Rethinking Food: It's Snack Time!

What to feed the kids for snacks….it is a real food dilemma for sure.  Fruit snacks, Little Debbie snack cakes, and most chips, crackers and pretzels do not make the cut if you read the ingredients.   I love a good Wheat Thin, sweet and salty at the same time.  I used to eat A LOT of Wheat Thins.  I was a little sad when I decided that they finally had to go.  Snacks were the “Last Frontier” of real food for our family.  The great thing is that once we did switched from packaged food to real food our snacks went from empty foods that robbed our health to full foods that added nutrients to our bodies.  Here is a peak at what we munch on now. 

·       Fruit-There almost doesn’t even need to be a comment here.  I think that our favorite would have to be apples and peanut butter.

·       Veggies-My kids are absolute bears before supper.  If things get really out of hand I let them snack on veggies and dip or plan old frozen peas (still cold, straight from the freezer.)

·       Popcorn-I make popcorn either on the stove top or with our air popper.  We love popcorn!

·        Smoothies-Smoothies are a little pricier of a snack.  We put greens in our fruit smoothies so we get fruit and veggies all at once. If you have never added greens to your smoothies start with a few spinach leaves and gradually increase them.  Yogurt is another great food to add.  We love frozen bananas in our smoothies so that they are really thick, almost like a shake!  I freeze the leftover smoothies into freezer pops.  Banana pops are good too.

·       PBJ Tortilla-This is also lunch for us sometimes.  Whatever works!

·       Bread and Butter-Bread is the best when it is fresh from the oven.  It is hard for our family not to eat a whole loaf!

·       Nuts and raisins-Our family loves almonds, cashews, pistachios, macadamia nuts and peanuts.  I know that walnuts are supposed to be a super food, but our tastes are just not there yet!  We buy nuts in bulk at Costco.

·       Granola Bars or Protein Bars- I am currently out of honey this week, and my son keeps asking for granola bars.  I agree with him.  We need to get honey and make a double batch this week!

·       Quick Bread or Muffins-I usually make enough muffins or bread for breakfast and freeze some for another breakfast.  If I know that we don’t have snacks for the day/week I will serve them as a snack too.

·       Hard Boiled Eggs-Slightly off topic, but hard boiled eggs remind me of the Ramona books.  Have you seen the movie Ramona and Beezus that came out a couple years ago?  It is a great movie for family movie night.  Back to eggs...I have to limit my kids on the number of hard boiled eggs that they can eat in a sitting because they love them so much!

·       Cheese Sticks or Yogurt

·       Crackers and cheese-Wait, didn’t I just bash crackers in the first paragraph of this post?  We do still buy Triscuits.  The ingredients are very simple so I feel fine purchasing them for my family.

·       Herbal tea-OK so not a great 10 am snack for the kids, but a great “snack” at 9:30 p.m. when I really am really not hungry physically but just need a little something.  I go ahead and add a little honey, because I figure what are a few calories from honey in comparison to a bowl of ice cream? 

What great snacks did I forget?  I am sure that there are plenty that I didn’t mention.  What does your family eat?