Snack Foods

Homeschool Blog Awards has a posting on snack foods this week. I figured I would join in. :)

First off. I am a careful snacker. Always have been. I tend to be overly caucious about food in general actually. But that is another topic. ;) This and being frugal tend to make me a 'trend snacker'... one week I prepare this... next week this. Things like that. Many of these things we also will make for a whole meal... Most of the time not alone... but mix two or more of these things on the list and you have what we probably ate for lunch one day in the last few weeks.

So, on to those ever so useful lists:

1. Hummus. I make hummus a lot. Sometimes I even buy it. My favorite things to dip in hummus are fresh carrot sticks or tortilla chips.

2. Chips and Salsa. I buy a bag of organic corn chips every week. Sometimes red, sometimes yellow, but even blue corn has made it into our diet via this little conduit. This time of year, I make salsa or pico de gallo quite often, but when it isn't in season around here, I get mine from the organic Safeway variety.

3. Apples and Peanut butter. A fav of my kids and they have their own apple slicer so they can make it themselves really easily.

4. Cold Oatmeal. This was started by my daughter, who loves oatmeal in any form. And now has been picked up by the baby, who will eat cold oatmeal, plain, with his fingers. This gets rather messy, but is a good way to use up food left over on the counter from breakfast. lol... (My mother has told me that I used to eat oatmeal when it wasn't even cooked yet. So my husband blames me for this weird cold oatmeal trend.)

5. Popcorn. The kids LOVE popcorn. They would eat it every day. We put all sorts of things on it. It is rarely just butter and salt. Our current fav is Nutrional Yeast, basil, and cheddar cheese.

6. Celery sticks with Peanut butter. Same as apples. Kids can do it by themselves... it makes it a hit. Plus, right now we get a couple heads of celery every week from the farm (and this celery is amazing.. and hot just cuz I sell it either.) so they are eating this nearly every day.

7. Pretzels. We don't get them often. But they don't last when we do get them.

8. Animal cookies. I happen to LOVE the light and simi sweet animal cookies from Trader Joes.

9. Crackers and cheese. Once again, I don't get crackers often, but when we do, this is a favorite snack of ours.

10. Uncrustables. My own making. I throw them in the freezer and the kids will pull one out, wait for it to get just mushy enough not to be frozen anymore and eat it like that. I can't imagine how... but heck, they eat cold oatmeal with nothing on it. So... whatever.

11. Trail mix. I was going for an even ten, but maybe it will be twelve. lol... I make trail mix by taking whatever dried fruits we have on hand, and mixing it with whatever nuts we happen to have on hand, and pretty much anything else. I have been known to throw in raw almonds, peanuts, cashews, walnuts, crasins (we don't eat plain rasins here), chocolate chips, banana chips, M&Ms, dried papaya, dates, pineapple, apples, apricots (all sulfer free), cornnuts, yogurt covered rasins, granola, and/or dried soybeans/soynuts. Anyone of these would be crazy spendy to buy enough to feed a teen, a kid, and a toddler... but throw them together with something like peanuts or almonds as filler... you have a healthy snack that you don't have to break the bank for. My favorite bedtime snack for the last few years has been the mix of a few sulfer free apricots, dark chocolate chips, and raw almonds.

12. Frozen blueberries. I u-pick/buy 30lbs of blueberries every year from a no spray farm. That is a LOT of blueberries. But my kids eat them. Nearly every day. So knowing where they come from and what went into preparing them for eating is important. They like frozen grapes too, but grapes don't really grow anywhere around us, so they are a every couple months thing (maybe) on our locavore diet.