One of my biggest pet peeves is throwing away food. I could kick myself every time I dump food down the drain or in the trash: it’s just a complete and total waste! And I hate waste. Which is why I am so thrilled to link up to The Frugal Girl on her weekly feature where she posts a picture of all the food she had to throw away for the week, and invites other bloggers to do the same. The idea is to feel some accountability – who wants to admit they threw away all that money to the whole world? – to help you avoid throwing away food in the future.
So in the picture above, you see what I threw away this week:
a child’s serving of chicken
cucumber-tomato salad
(not pictured) 3-4 soft potatoes
The chicken is leftovers from going out to eat with our extended family to celebrate some birthdays. I tried 3 different times to get both kids to eat their leftovers, but they categorically refused. By then, it was time to throw them away. Sadness.
I made myself the cucumber-tomato salad, ate half of it, then forgot about the other half. Oops.
And the potatoes went bad surprisingly quickly! I’m going to half to cook up the rest of the bag for dinner tonight before they go bad, too.
You’re probably wondering about the sweet potato peels, aren’t you? I have not recently thrown away any sweet potato peels. In fact, I’ve discovered recently that sweet potato peels actually make an amazingly delicious little snack that’s good for you, too. Considering it’s made from something most people would grind in the garbage disposal, I’d say that’s a pretty good deal!
Now if you Google “sweet potato peels”, you’ll find a bunch of tutorials that instruct you to bake the sweet potato whole, scoop out the flesh, and then roast the peels. That’s great if you actually need sweet potato puree, but not so great if you’re wanting to peel and cut the sweet potatoes for some other purpose (like sweet potato fries, for example). In that case, you’re starting with raw peels, a totally different thing altogether.
I couldn’t find a single recipe online that started with raw sweet potato peels, so I invented my own. And Oh. My. Goodness. They were soooooooo good. Even better (in my humble opinion) than the variety that starts with baked potato peels. Instead of baking the peels, I boiled them a little bit first so they weren’t completely raw when I put them in the oven. The olive oil just soaked into the tender peels and created a crisp but tender salty little treat that was rather addictive.
Sweet Potato Skins
Ingredients
2 sweet potatoes
1 TBSP extra virgin olive oil
1/4 tsp cumin
1/4 tsp paprika
1/4 tsp sea salt
1/4 tsp black pepper
Instructions
Use a paring knife to peel the sweet potatoes in strips lengthwise, making sure to leave a decent amount of flesh on the skin. Use the actual sweet potato for another purpose.
Place the peels in a pot and cover with water. Bring to a boil and simmer just until the skins are tender.
Drain the skins, pat them dry, and place them on a cookie sheet. Brush liberally with olive oil.
Mix together the seasonings in a small bowl and sprinkle them on the peels.
Bake at 425F for 10-12 minutes or until peels are browned and crispy.
Unfortunately, I don’t have a picture of the finished product, but trust me. These are good!
Boiling the peels adds an extra step, so these aren’t the QUICKest snack in my repertoire. But they’re still done in half an hour or less.
Very EASY! No special skills required.
Oh yeah, these are CHEAP. Can’t get any cheaper than this!
And very HEALTHY, too. The fiber from the peels and all the antioxidants and other goodness from the sweet potato is just the icing on this cake.
I was actually going to call this dip “Chicken Chicken Dip“, the first “chicken” standing for the cowardly human variety, because it doesn’t have hot sauce in it. Due to sensitive tummies in my household, I never buy any because it would sit around in our fridge until it went bad (does it ever go bad?). Henceforth and therefore, we have never had Buffalo Chicken Dip, because, as you no doubt know, it has hot sauce. And we don’t eat hot sauce.
Instead, we have Non-Buffalo Chicken Dip, more specifically BBQ Chicken Dip, seeing as it’s made with BBQ sauce instead of hot sauce. It’s a milder-tasting, almost lightly sweet, version of the famous party dip, that goes just as perfectly with chunks of hearty bread, crudites, and tortilla chips. Hey, it even makes celery taste good!
I really think you should add this dip to your Super Bowl menu right now because your friends are gonna love it! If you want to be really cool, you can make a bread bowl shaped like a football. (I don’t know why I didn’t do that – I guess because I didn’t think of it until right this minute!)
One note: I wanted to try this recipe with yogurt cheese, since I’m embarking on my journey of make-your-own-dairy, but I ran out of milk and time, two essential qualities for that particular delicacy. So I bought a last-minute bar of cream cheese instead. I still want to try it with the yogurt cheese to see how it turns out; if you do, let me know! I really feel like cream cheese is just too over-processed for my taste, and would prefer the healthier version.
I did use my own homemade Ranch dressing and BBQ sauce for this recipe, which is easier if you already have some on hand, but not a huge problem if you don’t. They’re both easy to whip up in a jiffy! I’ve included the Ranch dressing in the recipe because I don’t have it anywhere else on the blog, but you can find my two favorite BBQ sauce recipes here: Quick BBQ Sauce, and Cooked BBQ Sauce.
BBQ Chicken Dip
Ingredients
8 oz cream cheese
1/2 cup Ranch dressing*
1/2 cup BBQ sauce
1 cup shredded Monterey Jack cheese
2 cups shredded cooked chicken
Instructions
Turn the oven on to 350F. While it’s warming up, place the brick of cream cheese on a pie pan, or round pan and put in the oven to soften and melt. When the cream cheese is soft enough to stir with a whisk, remove it from the oven and add the Ranch dressing and BBQ sauce, stirring until well blended. Stir in the cheese and chicken, mixing thoroughly. Return pan to oven and cook for about 20 minutes, or until bubbly and steam, and cheese is melted.
*Ranch Dressing: In a small bowl, combine 1/2 cup yogurt and 1/2 cup buttermilk. Stir together until smooth. Add 1 tsp parsley, 1 tsp dill, 3/8 tsp granulated garlic, and 1/4 tsp each salt and pepper. Stir together well. Refrigerate until ready to use.
I served mine in a bread bowl(alas, not a football-shaped one). Of course, I used my artisan bread dough recipe, and I just baked it in a round shape in a small cast iron pan. I used up the last of my dough, so it ended up being kind of flat because I didn’t have enough – next time I will definitely use more, probably about a pound or pound and a half.
Since I made it with real ingredients (mostly, anyway), it was not quite as QUICK perhaps as regular Buffalo Chicken Dip. But I mixed up the dressings while the cream cheese was melting, so that didn’t really add much time. Still about half an hour or so from start to finish.
It’s very EASY, too. Again, the added steps of making the dressings, but nothing too overwhelming.
Cream cheese ain’t CHEAP, another reason why I wanted to use homemade yogurt cheese. Otherwise, it’s made with affordable, common ingredients that anyone can afford.
I like my HEALTHY-er version quite a bit! I love that I know each and every ingredient in this recipe – no packaged or bottled goods (with the exception of the cream cheese, which I hope to change in the future).
Here’s yet another last-minute Christmas tray to bring to any festivities this weekend. Yesterday, I brought you a Christmas tree fruit tray. Today, it’s aChristmas tree veggie tray! Same concept, different produce.
1/2 yellow pepper, optional OR chunk/slice of cheese
Instructions
Wash all produce thoroughly. Trim broccoli and cauliflower so you have only the florets, with very little stem (just enough to hold on to).
Using an oval or rectangular tray, place a line of cauliflower along the bottom narrow edge to form the “snow”.
Place a handful of pretzel sticks, centered above the cauliflower, oriented lengthwise to form the “trunk”.
Place a line of broccoli across the tray, above the pretzel trunk, trying not to leave any white space.
Above the broccoli, and forming a slightly shorter line, place a row of grape tomatoes, touching edge to edge.
Continue alternating broccoli and tomatoes, creating shorter lines as you go, until you get near the top of your tray.
Form a star but cutting a yellow pepper into strips OR use a star-shaped cookie cutter to form a star from a slice or chunk of cheese. Or just go without, like I did!
Serve your Christmas tree with a bowl of homemade dip on the side. Unfortunately, I have no specific dip recipe for you (I was in too much of a hurry to take measurements), but I can tell you how I made my Ranch-like version of dip: I dumped equal parts cream/yogurt cheese (homemade from yogurt) and plain yogurt in a bowl and mashed it together well until it was creamy. Then I stirred in garlic powder, freshly ground black pepper, dill, parsley, chives, and a bit of salt until it tasted right. Then I refrigerated it for a couple of hours before serving.
Just as QUICK as any other vegetable tray!
And just as EASY, but with so much more presentation!
It’s CHEAPer than the fruit tray, because these veggies are cheaper than those fruits.
And it’s very HEALTHY, too, nothing but veggies! (Well, except the pretzel sticks, which I don’t normally buy, but didn’t have time to come up with anything more creative. Carrot sticks? Celery sticks? Right shape, wrong color. Let me know if you come up with something!)
The kind that go to a Super Bowl party for the football.
The kind that go to a Super Bowl party for the food.
I suppose you could argue that there are subsets of both groups, such as those who only go to watch the commercials, or those who only go because it’s really the only thing going on that particular Sunday night. At any rate, I am firmly planted in group #2. And proud of it!
Forget the football. Bring on the food, baby!
Hence, I bring you an appetizer that is definitely not meant for the dedicated football fan, but for his/her foodie guest. When I made them and told my DH they were for a Super Bowl appetizer, he said (and I quote), “Yeah, right.” He is firmly planted in group #1.
Who cares if the real fans don’t appreciate these delicately crispy, lightly salty, and oh-so-good snacks? They weren’t intended for them anyway; they are strictly just for us. You know, the food fans.
Would you believe me if I told you these gourmet-like crisps are super easy? And super quick? Read on, and perhaps I can convince you.
The recipe doesn’t contain measurements because it really doesn’t matter. You can have as little as 1 TBSP of shredded parmesan, or as much as 3 cups. It all depends on how big your block of Parmesan is, how long you want to spend grating it, and how many foodie friends you have.
The only thing that’s really necessary is that you do indeed begin with a block of Parmesan and grate it yourself. Probably some freshly grated Parmesan at the store would be OK, but I really think it’s better to grate it yourself.
Parmesan Crisps
shredded parmesan
freshly ground black pepper
Place the shredded parmesan 1 TBSP-full at a time on a silicone- or parchment- lined cookie sheet. Sprinkle with black pepper.
Bake for 5 minutes at 400F or until the cheese is melted and the edges are golden crispy.
Allow to cool, then carefully remove from the cookie sheet and place in serving dish.
Most people say these are best served the same day they’re made, but I actually think they are sturdier and crisper the next day. They didn’t make it any farther than that around here….
Of course, you can use different seasonings, by the way. I like the simple subtlety of the black pepper, but spicy seasonings like cumin or red pepper flakes would be delicious, as would more Italian herbs like rosemary or basil. Try them all and see what you like best!
These also work great as a delicious accompaniment to soup or salad.
So QUICK: 10 minutes or less for one cookie-sheet-full! You definitely have time for that, especially since that small amount of time is so well invested in deliciousness like this.
Can you grate cheese and dump it on a pan? Then you can make these. EASY-Peasy!
CHEAP, on the other hand, is debatable. If you’re making a batch large enough to feed a lot of guests, it will take a large amount of Parmesan cheese, which gets expensive. However, if you just make a few as a garnish, or as part of a platter of other appetizers and noshy stuff, the expense is minimal. It doesn’t take much Parmesan to make a TBSP worth of shredded cheese.
It’s very HEALTHY, too! Cheese is a great source of protein and calcium, of course, but also vitamins B and A, among other things. So enjoy guilt-free!
Yummy, huh?! Well, it does taste pretty good, but as you can see, it’s hardly good for you. If you’re anything like me, it’s probably one of those things you never even thought of attempting to recreate at home, thinking it way too complicated and messy and totally not worth it.
Think again!
My friend posted this recipe on her blog almost a year ago, and the minute I saw it, I wanted to try it. For some reason, it’s taken me this long to actually get around to it, but it was worth the wait. These yummy little bites, or “blobs” as she calls them, really don’t take that long to make and are far from complicated. And the best part is, they provide some great competition for the contents of that box in the freezer. (Oh, and side note: you can freeze them yourself and save them for later!)
This recipe’s traveled a bit around the blogosphere, and as far as I can tell, it started more or less here. Everyone who’s tried it makes it a little differently based on their needs and preferences, so you can feel free to do the same and tweak it to meet your own desires.
It starts with a bread dough like pizza dough. My friend used ready-made pizza dough from Trader Joe’s, which is a great idea. You can also quickly make your own batch of pizza dough in no time at all (The good thing about many pizza dough recipes is that they don’t require much, if any, rise time.). I used my Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day bread dough because it was easy! It was a slightly different texture than a pizza dough would be, but it worked well.
If you’re curious to try it for yourself, here’s how I did it:
Pizza Rolls
2 batches pizza dough
8 oz mozzarella cheese, sliced into bite-size pieces
1 pkg pepperoni
Fresh basil leaves – sliced to fit
Butter
Garlic salt
Parmesan
Roll the pizza dough out into a rectangle. Using a pizza cutter, cut the dough into individual squares. You’ll want the squares to be large enough that the pieces of pepperoni can fit squarely in the middle with a generous 1/2″ margin (Not all of mine managed to be this way as you will see… maybe you can learn from my mistakes!).
Place a slice of pepperoni, a slice of mozzarella, and a piece of basil on each square. (If you have small basil leaves, a whole one will fit. I chopped mine up because I only had a limited amount of large basil leaves on hand.)
Fold up the corners of the square around the filling.
Pinch the open edges to seal them. Seal them as tightly as you can.
Place seam-side down in a well-greased round pan or pie plate.
Bake in a 400F oven for about 15 minutes. Brush with butter and sprinkle with parmesan cheese and garlic salt (optional). Serve hot with pizza sauce.
It’s not as QUICK as warming up that box full of junk, certainly. But perhaps it doesn’t take as long as you thought it might: mine were done in less than an hour, start to finish.
It’s pretty EASY, too. Yeah, you have to roll out the dough and cut it and all that, so I suppose it’s more complicated than other recipes. But it’s still not that difficult.
It’s probably not any CHEAPer than the boxed variety to be honest. The dough is cheap, but mozzarella and pepperoni are not. However, both of those items I bought on sale with coupons, so I actually ended up paying very little for them. This time around, anyway. I probably won’t make these again unless I find myself in the same situation.
These are one HEALTHY step above the frozen box. Pepperoni is far from the healthiest food available, but you can certainly find healthier versions (for a price). Of course, you can make these without the pepperoni. Either just make them cheese pizza bites, or replace the pepperoni with any other meat of your choice. Other than that, they’re a HUGE improvement over the list of ingredients at the top of this post.
I am pretty sure my family is not the only one whose New Year’s Eve repast consists mostly of hors doeuvres and finger foods. When you’re staying up until midnight to usher in the New Year, you need to snack on something, right? And it’s better (or so one thinks) to nibble here and there all night long than to fill yourself up on a big meal and then nibble some more on top of that.
My offering for the New Year’s nibbling-fest is neither exciting nor new: it is a simple humble cheese ball. I have admired and enjoyed others’ cheese balls through the years, but I never attempted one myself until I brought one to a Christmas party a couple weeks ago. Since it was more or less a success, and I still had 2 packages of cream cheese in the refrigerator, I decided to make another for my contribution to the New Years’ selection of appetizers.
The vast majority of cheese balls (or logs, if you prefer) are rolled in nuts, but since I was out of nuts and my DH can’t eat them anyway, I had to scratch my brain for a few minutes to come up with an alternative: seasoned bread crumbs! It’s so simple, but it’s so delicious; in fact, I think I prefer the bread crumbs to chopped nuts, because they blend in better both in texture and in taste. Unfortunately, removing the nuts also removes some of the health value of this appetizer, but one must make trade-offs somewhere, especially when it comes to diets limited for health reasons.
There are at least a million varieties of cheese ball recipes (as you will discover if you google cheese ball recipe), but almost all of them have one thing in common: they’re based on 2 8oz bricks of softened cream cheese. As long as you have those items and a few seasonings and spices in your cupboard, you are good to go. I sort of made mine up as I went a long, and here’s what I ended up with:
Place all ingredients, except the bread crumbs, in a medium bowl and stir together until well blended (if the cream cheese is soft enough, you can do this with a wooden spoon). Spoon the mixture onto a large sheet of wax paper:
Use the wax paper to help you shape it into a ball:
Pour the bread crumbs onto the other end of the wax paper:
Roll the cheese ball in the bread crumbs until it is completely covered and no cheese is showing through. You can also continue shaping as you go so that you have a nice round ball. The bread crumbs will help you shape it up firmly.
This is what it should look like:
Refrigerate for a couple hours or until ready to serve. Serve with crackers, crudites, squares of toast, pita bread triangles, etc.
This is a very QUICK recipe, perfect for a busy or even a lazy day. It does need to chill for an hour or two, but the actual mixing and shaping takes very little time.
It is certainly EASY, no doubt about that! You don’t even have to pull out the mixer for this one.
CHEAP depends on how much you pay for the cream cheese and the crackers (or whatever you serve with it). I never pay more than $1.00 for cream cheese: I watch for it to go on sale and I use coupons. I often buy the store brand, which works just as well as the famous Kraft Philadelphia kind. As for crackers, I usually never buy them, but this time around, I pretty much got them for free: my grocery store was having a special midweek sale where certain crackers were only $0.99. On top of that, I had a $1.00 coupon, so I ended up paying nothing for them! Using bread crumbs instead of nuts also greatly reduces the cost.
HEALTHY is relative… Many recipes I saw for cheese balls called for products like processed cheese food (why they tack food on the end of that I don’t know – a misnomer if there ever was one!), or powdered dressing mixes, both of which I consider to be very UNhealthy. I purposely made mine without those ingredients, so it’s healthier in that sense. I also didn’t add any Worcestershire sauce or soy sauce, which would greatly increase the amount of sodium. On the other hand, I don’t think that cream cheese is the healthiest dairy product available, being one of the more processed cheeses. And as I mentioned before, removing the nuts removes a lot of nutritional value: healthy fat, protein and fiber, to name a few. I did use homemade bread crumbs from homemade bread, so at least they’re healthy bread crumbs! To sum up, it is a slightly healthier version of less-than-healthy appetizer. I am hoping someone else brings a vegetable tray I can load up on to make the difference!
Tonight was the first night of our “staycation” so we celebrated with what my DH termed “very appropriate vacation food”. I’m not sure what makes it so perfect for a vacation, except maybe that it’s casual and fun? There’s just something very child-like and delightfully improper about finger foods, don’t you think?
The meal started with meatballs and mushroomed from there. I bought a package of reduced ground beef for $1.35 – for about a pound and a quarter – when I went to the grocery store today and decided that would be the perfect choice for dinner tonight. Then I decided that it would be fun to dip the meatballs instead of serving them in a sauce, and from there I decided that a finger foods meal would just be fun. If you have kids (I do, but unfortunately he’s allergic to beef so he couldn’t have the meatballs), this is a great meal for them. And who knows, you might even get them to eat some veggies they’ve never tried before just because of the dip factor!
I used a meatball recipe I had clipped from a magazine (Woman’s Day, I think) and made some alterations to it. I kept the basic recipe but added shredded zucchini (I always sneak vegetables in wherever I can!) and used green onions instead of regular.
Zippy Dippy Meatballs
1 1/4 lbs ground beef
1 egg, lightly beaten
1/2 cup unseasoned bread crumbs
1/2 cup shredded zucchini
1/2 tsp garlic salt (or use a fresh clove of garlic)
1 tsp oregano
1/2 tsp black pepper
1 TBSP olive oil
1 TBSP chopped green onions
During the summer, I like to get some extra zucchini and shred it in the food processor, then store it in freezer bags in the freezer. Then I have some handy shredded zucchini to add into ground beef mixtures, sauces and pasta salads.
For the bread crumbs, I love this easy trick: always save the heels of your loaves of bread. Keep them in the same zippered bag in the freezer until you need them. Then you can do one of two things, depending on your need at the time. First, you can make a batch of dried bread crumbs that keeps almost indefinitely (another topic for another post). Secondly, you can do what I did and just take a slice of the frozen bread and grate it into the mixture. This second method is particularly useful for recipes that call for “soft” bread crumbs, or unseasoned crumbs.
Mix all the ingredients together with your hands (I know, yuck, right? But that’s the only way I’ve found to be successful in blending the ingredients thoroughly.) until thoroughly blended. Form into balls with a tablespoon and place on a broiler pan, evenly spaced. Bake at 350 for 20 minutes.
While the meatballs are cooking, you can make some dips to go with them. I made two different dips, Old Bay Barbecue and Lemon-Herb Yogurt Dip.
I found the Lemon-Herb Yogurt Dip recipe in the All You magazine (available only at WalMart). It’s not on their website, but here is my version (I halved the original recipe and left out some ingredients):
Lemon-Herb Yogurt Dip
1 cup Greek-style plain yogurt (Greek style is thicker, but you can still use regular if you wish.)
1/2 tsp grated lemon zest
1 TBSP fresh lemon juice
2 tsp olive oil
1 TBSP green onion
1/8 cup minced fresh parsley
1 TBSP minced fresh mint leaves
1/2 tsp minced fresh oregano
Mix all ingredients together in a bowl, stirring until well blended.
I thought this dip went very well with the meatballs, and I think it would also go very well with fresh vegetables.
I found the other recipe on www.allrecipes.com, my favorite go-to site when I need a recipe and fast! Actually, this particular recipe I had found a year or two ago, and written down in my own recipe notebook because I liked it so much. It’s a good thing I wrote it down because now I can’t find it.
By the way, Old Bay is very much a Maryland thing. If you live elsewhere, you may not have heard of it and you may not even be able to find it in your regular grocery store. But hunt it down, because it’s totally worth it! It’s the most unique blend of spices, and it’s perfect on all sorts of stuff, especially crab cakes (it’s what makes a Maryland crab cake a Maryland crab cake) and Boardwalk french fries. Oh, yum! I’m out of it now, so I need to go get some more!
Old Bay Barbecue Sauce
1/4 cup ketchup
2 tsp honey
1 TBSP Worcestershire sauce
1 TBSP Dijon mustard
1 tsp (or more if you’re from Maryland;) Old Bay seasoning
Blend the ingredients together and serve. This can also be used as a regular BBQ sauce for meat dishes. Actually, come to think of it, that was its original intention!
For sides, I served home made French fries and apples with dip. For the dip, I used my new favorite Yogurt “Pudding” recipe. I’m obsessed with that stuff! It’s so easy, and so yummy!
This finger foods meal was QUICK, naturally. The meatballs only took 20 minutes to cook, and while they cooked, I mixed up the dips and fried the French fries. I should have started the French fries earlier because they took a little longer, but altogether the whole meal was pretty quickly put together.
An EASY meal, for sure. It’s really not necessary to buy those bags of ready-made meatballs. You still have to cook them, and to be honest, mixing up the beef and other ingredients takes maybe 5 minutes. So buying that package doesn’t save you all that much time. Probably the French fries were the trickiest part, what with having to peel them, slice them and keep a close eye on them in the pan. It would be even easier to bake them in the oven. That’ll be a recipe for another day!
And yes, CHEAP too. You already know the good deal I got on the beef, and everything else was of minimal expense, made of staple ingredients I had on hand and some herbs from the garden.
HEALTHY? Oh yes! Making my own meatballs avoided the unnecessary and unhealthy ingredients found in store-bought meatballs. Ditto for making my own dips and French fries.
A recent Woman’s Day magazine had a list of 50 100-calorie or less foods that were also nutritionally beneficial. It was an interesting list; some items are pretty common, some are unusual, some I really doubt are all that good for you. But when it comes to healthy snacking, I like to get as many ideas as I can, because otherwise I end up eating snacks that are quick and easy, but definitely not healthy.
Some of the items from the list I have had before and highly recommend:
1. 2/3 oz of dark chocolate (Careful, if you have 5 of these, that’s 500 calories! Limit your intake on this one.)
2. 25 dry-roasted unsalted pistachios
3. 13 (count them:) whole almonds
4. 1 stick sugar-free gum (helps you eat less by keeping your mouth busy) 5. 1/2 cup all-natural yogurt
6. 1 cup green tea sweetened with (no more than) 1 TBSP honey
7. 1 medium apple (of course you knew that would be on this list!) 8. 2 cups watermelon
9. 1 cup broccoli florets with 3 TBSP veggie dip (better yet, make the dip out of yogurt or cottage cheese) 10. 1 large egg (Boil a batch and keep them on hand for a high-protein snack when you need it.) 11. 1 small oatmeal cookie (As the article says, if you have to have a cookie, this is the way to go.) 12. 1 slice whole-grain bread
13. 2 cups air-popped popcorn with 1 tsp butter
14. 1/2oz natural cheese puffs, like Robert’s American Gourmet Smart Puffs
15. 3/4 oz sharp cheddar
Some of the suggestions I have not tried, at least not as a snack, but I would like to try them: 1. 1 small scoop organic lowfat frozen yogurt with active cultures
2. 2/3 cup pomegranate juice
3. 2 medium organic kiwis (according to this article, organic kiwis have more vitamin C than conventional.) 4. 2 medium figs
5. 3 TBSP dried cherries
6. 3 TBSP hummus (I have eaten hummus before, but I’ve never bought it to keep on hand as a snack. I’d like to, though.) 7. 10 natural blue corn tortilla chips (but I’d have to eat it with salsa, more about that later.) 8. 1/3 cup cooked quinoa
Some of the suggestions I disagree with, for one reason or another: 1. 1 cup salsa Only 70 calories, and it counts as two servings of vegetables. But I don’t know anyone who eats salsa by the spoonful, and adding tortilla chips to this snack completely blows away the whole 100-calorie idea. 2. 1 1/2oz organic hot dog I just feel like hot dogs are so processed that very little real food remains in them. Very skeptical about this one. 3. 1 (8 fl oz) vodka soda I’m sorry, but I lived in Russia for 5 years, and I’ve seen the effects of vodka. Not a good idea. 4. 2 tsp natural peanut butter I have no problem with peanut butter, but who eats it by the spoonful? Maybe if you have just 1 tsp (30-ish calories) and spread it one some crackers or whole grain bread, you might still be under 100 calories.
Some of them just sound yucky: 1. 1 cup low-sodium tomato juice (not a tomato juice fan, obviously!) 2. 1 cup sliced yellow onions, caramelized in 1 tsp extra virgin olive oil
3. 1 cup pure canned pumpkin (who eats canned pumpkin right out of the can?) 4. 2 1/2 oz baked or broiled coho salmon (for dinner maybe, not a snack)
Some of my favorite snacks didn’t make it on the list: 1. dried cranberries (careful, some dried cranberries have unnecessary added ingredients) 2. dried apricots (same for apricots) 3. dried mangos (I like dried fruit as a snack, can you tell? 4. string cheese
5. baby carrots
6. trail mix
7. a few crackers with Laughing Cow spreadable cheese
8. a few crackers with tuna (sounds kind of odd, but is actually very tasty) 9. apple slices dipped in peanut butter mixed with some honey and a touch of chocolate
10. cottage cheese
11. Trader Joe’s granola bars (one of very few brands made without high fructose corn syrup and other evil ingredients, also one of the cheapest at $2.00 a box) 12. fruit leather (the original fruit roll-up without all the sugar and other unnecessary ingredients) Maybe you could create your own list of snacks you like that are both convenient and nutritious. Post it on your fridge or in your pantry for easy reference.
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QECH
* QUICK - because who has time for anything more?
* EASY - because I'm no gourmet.
* CHEAP - because who has money for anything more?
* HEALTHY - because you are what you eat.
