Healthy Snack: honey nutters with apples

When my kids get home from school they are absolutely famished. So I'm trying to build up a healthy snack stash to have on hand when the munchies strike. I recently discovered honey nutters. I'd never heard of such a thing until I read about them over on another Heather's blog. These are so easy, so yummy, and I think the kids would really enjoy making them, too. 

1 1/2 C natural creamy peanut butter

1 C honey (you could also use maple syrup)

1/2 C powdered milk

16 full-size graham crackers (or 32 squares), pulverized in a food processor or blender, or crushed finely with a rolling pin

If your peanut butter is coming straight from the fridge, you'll want to warm it in a pot on the stove to make it nice and gooey. And if you buy really thick honey, mix it in with the PB on the stove to soften. Otherwise you just mix everything up in a bowl and form small balls with your hands. I like mine to be about the size of a Hershey's kiss, but you could make them a little bigger. That's it! Store in the fridge. The other Heather (sorry, that sounds like the title of a bad teen romance novel: The Other Heather: Heartbreak and Revenge at Green Valley High) rolls hers in coconut flakes, but my kids aren't fans so we don't. 

Three honey nutters served with a side of sliced apples (hooray for apple season!) makes this crew very happy. They are also great for soccer practice snacks. I don't typically buy graham crackers, but I did find this brand at New Seasons called Mi-Del made with whole wheat flour and no high fructose corn syrup. I don't care for them just as graham crackers (not sweet enough), but they are perfect for this recipe.

Toasted pumpkin seeds and thoughts on the Mediterranean diet

It's been awhile since I posted a healthy snack recipe (perhaps because I haven't made any recently?). This one is so easy: toasted pumpkin seeds. These aren't like the big white ones you separate from the gooey brains of a jack-o-lantern (which are also tasty toasted), these are small and green. I guess it's just a different type of pumpkin. You can find them in the bulk section of your grocery store. What I do is pour the seeds into a bowl, add a bit of olive oil just to coat and mix in some salt. Then spread them out on a cookie sheet and toast for 10 minutes in a 350 degree oven. You'll hear them pop a little, and you might keep an eye on them so they don't burn. Everyone's oven is a little different. You just want them a little brown. I intended to have these on hand for salad toppings, but everyone just kept grabbing handfuls for little salty snacks.

I've become really interested in the Mediterranean diet -- not for losing weight, just as a lifestyle framework. Everything about it makes sense: fruits and veggies are the focus, followed by legumes, nuts and seeds (voila), whole grains and olive oil. In moderation: low-fat dairy, fish, healthy fats, red wine and other lean meats. Mediterranean cultures put a lot of emphasis on eating with family and relishing food, and they have a history of physical activity tending crops and such. I'm the kind of person who needs a theme, some sort of direction. Food overwhelms me, and I often feel panicked and uncertain about what to do with it. Am I really nourishing my family? Maybe I can adapt this Mediterranean way of preparing and thinking about food to my family's taste and lifestyle and ultimately feel more confident in the kitchen.

I'm reading The Mediterranean Prescription right now, and I really like the way this guy talks about food and health and tradition. Some of the recipes, particularly the soups, sound really good and not intimidating. I've got another cookbook on hold at the library. Has anyone else embraced the Mediterranean diet?

Halloween treats: is going green just askin' to be egged?

So I'm driving in the car the other day listening to the radio, and an ad for Trader Joe's comes on. They're talking about something healthy and great to give out to trick or treaters. I turned up the volume because I'm looking for good suggestions in that department. And what do they suggest? Organic chicken stock. Arrrgh. Not funny. Not even close.

Last year I was all over the idea of green Halloween. But I ended up buying and giving out the same-ol' same-ol': candy. I was surprised at how many people commented that if you didn't give out candy you were just beggin' to have your house egged. This year I think I'm giving out fruit leather. Maybe I'll even sweeten the pot with some fair trade dark chocolate. I don't know. It's hard.

Leah is asking the same thing:

What are the enviromoms handing out for Halloween? I posed the same question to my friends on Facebook and urbanmamas....some say it's a buzzkill to not hand out candy on Halloween, others are handing out juiceboxes... I'm on the fence: pre-packaged, chemically sweetened, HFCS candy on one side and cheap, plastic crap from China on the other. What's a mama to do without being totally lame?

So what are you handing out? Maybe we should all just turn out the lights and be quiet as mice.

Healthy snack: roasted soy nuts

In my continued quest for healthy alternatives to processed snacks, with the exception of tortilla chips and possibly Trader Joe's Wasabi Peas and the occasional handful of potato chips at a picnic and let's not forget pretzels...oh dear, where was I? Oh, yes. Roasted soy nuts! I'd never purchased or even tasted soy nuts before I made these, but I saw a recipe that sounded tasty and do-able, so I did it. Oh, yum, with the crunchy (but not tooth-breakingly so like the roasted garbanzo beans) and the salty and the healthy. Everyone likes the roasted soy nuts in this house. The recipe came from, once again, 366 Delicious Ways to Cook Rice, Beans and Grains by Andrea Chesman (which I have reluctantly returned to the library):

Garlic-roasted Soy Nuts (yield: 1 1/4 cups)

*1 cup dried soybeans     *4 cups water     *2 tbsp soy sauce   *2 cloves garlic, minced     *garlic powder (which I omitted)     *salt

In a medium saucepan, combine beans, water, soy sauce and garlic and bring to a boil. Boil for 5 minutes. Remove from heat and let sit one hour.

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Lightly spray a baking sheet with non-stick cooking spray. (I don't have this, so instead I tossed my beans with a little olive oil.) Drain beans and spread on the baking sheet. Mist the beans with the non-stick cooking spray (again, not necessary if you toss with oil) and bake for 30 minutes until the beans are browned, shaking the baking sheet a few times as they bake. Reduce the heat to 325 degrees and continue baking until crisp, about 30 minutes. Sprinkle with garlic powder and salt to taste, and let cool completely before storing in an airtight container for up to 1 month.

One-fourth of a cup of these babies has 11 grams of protein, 117 calories and 6 grams of fat. Soybeans are pretty inexpensive and can usually be found in the bulk food section. You probably have the rest of the ingredients on hand, so all in all, this is a nutritious, low-cost snack. 

Healthy snack: roasted kale (really!)

My CSA puts out a newsletter each week with recipes that incorporate some of the produce in that week's bin. One week in early summer they listed a recipe for roasted kale and claimed it's, "better than potato chips!" I hung this on the fridge and looked at it daily for several weeks before I finally worked up the gumption to actually test it out. Oh. My. God. They weren't kidding.

I have two kids. My 6.5-year old daughter is a good eater and will often try new things, while my almost 4-year old son is a bit of a challenge. Never in my wildest dreams did I think one of my kids would eat kale in any form. But guess what? Roasted kale is light and crispy and tastes like salt. I had to quickly take this photo before my daughter gobbled up THE ENTIRE PAN:

Here's what you do:

Remove the tough veins and toss the kale with a little olive oil. Roast on a baking pan at 400 degrees for about 5 minutes. Turn it and roast for another 7-10 minutes. Sprinkle with sea or kosher salt.

What you need to do is watch these little suckers as they roast, because the minute they start turning brown they get a certain burnt-kale taste that doesn't quite measure up to potato chip standards. I ate the brown ones. Go for the green. I think you could store these in a sealed container for 2-3 days.

Even if your kids don't like it, you will. Moms need a healthy snack, too!

Healthy snack: roasted garbonzo beans (aka garbo nuts!)

A few months ago we stopped buying orange, cheddar-flavored crackers in an effort to reduce our reliance on processed foods. It was really, really hard because it was so darn convenient to pour out little bowls of Annie's bunny crackers when the kids got hungry, or pack them for school snacks. However, I felt we needed to add more whole foods to our snack repertoire, so we've been experimenting. Hummus with carrot sticks has been a hit. Apples smeared with peanut butter is a home run with my son who generally prefers the brown food group (bread, granola, peanut butter).

I first heard about 'garbo nuts' through my friend Gail who made them, and then I came upon a recipe in the book 366 Delicious Ways to Cook Rice, Beans and Grains. Roasted garbonzo beans (or chick peas) are a crunchy, salty, healthy, protein-filled snack. My kids liked them at first, but the roasted beans are really crunchy and after awhile the kids didn't like how hard they had to crunch down on them. I, however, really like them. A small handful easily satiates my snacking needs.

Roasted Garbonzo Beans (Garbo Nuts!)  Yield: 1.5 Cups

1 cup uncooked chick peas  *  6 cups water  *  2 tbsp hot sauce (Tabasco)  *  1 tsp ground cumin  *  garlic powder  *  salt

Combine beans with water in a medium saucepan and bring to a boil. Boil for 5 minutes. Remove from heat and let stand for 1 hour. Drain well. Toss beans with hot sauce and cumin.

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Lightly spray cooking sheet with non-stick spray. (Or oil it. I actually just tossed the beans in some olive oil and the hot sauce and cumin all at once.) Spread the beans on a baking sheet. Bake for about 25 minutes until the beans make a popping sound, shaking the baking sheet a few times while they bake. Reduce the heat to 325 degrees and continue to bake for another 30 minutes until the beans are well-browned and crunchy. Sprinkle beans with garlic powder (I skipped this) and salt to taste and let cool completely before storing in an airtight container for up to 1 month.

It took about an hour before my beans started popping, so I ended up leaving them in a 400 degree oven for 1.5 hours, reducing to 325 degrees for 30 minutes. I know, 2 hours in the oven! It could be that I roasted them too long, though I kept snacking on them during the cooking process and it took 2 hours for them to get crispy. I'm going to keep experimenting with garbo nuts and other roasted snacks (soybeans are next, and peas!).

What healthy snacks are hits in your home?

Baby step: kicking the overly packaged snack food habit

Making a "love connection" between food and kids is such a tricky business. You want your kids to eat healthy foods (and if you read the news, a new definition of what constitutes "healthy" is introduced just about every other day). You want them to eat foods that are whole and natural with not too much sugar. You want them to eat foods that don't have an excessive amount of packaging. But most of all, you want them to eat foods they will eat, instead of look at you blankly when you make snack suggestions with an expression that says: "Really? That's all you have? I'd rather starve and be crabby for the rest of the afternoon than eat those healthy, eco-friendly, crummy snacks..."

One thing that has made my life easier recently is that my older daughter is in school all day, so I usually only take my 3-year-old to the grocery store. That greatly cuts down on the "gimme-gimme-buy-me" mantra. However, that doesn't stop my older daughter from asking for various snacks that I'm not excited to buy. The most recent request was for string cheese. I avoided buying it for a while by simply "forgetting," but really just avoiding. Then she pestered me, and finally I decided to make my own string cheese. Pretty easy: buy a big hunk of mozzarella cheese and cut off slices day by day, and pack in durable snack container for school. The verdict: she loves it. She seems to appreciate that we can cut it into any shape we want rather than that pre-packaged uniform stick shape.

Next thing we need to kick: wogurt slurps. This is not something I would have normally bought. But we had friends visit with a cooler full of "travel food" last summer. And go-gurts left a major impression on my younger daughter. She was dying to have them. So I found a brand that didn't have HFCS, and she looooved them. She was addicted for a while. Slowly I've started "forgetting" to buy them, and she is forgetting to ask for them. So the yogurt the kids consume is returning to our old faithful Nancy's buckets again. But perhaps this summer, I'll try to find a was to make my own yogurt slurps... Has anyone tried this with any success, maybe using those home-made popsicle containers?

How to green-up a playgroup?

You get a bunch of kids together for snack time and usually you want it to be quick and painless -- no fuss, no mess. But convenience foods generally translate into lots of waste. Susan wants to find ways to make her playgroup a little more green:

I stumbled onto your website and wanted to ask a question regarding playgroups here in Atlanta.  We host one every Friday in our neighborhood.  We have about 25-30 kids on any given Friday.  We rotate providing snacks and drinks for the kids.  We seem to create a lot of trash...juice boxes, wrappers from the straws, not to mention the the snack bag.  Can you give us an idea of how to make playgroup more green?

Should we reuse cups?  One person would have to wash them, but does that creat more water run off etc?  Is paper the way to go or is that wasteful? Any help would be appreciated.

This is such a great topic to explore! While I can't quite wrap my brain around having 30 kids in my home, I know our clever EnviroMom community can brainstorm some waste-reduction solutions. Here's one: what if each child brought their own durable cup from home and you served juice from bottles rather than individual boxes? Then the cup goes home with the child and one person isn't stuck washing 30 cups. The juice bottles can be recycled, et voila, you've eliminated a huge amount of landfill waste.

OK, EnviroMoms, how else can Susan's playgroup snacktime waste be reduced or eliminated?

Care to share a protein bar recipe?

If you have the time and energy, making snacks from scratch guarantees you know exactly what your kids are eating. Kim has an excellent goal and is looking for a few good recipes to keep her kids happy and healthy:

One of my new years resolutions is to make more homemade food to cut down on the trips to the store, fuel, money, and junk food. So I would like to make my own snack bars that have some amount of protein in them. Does  anyone have a good recipe to share?

Baby step: switch to stove top or air-popped popcorn

Popcorn is high in fiber, which makes it a fairly healthy snack. Well, let's just say it's a good alternative to salty favorites like chips. And anyone who's ever worked in an office knows all too well the intoxicating scent of microwaved popcorn in the air. Resistance is futile. But microwaved popcorn isn't actually the most healthy, environmentally-friendly snack. To wit:

1) Here's what Newman's Own Organic Light Butter Microwaved Popcorn lists as its ingredients: organic popcorn, organic palm oil, natural butter flavor (contains milk), salt, annatto (for color), vitamin E, and contains soy and peanuts. Even the 94% fat free version contains 'natural flavor.' Natural flavor? Hmm, just because it's natural (and they are not required to disclose the ingredients) doesn't mean it's healthy. (The Newman's Own Web site does not disclose these 'natural' ingredients.) And what about that palm oil? It's a really cheap cooking oil, high in saturated fats, that is used by most commercial food processors. Then there's Orville Redenbacher's Smart Pop popcorn, which contains the food additive/carcinogen TBHQ (also used in perfume and varnish - yum!). Bleh.

2) There's been a lot of press around the butter-flavor ingredient diacetyl causing lung cancer in people who work in microwave popcorn factories. The evidence has caused big manufacturers to phase out usage of diacetyl. Now there's concern that people who are frequently exposed to the odor of microwaved popcorn containing diacetyl could be at risk. Bleh.

3) And then there's that lovely popcorn bag, which absolutely cannot be recycled. Bleh.

Buying a bag of popcorn and popping it in olive (sorry, just learned that olive oil should not be heated this hot -- it will burn and break down) or canola oil or in a hot-air popper takes about as long as microwaved. You know exactly what you and your kids are eating, plus there's no bag to throw away. I recently started popping corn on the stove top as an after-school snack. We make a giant pot of it, eat some then bag it up and munch on it throughout the week. The kids just love it, I actually enjoy the ritual of popping it, I like knowing what we're eating and it's a whole lot cheaper than microwaved. Give it a try.