Does your loved one lean more toward healthy fare? We think one of the best presents you can give your sweetheart on Valentine’s Day is the gift of heart health. Many sweet and delicious treats also promote cardiovascular health. Here are our top five favorites:

1) Almonds: This nutty treat is spectacularly healthy! Of the 14 total grams of fat in a serving of almonds, 64 percent is monounsaturated. This monounsaturated fat has been shown to lower cholesterol, according to an American Heart Association study. Sounds like a fabulous deal to us!

2) Walnuts: Walnuts are naturally cholesterol-free, and regular consumption of these nutritional powerhouses can lower your LDL (bad) cholesterol, as well as your total blood cholesterol.  The phytochemicals and antioxidants found in walnuts protect cells from free radical damage that could result from heart disease.

3) Dates: Dates for your date? Great idea! Dates are packed with potassium, a mineral that your body uses to maintain muscle contractions, including those that keep your heart beating strong. They’re also a fantastic source of fiber, which can help lower blood cholesterol. Plus, they’re virtually cholesterol-, fat- and sodium-free! Dates sure are great!

4)  Raisins: Think raisins are just for kids? No way! Raisins are loaded with vitamins and minerals that are great for snackers of all ages! New research has shown that you can lower your cholesterol naturally by including raisins in a Mediterranean-style diet.

5) Heart Healthy Mix: This special trail mix was designed with your heart in mind! We put together some of the best ingredients known to help control cholesterol in this delicious Heart Healthy Mix. Try it today for a tasty, healthy treat!

What are some of your favorite smart snacks for a healthy heart?

Love is in the air at Nuts.com! We’re so excited about Valentine’s Day this year that we’re already coming up with gift ideas for the special people in our lives. These treats make great surprises for significant others, family members and friends. Check out our Valentine’s Day gift guide for all of our favorites!

If your sweetie is a chocolate-lover, we have some wonderfully rich and delicious recommendations! Try a box of our giant gourmet dessert truffles, with flavors such as milk chocolate champagne, tiramisu and dark chocolate Grand Marnier. They are truly decadent! If a gift tin is more your style, try our Gourmet Chocolate Covered Trio or our Chocolate Supreme Tin. They each offer up pounds of our favorite chocolate treats, and they’re perfect for sharing!

Looking for something that’s a bit unique? Try our Aphrodisiac Mix! It’s loaded with dark chocolate covered strawberries, milk chocolate covered bananas, banana chips, dried papaya, raw almonds, tart dried cherries and regular dried strawberries. We also offer quirky conversation hearts. What Valentine’s Day celebration would be complete without a bag of this class treat?

We also offer a wide variety of Valentine’s Day gift baskets for loved ones near and far, and they’re all loaded with goodies! Try our Indulgent Valentine, our Sweetheart Box or our True Love Box for the special someone in your life.

What are your favorite treats to give your valentine?

Are you ready for some football? We sure are! We’ve stocked Nuts.com with Super Bowl snacks that are a fantastic addition to any party, even if your team didn’t make it to the big game this year.

For a nutty appetizer, we highly recommend digging into some of our delicious nuts. Our jumbo roasted peanuts and organic mixed nuts make great game-day fare. Our bucket of pistachios and bucket of peanuts are both fantastic additions to any party. Your guests will love these healthy and delicious treats!

Snack mix also has an important role in your Super Bowl spread. Good thing we’ve got some great varieties! We love our crunchy and delicious bar mix and bagels and bits mix. Our Mix of Champions, inspired by David’s back-to-back Shug Softball Championship teams, is also a delicious choice. This winning mix is packed with hickory smoked almonds, edamame, salted macadamia nuts, chili bits, buffalo peanuts and cheddar sesame sticks.

If you want to send a Super Bowl gift to the super fan in your life, we’ve got you covered! The Tough Guy Basket is jam-packed with a spicy combination of snacks like Southern Heat Mix, wasabi peas, corn nuts, cajun peanuts and wasabi peanuts. The Ultimate Sports Snacker is an oversized tin loaded with favorites such as salted cashews, oriental mix and sugar-toasted peanuts. The Ultimate Peppah Snacker is the best treat for the spicy food fanatic in your life! It’s filled with a mixture of Southern Meat Mix and Cajun peanuts.

What are some of your favorite Super Bowl snacks from Nuts.com? We promise that you won’t be disappointed in any of our scrumptious offerings!

When it comes to Christmas cookies, there’s just about nothing that’s easier (or more delicious) than gooey butter cookies. These cookies, which are made from just a few simple ingredients, are soft, moist and delicious. They’re always a hit with friends and neighbors!

Our favorite recipe for gooey butter cookies sticks rather closely to the original. In a medium bowl, cream together 1 stick of softened, unsalted butter and one 8 oz. brick of cream cheese. Add one box of yellow cake mix (or 3 cups of our gluten-free vanilla cake mix), 1 egg and 1/2 tsp. of vanilla extract. Mix the batter until a soft, smooth dough forms, then add our super-special secret ingredient: 1-1/2 cups of mini cinnamon chips.

Scoop rounded teaspoonfuls of dough, roll them into balls and roll the balls in powdered sugar. Bake the gooey butter cookies at 350 degrees Fahrenheit for about 11-13 minutes. Transfer the cookies to a cooling rack, and let them cool completely before serving.

Of course, the beauty of these cookies is that they’re flexible! Choose a chocolate cake mix (or gluten-free chocolate cake mix) and sprinkle the cookies with crushed organic candy canes for a minty chocolate cookie! Lemon cake mix with yogurt chips is also a delicious combination!

What are some of your favorite quick and easy holiday recipes?

When we’re scrambling to get some goodies together to gift to friends and neighbors, no-bake cookies are our go-to treat! These chocolate-peanut butter cookies taste an awful lot like fudge, and they’re a cinch to make. We love them!

Start by placing two sticks of unsalted butter, 4 cups of granulated sugar, 1 cup of milk and 1/2 cup of Dutch cocoa powder in a medium saucepan. Heat the mixture over medium-low heat, stirring occasionally until the butter is melted. Bring the chocolate mixture to a boil, cook it for 1 minute, then remove it from the heat. Add 1 cup of crunchy peanut butter, 3 tsp. of vanilla extract, 1 tsp. of ground cinnamon, 5 cups of rolled oats and 1/2 cup of dark raisins. Stir to combine.

Drop the batter by rounded teaspoonfuls onto wax paper. Allow the cookies to cool until they’re firm (about 15 to 20 minutes), then peel them off the paper and store them in an airtight container.

Ta-da! A quick, easy treat that’s sure to make your taste buds sing!

What are some  of your favorite easy holiday recipes?

Our holiday calendar is filling up quickly with parties and celebrations (yay!).  Whether we’re heading to a potluck, cocktail hour, or a small, intimate dinner gathering, we always come bearing gifts.  Since we have more than 100 gifts available, we wanted to share a few of our favorite host and hostess presents.

Our custom trays are a go-to favorite for any occasion.  We usually fill them with our host’s or hostess’s favorite treats – nuts, dried fruits, and sweets.  Sometimes, the host will even set out the tray for the party guests to enjoy.  Oh, and the trays are a lot of fun to design, too!

You might have trouble getting our Gourmet Christmas Basket through the door, but your host is going to love it!  The basket has 8 pounds of treats that the host can set out immediately, or enjoy with their family through the whole holiday season.

If you’re looking for something smaller, our wonderful Box of Winter Wonderland is certainly easier to carry, but overflowing with sweetness (and some salted nuts, too).

Our Movie Tin Assortment of sweets will provide plentiful provisions for those delightful family gatherings that end in a quiet evening of movie-watching.  If your host is screening old family movies, be careful that they don’t accidentally mount the tin on the projector.

After the party is over, the host can enjoy a treasured quiet moment.  Our Snowflake Bliss is a delightful indulgence, in a beautiful tin that’s full of yogurt pretzels shimmering with silver sprinkles.  A true reminder of the winter wonderland and the small joys of the season!

Our lives are full of friends and family who are fitness fanatics and health nuts, so we’re always looking for the perfect gifts for them.  Below are a few of our fitness favorites to get you started (although we’d be delighted if you pulled up a chair and browsed through our full selection of more than 100 gifts)

Do you know a yoga nut that regularly gets twisted into a pretzel?  We sure do!  That’s why we love to give our Yoga Nut gift pack, complete with a nutty yoga mat and pretzels (chocolate covered for the indulgent yogi and yogurt covered for the virtuous one).

The Hole in One Gift Basket will make sure that you score a hole in one with the golf lovers among your friends and family.  Not only is this basket full of golf-fuel, like Damn Good Beef Jerky and Cajun Peanuts, it also delights with surprises, like a sleeve of our NutsOnline Top Flight Extra Distance Balls and 18 NutsOnline printed golf tees!  And the steel bucket  cools down beverages after a long day on the golf course!

Your favorite health nut can now enjoy their favorite nuts by the bucket!  Our buckets of nuts are sure to satisfy monumental cravings, from almonds to walnuts.

Even though berries may not be in season during the holidays, our Berry Good Tray delivers an anti-oxidant punch – and a pretty array of delicious dried berries.  The berries will fuel your fitness nut through grueling winter workouts (in preparation for the 2012 bathing suit season!).

If you’re looking for stocking stuffers or want to give a little bit of everything, consider designing a custom tray of nuts and fruits.  Or put together an array of our sample packs; from antioxidant mix to superfood spirulina, the sample packs are great for powering though the holiday season and jump-starting a healthy new year!

Have you started your holiday shopping? With holiday season in full swing, we’ve really started to think about the gifts we’d like to give our family members and friends! If you’re in the same boat, you may want to check out our line of holiday gifts! We’ve rolled out some special gift tins, boxes and baskets that are sure to please that special someone in your life!

Gift boxes like our Royale Gift Box and our Box of Winter Wonderland are packed with delicious nuts and sweets, such as pistachios, almonds, apricots and chocolate covered espresso beans. Our gift baskets, like our Gourmet Christmas Gift Basket and A Very Merry Christmas Basket, are packed with holiday classics such as dark chocolate cashew clusters and old fashioned Christmas candy. Delightful!

For the kid in all of us, we recommend the Nutty Reindeer and Nutty Lil’ Guy, both filled with festive red and green chocolate covered sunflower seeds. We also love the Nutty Snowman and Nutty Santa. They’re packed with layers of chocolate covered macadamia nuts, cashews, pecans and chocolate almond clusters.

Of course, if you know exactly what your loved one will enjoy, a custom tray is definitely the way to go! Fill this sectioned tray with up to five different treats for a gift that’s sure to thrill.

We’d be happy to assist you with any questions you may have regarding holiday gifts. You can contact us at 800-558-6887 Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. EST, or at CustomerService@NutsOnline.com 24 hours a day! You can also find us on Facebook and Twitter. Let us help you make this holiday truly tasty!