Snickity Snack: Fish in a Stream

Food Network Magazine had a mini "Family and Kids" mag in the back of a recent issue.  In this section, they reinvented ants on a log, the classic after school snack of celery sticks filled with peanut butter and topped with raisins.  I'm pretty sure this article was all about sneaking veggies into your kid's diet but since I'm basically a kid myself, I thought it was great.  Also, raisins are not my fave so I was happy to see this fun and healthy snack re-vamped with flavors I enjoy.

For book club, I prepared the "fish in a stream" version, which consisted of celery sticks filled with hummus and topped with pretzel goldfish.  They were devoured in minutes.  It makes sense: you dip pretzels in hummus and you dip celery in hummus.  Just because you rarely see the three ingredients partying together doesn't mean they can't all get along.

Fruit and Yogurt Dip

When it came to cooking for my last book club meeting, I just wasn't havin it.  Oddly enough, I wasn't even that busy; I just didn't want to tie myself down to preparing a specific travel-well recipe for a group.  My solution was to open up one of my "easy" cookbooks.  Every recipe in this cookbook is easy, but at the beginning of each section, they give a list of extra easy "recipes".  These are the ones that basically require zero effort but can sneakily make your meal more impressive.  It was here that I found fruit with yogurt dip.

All you do is add honey, nutmeg, and cinnamon to vanilla yogurt.  Stir it together and serve with fruit (I used pineapple and cantaloupe).  I used the 0% Tahitian vanilla Greek yogurt from Trader Joes so not only was this dip good, it was healthy.  And it was good.  One of the girls said it tasted "just like fall," which is a yay! for me (pat on the back) but a wah :( for the reminder that cold weather is approaching.  Fruit plates, like crudité platters, are the go-to buffet staple when you want to add something healthy to your spread.  But plain fruit plates are boring.  Adding this yogurt is not.

The picture is capital T terrible because there were no lights on the roof where we were holding book club.  Sorry bout that.

before mixing in the honey

Snickity Snack: Avocado White Bean Dip

This might be the healthiest snack you can make and still be satisfied.  It tastes so good but it's one of those things where you're practically burning more calories by chewing than you're ingesting.

Just combine avocado and drained white beans in a food processor with olive oil, salt, and red pepper flakes to taste.  The whole burning more calories than you're taking in is a slight stretch, but this is still super duper healthy.  Everyone says avocado "is good fat!  good fat!" and white beans have plenty of protein so you're chillin in a pretty healthy place, especially if you just dip veggies like I did.  (When I told my Mom about this recipe she said pita chips would be great but less healthy - I leave the choice up to you.  You are your own boss.)

The avocado provides a rich, velvety flavor while the white beans get the texture up to snuff for a good dip.  The red pepper flakes are necessary for dimension - this is what keeps it from tasting like mush.

Tip: prep your veggies in advance.  If you're already shaving two carrots for snack number one, might as well shave the whole bunch so you have a fridge full of ready to eat veggies for the week.  You might eat all of this avocado white bean dip in one sitting (like I did), but then you can rip into a tub of hummus and you'll have the veggies already ready to go.  It'll keep you from reaching for the chips.

Beet and Sweet Potato Chips with Curried Yogurt

I've been in a snack rut lately. Every time I reach for something to munch on between meals I've ended up with popcorn or hummus. I wanted something new so I did some googling and found a list of quick and healthy snacks on realsimple.com and found this winner. 

Just mix fat free Greek yogurt with curry powder and salt.  That night be the easiest dip you'll ever prepare, FYI. If you're not into curry just use a spice you prefer, like smoked paprika. You could also use fresh herbs, like dill. Anything goes here, as long as it takes less than one minute to stir into the yogurt. Anything longer than that would have me going back to my old old standby, popcorn. I used Terra sweet potato and beet chips as my dippers. The crunch satisfied my snack craving but the slightly sweet flavor was completely different from what it been snacking on lately. 

Consider my rut over. 

Chocolate Peanut Butter Pretzel Snacks

My Mom and Bubba call those peanut butter filled pretzels crack.  They're obsessed.  Well, I found a recipe on Pinterest that takes their favorite snack to a new level.  Make a little sandwich with pretzel thins and peanut butter, then dunk half of it in melted dark chocolate.  Sprinkle a little sea salt on if that's your thing and then put them on some wax paper in the freezer to set up.  You're left with a great salty sweet treat.

But I ask you, why use peanut butter when you could use sunflower butter?  The only problem with sunflower butter is that it's a little runnier and therefore harder to work with in this type of situation.  But it just tastes so good.  Peanut or sunflower - whatever kind of butter you use, this is a great dessert to snack on or pre-assemble for parties.

These look prettier once plated...

Sunbutter Snack #2

Since my pear/sunbutter/granola snack worked out so well, I tested out another variation for breakfast the other day.  This time, I smeared sunbutter on a rice cake (made with brown rice because a regular rice cake just didn't seem healthy enough) and topped with blueberries.  The creaminess of the sunbutter and juiciness of the berries makes the rice cake less cardboard-y.  In fact, the rice cake became downright tasty once it was hooked up with these flavorful toppings.  It was a great way to start the day and kept me nice and full all morning.

Sunbutter Snack #1

I have a couple weekends coming up where I need to look G-O-O-D.  With that as motivation, I am trying my darnedest to eat healthy and exercise for the next few weeks.  I was inspired by some healthy snack suggestions I saw in my latest Real Simple and picked up a jar of sunflower butter (aka sunbutter) to activate.  In case you've never tried it, sunbutter is basically peanut butter that is made with sunflower seeds.  It's not supposed to taste exactly like peanut butter, more like an allergy-friendly way to mix it up.

For my first sunbutter snack (which serves as a great breakfast), I spread sunbutter on pear slices and topped with granola.  It was an extra crunchy snack, and I think all that chewing made me fuller faster.  As you can see, it was enjoyed along with the latest People Country issue.  Gotta get my country with my crunchy!