Healthier Eating | Part 2 | Snacks
Over the last month and a half, we’ve been trying to come up with healthy snacks including desserts. We think we have some good ones.
Cracker Snacks
Just about anything can be placed on any type of cracker and it is deemed a snack. After some searching, I found a rice/almond cracker that is quite good – Nut Thins. We’ve tried anything from peanut butter and cheese to almond butter and jelly to lunch meats and tomatoes. These come in really handy when we need something quick to eat as we are heading out the door, before exercising, or for taking with us. 
Salad
The wonderful thing about salads is that they can be made up of so many different veggies and can be topped with our without dressing. We use them as snacks or as the addition of a veggie to our dinner. Sometimes they are as simple as tomatoes and cucumbers and other times as complicated as spinach, carrots, tomatoes, cucumbers, green onions, and broccoli – really, whatever veggies we have on hand in the fridge.
Veggie Pockets
These were fun to make. I had a roll of non-perforated crescent roll dough and didn’t know what to make with it. So, we had some broccoli to use up in the fridge and I started concocting. By the time I was done, I mixed broccoli, spinach, sour cream, mozzarella & Parmesan cheese, and garlic & herb seasoning. I unrolled the dough across my brownie pan, cut around the wells, stuffed the pockets and squeezed them shut. They turned out so cute.
Fruit bowl
This bowl was originally full of fruit – bananas, apples, strawberries and/or blueberries – and chocolate chips. It all depends on what fruit we have in the fridge or on the counter. This snack has become our evening snack dessert. I learned that eating bananas in the evening helps to sleep better.
Clementine
We keep a few in the fridge and these things are awesome as a small snack during the day. Pairing it with a few walnuts or cheese stick will kick any small hunger pangs while waiting for lunch or dinner time. Plus, we get a good dose of Vitamin C. These could be added to our fruit bowl also.
Banana Ice Cream Cut up some bananas onto a cookie sheet and place them in the freezer for a few hours or overnight. Alone, these little guys make a great snack as do frozen blueberries or cut up strawberries, but put some frozen bananas in a blender and you have yourself banana ice cream. We like to add a little bit of peanut butter to the blended bananas and then throw on a few chocolate chips.
“Cookies”
We absolutely adore our modified 2-Ingredient cookies. They have become our morning snack and a substitute for the bars we used to each so much of. The base consists of bananas and quick oats and then I always add cinnamon. Supposedly, cinnamon is an appetite suppressant which can be good to avoid eating so many cookies, but I just like the flavor.
In addition to the base ingredients, I have made a few concoctions:
(1) walnuts, chocolate chips
(2) walnuts, raisins, chocolate chips
(3) walnuts, raisins
(4) walnuts, cranberries
(5) peanuts, peanut butter, chocolate chips
(6) cashews, cashew butter, chocolate chips
(7) almonds, chocolate chips
(8) almonds, almond butter, cranberries, chocolate chips (absolute favorite!)
I’d like to try a cookie involving dried apricots. I recently bought some and am thinking of pairing them with walnuts. I’m also thinking of adding pretzel pieces too. The combinations are endless.
