Snacktime Round-Up

I’ve shared many of my favorite “make it yourself” recipes. I wanted to bring this series to a conclusion by offering some encouragement as well as a dose of reality.

Simply put:

You cannot do it all.

I’m not sure about your kids, but mine eat approximately 10,000 times a day. Okay, maybe not that much, but it goes something like this:

Early morning snack with Dad

Breakfast

Snack

Lunch (or “snacky” lunch)

Snack

Dinner

Maybe even one more snack in there somewhere!

It seems like someone is always eating (this doesn’t include the baby’s nursing habits, of course!). As much as I would like to, I’m not there yet with making every single snack from scratch. I know some people do, but I’m not quite that organized!

Here’s what I recommend if you are making a shift from store-bought to at-home:

1. Pick and choose. Decide what’s most important to you. Is it to avoid added sugars? Dyes? White flour?

2. Start by replacing one store-bought item with homemade. You don’t necessarily even have to make the switch for each time the item is consumed. Go through a lot of bread? Maybe resolve to make bread for lunchtime PBJs on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. Maybe it’ll be chocolate graham crackers the third Friday of each month for a weekend treat.

3. Once you feel comfortable with one, add another.

4. Make a schedule. Know that Thursdays are always slow? Make your yogurt and applesauce for the week then.

5. If you stick with store bought, choose a better option. Instead of Ritz crackers, we eat Late July.

I tend to rotate what I make. I always, always bake my own bread/rolls and make my own yogurt. Other than that, it fluctuates. During apple season, I make a lot of applesauce. During the summer, I make ice cream. I go through cycles of making and freezing my own stock and tomato sauce. Occasionally, I make crackers. Once a week or so, I bake cookies or another dessert and make other items like granola bars, brown rice snacks, or Jell-o.

My next goal is to add tortilla making to the rotation!

Find what works! The journey from refined to real food does not happen overnight!

Yogurt: A Powerhouse

In my opinion, yogurt is a “power food.” Loaded with probiotics, calcium, and protein it’s my favorite go-to for a quick pick-us-up.

Yogurt is also one of our favorite foods to “doctor” for snacks and meals. There are so many options! Yogurt is delicious on its own, in smoothies, with fruit, as a dressing, marinade, dips or garnish!

Since we’re talking about snacks this month, let’s focus on that for today.

First, you need to choose your yogurt. I make my own every week or so, but if you’re buying yours, go for the simplest choice out there: plain (full fat is best, and choose low-fat options carefully).

Avoid yogurts geared especially for kids (packed with sugar, artificial flavors and colors) as well as most fruit-flavored choices and “light” yogurts. Remember that while these sound appealing in terms of calories, the real food is replaced with artificial sweeteners such as aspartame, dyes, preservatives, and the fat is sometimes replaced with fillers to help the taste.

Be aware that even organic yogurt products still have thickeners, sugar, and some form of coloring, even if it is more “natural.”

Read your labels! The ingredient list should say “milk” and “active cultures.” Nothing else!

It is far better to have a serving of plain, yogurt you sweeten or otherwise enhance yourself !

I can hear your protests now, however, about the convenience of single serve yogurt and the moans about pickiness from kids. I know! The ideas I have below are very simple, however, and something should appeal to everyone!

• If you must, you can find plain yogurt in single serve containers. You can start there and add your own fruit or a dollop of honey.

• Make your own single serve containers! I always keep my eyes open for small 1/2-1 cup containers. There are options out there in plastic or glass.

• If you aren’t a fan of whole fruit in your yogurt, puree yogurt and fruit (fresh in season or frozen if not) and pour into containers. (Add a tablespoon of honey or maple syrup if you need to). This only takes a few minutes every time you do it and you are ready for snacks or lunches.

• You can also freeze portions of your fruit/yogurt combo. I freeze in ice cube trays for babies and young toddlers and in freezer pop molds or Dixie cups for older kids. Sure to delight on a hot day!

• Mix a little fruit juice with yogurt and serve immediately or freeze for another popular treat.

• Yogurt and granola is, of course, a classic combination. I haven’t found my perfect granola recipe yet, so please share if you have one!

• If you’re interested in branching out, goat’s milk yogurt is one of my favorite indulgence. It’s delicious on its own, but can also be served with fruit, nuts, or cereal.

There are dozens of ways to dress up plain yogurt. Get creative then come back to share your ideas!

Healthy Snack Choices

For the remainder of the month I’m going to be sharing a few of our go-to snacks. These are all very quick and very simple ideas.

Our goal in our house is avoid as many packaged foods as we can. We strive to eat whole foods and homemade as much as possible. I recently read a startling article about just how many preservatives and food dyes many people consume, even when they are eating “healthy” foods.

Here’s a snippet:

Based on the anecdotal information I see in my client’s food journals, people eating processed and packaged foods are taking in exorbitant amounts of artificial ingredients and additives. Typically, a client will say something like, “I eat a bowl of cereal with low-fat milk, have yogurt for a snack, and a Subway sandwich for lunch.” While this sounds relatively harmless, here’s what it might actually look like based on some popular “health food” items:

• One serving of Kellogg’s Fiber Plus Antioxidants Berry Yogurt Crunch contains more than 13 different additives, preservatives, and food dyes, including Red 40 and Blue 1, which are known to cause allergic reactions in some people and mutations leading to cancer in lab animals. It also contains BHT, monoglycerides, and cellulose gum. In addition, conventional milk often contains residues of artificial bovine growth hormones, known endocrine disruptors as well as antibiotics used in industrial milk production.
• Dannon Light & Fit Peach yogurt contains more than 11 different additives including Red 40, aspartame, potassium sorbate, sucralose, and acesulfame potassium.
• A Subway sandwich of turkey and cheese on nine-grain bread with fat-free honey mustard, peppers, and pickles contains more than 40 different additives, preservatives, and dyes. The pickles and peppers have yellow 5 and polysorbate 80, the bread has ten different additives including dough conditioners, DATEM, and sodium stearoyl lactylate, and the turkey contains ten additives as well.

The person in this example has consumed more than 60 food additives eating breakfast, a small snack, and lunch alone, to say nothing of dinner, dessert, further snacking and drinks. Consumers Union’s Dr. Hansen told me, “I wouldn’t be surprised if it were up to 100 additives or more that people are taking in on a daily basis.”

Scary, no?

It’s important to keep in mind that when real food is substituted for low-fat, low-sugar, or packaged, you are losing nutrients– to say nothing of taste– and those good things have to be replaced with something else. Unfortunately, that sometime else is usually a dye, a preservative, or some other unsavory by-product. (MSG with your 1% milk, anyone?)

Now I can hear all of you busy readers (work! kids! home!) saying, ‘I have NO time to make everything from scratch.” Well, you’re right. Maybe not everything. However, over the next several weeks or month, I’m going to share quick and easy snack ideas and offer alternatives to conventional snacks when the inevitable, “What can I eat now?” comes from our kids (or our own tummies).

Later this morning, I have two granola bar recipes to share that you can make in the time it takes to wash a sink full of dishes.

Food, Glorious Food

Food, glorious food!

We’re anxious to try it!
Three banquets a day,
Our favorite diet!

Ah, food. We must eat, yet it is a relationship fraught with strife.

What should we eat? How much? Calories, grams, protein, carbohydrates, fat! The cycle of plan, shop, cook, eat, clean, repeat. The mother’s battle cry of, “You’re hungry again?” The breakfast blues, the lunchtime laments, the supper slump, the snack time sighs.

Or maybe not. Maybe you are bursting with ideas and fresh menus. New ingredients tantalize you every time you set foot in the grocery store. You browse the cookbook section at the bookstore and comb through thrift shops for forgotten treasures. Breakfast is bliss, lunch lovely, supper supreme, and snacks sublime!

I think most of us fall somewhere in the middle. Midwinter blahs and late summer heat make us run screaming from the kitchen. Picky kids test our patience and our tried and true recipes are just…tired. New snack time creations are fun at first, but then apple slices and crackers rule the day.

I can’t promise to solve all your kitchen woes or to provide the connoisseurs among us with revolutionary ideas, but through my contributions to this site I do hope to provide some inspiration, fresh approaches, share my favorite resources, and commiseration too when the going gets tough.