

Except the girl that made this recipe was vegan.  Not that there is anything wrong with that, but um, I like butter.   And I wanted a bit more whiskey in the mix.  And I wanted it sweeter to offset the sriracha.  So this recipe is inspired by the link that Aimee sent me.

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The best part about the parchment is that it makes it really easy to break apart.  The first taste you get is sweet, but then you get the taste of the spicy sriracha, almost from the back of your mouth to the front, but the taste the sweet again.  OMG.  So good!  I brought a batch to the restaurant and the Chef loved it.

Here is how the caramel sauce looks after the 5 minutes after it reaches a boil.

This is some damn fine caramel corn if you ask me.  It’s light, not too sweet, crunchy, salty, spicy.  This would be a pretty cheap and simple gift to make for the person in your life that loves spicy stuff like me!

A am starting over the last phase of my body building program, so I am starting at week 10 this week.  I only work one day during the work week this week, so I should be able to keep up.  Today is a killer leg routine – I think it will take me an hour to do, so I am headed to the gym before work.

Hope you had a great weekend!  Hugs!