I don’t know whether I’ve ever told the story of how I came to be a blogger. A very long story short, I was working in marketing in a regular 9-5 desk job and I was pretty miserable. I didn’t quite realise it at the time but I need to be creating things, doing new things and experimenting and being told what to do every day (one day it was write names on certificates!) was not up my alley.

Apart from the people, there isn’t really anything I miss from those days, apart from good old Secret Santa. Last year I had the genius idea of getting all my ‘work friends’ aka other food bloggers together for Foodie Secret Santa.

This year I cast the net a little wider and got some more Christmas-lovers involved. I assigned three people to each person and we all had to make up a foodie gift and mail it out to our secret recipients. Is there anything better to find in your letterbox than edible presents? I’m trying to come up with a way that we can make this international so if anyone has ideas please feel free to suggest.

This year’s inspiration for me came from my garden and the abundance of chilis (the one thing I have managed to keep alive all year). These chili peanuts are so easy to make and you don’t need many ingredients. If you grow chilis then you’ll just need some peanuts and the rest of the ingredients you’ll already have.

They’re pretty moreish though I have to warn you.

If you’re really organised you can make the chili oil yourself (it’s a bit late for this year but maybe next year) and chili flakes can be made by drying out some chilis in the oven then blitzing them in a food processor.

The hardest part is making sure they don’t burn. Just keep stirring and you should be fine. Now to the exciting part – check out all the other Foodie Secret Santa gifts below. What about you? Do you make Christmas gifts?

To add yours recipe to the hop please follow the instructions:

1. Somewhere in your post mention Foodie Secret Santa and link to this post.

2. Add your post to the hop.

3. If you would like to display all the other posts (you know you want to), click on the ‘get the code’ and copy and paste it into your post.

ps If you’re a food blogger and you’d like to be part of this next year, send me an email to claire(at)clairekcreations(dot)com.

Chili peanuts - Foodie Secret Santa 2014

Yield: 500g

Prep Time: 2 minutes

Cook Time: 15 minutes

Total Time: 17 minutes

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Ingredients

• 2 tbsp chili oil
• 500g raw peanuts
• 1 tsp chili flakes
• 1 tsp sea salt flakes

Instructions

1. Toss the peanuts in the oil until they are all coated.
2. Heat a large frying pan over medium heat and cook the nuts, stirring, until golden.
3. Transfer to a sheet of paper towel and spread into a single layer then immediately sprinkle with the salt and chili flakes.
4. Leave to cool and then package or store in an airtight container.