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There's only a few weeks of the school year left and I'm starting to think about holidays and of course food. Specifically snacking and convenient snacking. With so much going on at this time of year it is easy to reach for a bag of chips or any old packet of biscuits (or chocolate in my case). This year I want to be prepared with a repertoire of quick simple recipes and a fridge/freezer/pantry semi-stocked with relatively healthy options.
I have of course been scouring Pinterest and many of my favourite blogs. While I haven't made everything on my list yet, I've made a few and so far have quite liked just about all of them. Some of the recipes need a little tweaking for my liking and I want to have a try at making a few of them even healthier before I share, so in the meantime I'm looking at convenient healthy snacking, i.e. little to no prep work required!
It's almost an oxymoron isn't it - convenient and healthy parked next to each other, then throw 'holiday' and not only do the pigs fly they'll do a little dance for you too :-) Here's my top picks:
Fruit! (the fresh kind)
Loving:
Full of fibre
No artificial ingredients
Comes in a variety of flavours and textures
Readily available (especially over summer - hello mango!)
Can be dressed up or dressed down
Can be enjoyed at various temperatures
Little to no waste/garbage
Budget friendly
Loving a little less but liveable:
If you start it you have to finish it (unless you have the proper equipment, but even then I couldn't tell you the number of half eaten apples I've thrown out from the deep dark recesses of my fridge thanks to Miss M
Can't always guarantee the flavour/quality (I would have thought after 30+ years of life experience I'd be able to pick an apple that wasn't soft and floury inside, guess I was wrong)
Limited shelf life
Overall:
Brilliant! Always my top pick
Popcorn (the air popped kind)
Loving:
Oh so much!
I did a comparison of nutritional information against recommended in
this previous post. It's healthy :-)
Budget friendly
Easy prep & can easily be prepped ahead (store in an airtight container on the bench)
Little to no waste/garbage
Can be dressed up or dressed down. You can see some of my popcorn posts
here
Loving a little less but liveable:
It's healthiest plain, but I do like to add flavour for myself. . which usually involves lots of salt and/or oil and/or sugar :-)
Messy if you are travelling (I still find kernels every now & then - I swear they have an alliance with the dust bunnies)
Unless you are organised & have pre-popped, you can't just grab it as you're heading out the door
It does take up a bit of space once popped
Those bits that get stuck in-between your teeth. . .
Overall:
Love it! It's now part of our regular snack rotation, for home and away (park, daycare, travelling etc)
Yoghurt (the store bought kind)
Loving;
Can be frozen, so stock up when it's cheap!
Comes in a variety of flavours and textures
You can choose how healthy you want to be - we started Miss M on plain Greek yoghurt, but now that she's tried sweetened there's no going back :-(
Counts as a serve of dairy
Can be dressed up or dressed down.
Comes in a variety of pack sizes and serving styles (squishy packs, drinking, or spoon-able. . .yep, that's the technical term ^-^)
Loving a little less but liveable:
Those flavour packs always come with one I/she doesn't want/like
Refrigeration needed (although you can freeze for later consumption, and Rafferty's Garden make 3 flavours of
smoothy as well as 3 flavours of
yoghurt button which can quite happily live in your handbag)
Not good for any poor munchkins that suffer from travel sickness like Miss M :-(
Can be messy
Overall:
Great at home snack. We usually have some frozen yoghurt shapes made up in the freezer too for something a little different. . . or for when Miss M bites her tongue :-)
Cheese (the block kind)
Loving:
Counts as dairy!
Can be frozen, so again, stock up when it's cheap
Comes in a variety of flavours and textures. While I'm quite partial to mild or Colby, Mr LovingLunches would happily sit down to a block of
Devondale Mozzarella.
I know it's the same product but I swear the same block will taste different when grate vs sliced vs cubed
Can be dressed up or dressed down
Loving a little less but liveable:
Refrigeration needed (although you can always go for a cheese-stick or those triangle ones)
Again, no good for those that suffer from travel sickness like Miss M :-(
Overall:
Great at home snack
Veges (yes, veges!)
Loving:
Who doesn't need an extra serve of veg in their day?
Full of fibre
No artificial ingredients
Comes in a variety of flavours and textures
Readily available (I don't think I've ever seen carrots out of stock at the supermarket)
Can be dressed up or dressed down
Can be enjoyed at various temperatures
Little to no waste/garbage (depending on whether you get them fresh, frozen, or tinned)
Budget friendly
Loving a little less but liveable:
Refrigeration needed for the frozen kind. (Miss M quite like frozen peas)
Prep work for some (e.g. carrot/celery/capsicum sticks)
Overall:
While I'm not very good at including veges in anything other than a main meal, I am seriously going to try. I remember carrot sticks being a favourite snack when I was younger and Miss M will easily polish off a punnet of cherry tomatoes (OK, technically a fruit) if you let her. I've recently discovered mini capsicums filled with dip. . . hmmmm
Nuts
Loving:
Keep them mostly unsalted and you can be satisfied you've got a healthy snack. There's lots of info over at
Nutrition Australia
Long shelf life
Generally speaking a good source of fibre
Such a variety of flavours and textures
Loving a little less but liveable:
I find it hard to stop at one handful
Not entirely budget friendly (unless you have your own macadamia tree)
These do present a choking hazard, so use your own judgement as to whether or not they are suitable for you/your family
A lot of schools and child care facilities are nut free now due to allergy risks, so no discovering a new favourite to take to school :-(
I've found it difficult to find many Australian grown/owned/packaged nuts
Overall:
Due to the cost I haven't really embraced nuts (no, that didn't sound quite so wrong in my head for some reason). I think that & the fact they are not welcome in schools now are quite the turn off.
Boiled Eggs
Loving:
Good source of protein
Readily available (well, the raw ones are)
Using all those cute little egg cups and egg moulds!
Loving a little less but liveable:
You do have to cook these, there's no getting out of it, but you can quite easily boil a few at a time and store in the fridge for up to a week (according to
EatByDate.com)
Refrigeration required (if you're batch boiling)
A lot of schools and child care facilities are egg free now due to allergy risks, so no good for that :-(
Overall:
A good go-to snack for at home
I hope I've been able to give you a few ideas to keep your snacking healthy-ish these holidays.
(PS the cute graphic & fonts in my lead in image are available through new affiliate Lettering Delights)
Details of my tools & toys can be found on
this page.
~J
Disclosure: This is not a sponsored post. This post was written for Loving Lunches. No product was received for this post. All opinions expressed are my own, based on personal experience with the product.
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