Nuts and Bolts

Nana has a stack of recipes she only makes this time of year. I am gonna work my way through these recipes in order to share them with you. She's probably got a system to bang these out each year, and I've got two kids, so we'll see how long this takes.

Nuts and Bolts is basically Chex Mix, but in our family we like to take it to the next level by adding as many nuts as we can get away with. It's cause we're a nutty bunch! We're addicted to this stuff, and it's a good thing Nana only makes it at Christmas when we're planning on wearing our stretchy pants anyway. If I ate this year long, I'd be in trouble!

Now I have to admit, this isn't exactly Nana's recipe. That's because she actually gave me two different recipes for the same thing. They are both very large recipes, so the following is scaled back for ease of cooking. And edited. And probably she won't recognize it. But she better like it cause I just made a huge batch to share this weekend. It tastes the same to me, so I think she will like it. Cross your fingers for me please!

Nuts and Bolts
Click here for the Printable Recipe at Tasty Kitchen

3 cups Plain Cheerios
3 cups Rice Chex
3 cups Corn Chex
3 cups Wheat Chex
1 cup Pretzel Sticks, (the small skinny ones)
1 cup Mixed Nuts
1/2 cup Pecans
1/2 cup Cashews
6 tablespoons butter or margarine
2 tablespoons Worcestershire Sauce (Lea & Perrin's, if you please)
1 1/2 teaspoons Salt (I used Lawry's Seasoned Salt, but table salt is fine)
3/4 teaspoon Garlic Powder
1/2 teaspoon Onion Powder


Preheat oven to 250 degrees. In a large roasting pan, mix together cereals, nuts and pretzels. Melt butter and add to it the seasonings and mix well. Drizzle butter mixture over the cereal mix and stir well. Bake for 2 hours, stirring well every 15-20 minutes.

Store in gallon sized ziploc bags or in a large popcorn tin. And don't forget your stretchy pants!