Soo I broke my arm.

I have a cast going from my fingers to nearly all the way up my right shoulder, with my elbow perpetually locked in a 90° angle. All I can really do now is shrug and twiddle my thumbs, and even those take effort. So for the next 6 weeks, I essentially have an 8-pound deadweight for a right arm. How fun.

Not gonna lie, I did initially think this was going to be easy. I mean sure, I’ve never broken a bone or been put in cast before, but people (specifically athletes) go through this all the time right? Aaron Ramsey for one has been through much worse. No reason why I can’t endure this little fracture.

Pfft how naïve I was.

One week in, and I’ve gone from having a gung-ho, bring-it-on attitude to being an almost defeated shell of a man. The cast is giving me the most insane itch I can’t scratch, typing and texting have become lengthy ordeals, and I’ve found new nemeses in tightly shut ball jars and toothpaste tubes. Worst of all, I haven’t cooked in a week, and the itch to get cooking in the kitchen again is real. Fortunately, this is an itch I can at least do something about.

So instead of wallowing in my one-armed sorrow, I thought I’ll go back to basics and come up with a series of really simple (but still friggin delicious) dishes. There’s only one rule to these dishes – they have to be so simple they can be made with one hand. So no dough-rolling, pie-crimping, chicken-trussing, and probably no knifework. (Okay maybe some rough, one-handed chops or two are allowed.)

I’m calling the series Cooking with A Broken Arm, or CABAR for short. The acronym doesn’t mean much in English, but in Malay, it means challenge, which is pretty darn apt, because if you haven’t figured it out, cooking with one arm is going to be a real challenge.

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First in this CABAR series is a nut brittle! Despite it’s typically expensive price tag in supermarkets/bake shops, nut brittles are honestly one of the simplest snacks to make – just toast some nuts, fold in caramel, and leave it to harden. If you’ve noticed, this recipe’s called an any-nut brittle because you can literally use any nuts (and/or seeds) for it and it’d pretty much taste good regardless!

I took a cue from Sarah Jampel and made a pretty malleable recipe, one that gives you plenty of room to play around and add whatever nuts (and spices!) you fancy. Cardamom-spiced brittle? Ras al hanout with sesame? Sambal peanut brittle? With your imaginative food-brain and your own two hands (well, hand in my case), the sky’s the limit!

So while you go make these, I’ll be here having itches I can’t scratch, taking showers with plastic bags, and cooking with a broken arm. Fun times.

(Right arm please heal quick. )