Snacks for school, work, and play

School snack dilemmas; do you ever have them? If your goals involve trying to purchase the majority of foods locally and fresh, it adds even more difficulty trying to come up with something creative using the same ingredients, especially during the winter months. I am lucky, I will admit it; my girl eats almost everything you could expect from a four year old, and a bit you wouldn’t. But that also means she loves things that are not good for her, or she cannot take to school. Nut free lunches cause concerns for protein and time in my home. And although I do not mind the occasional treat for O, I find it best when the treat is actually, homemade, healthy, AND delicious.

Take these Flourless Pumpkin Pie Muffins from Running with Spoons! I made them over the holidays with leftover pumpkin pureé, and although I deviated from the recipes slightly and they looked different than expected (more with a muffin top), they were so delicious! They were a perfect after gymnastics snack in the car on the way home. Be careful about how many you make in a batch for serving size accuracy, as they are fairly calorie and fat dense for their small stature, but they do also include vegetables and protein. Making the same snacks for my daughter and myself is strategic for me as she needs smaller portions sizes and healthy eating is something I am trying to stress to her in early development. And I am trying to change my bad eating habits (from childhood to now)  through my love of food and my love for teaching my daughter the importance of healthy eating.

But of course, these muffins are not the subject of the post, as almond butter was used in the recipe and this is a post about a yummy recipe that is good to take for school too. Today’s adventure in baking involved an early morning rise (5:00 AM, really?!) although the actual baking probably started  closer to 7:00 AM after stretching/colouring and breakfast/ organizing & coffee! We made Banana Berry Oat Bars – by Hello Healthy. This is a recipe that I saw on the Blog for My Fitness Pal, a calorie counting app (and more) that I use to monitor my food and exercise and helped me in many ways eat healthier and with more awareness, and set goals and track progress in exercise and weight loss. I feel this app was integral to my almost 20 lbs weight loss in a 3 month period last winter. I fell off the wagon in April last year but I want to push through the, what I view as, failure and be successful this year with my goals of healthy, local, homemade eating and a more active and healthy life on the whole.

So in keeping with the local, I had to adapt the recipes for the pat bars to what I had on hand as strawberries, when out of season (unless frozen) are very disappointing to me; it is very rare for them to be found here in mid-January. There is something about the sweet freshness of local Ontario strawberries that is totally worth the wait for me! Its rare for them to even make it to freezing during their harvest season, let alone kept so long into the winter.

I did, however, have frozen Ontario blueberries in the freezer (from grocery store) and I knew they would make a berry good replacement. I also do not have liquid honey in the kitchen, so for the above pumpkin pie muffins, I actually used cinnamon honey butter from a local farmer instead (Gord’s Local Honey). For the oat bars, I used agave syrup I discovered in my pantry. My husband picks up random things to cook with sometimes. And eventually I find a use for them, or he has a plan come to life. I actually only used about half the amount of agave in this recipe. The blueberries took really well to the agave and lemon juice, and I have saved the leftover juice to make a a sweetened fruit salad tonight.

The picture above shows 5 pieces of the original 8 oat bars. The recipe is supposed to make 4 servings, but for a snack rather than, say, breakfast on the go, I cut each piece in half to make 8 snack servings. I also did not have the same size pan, so I just molded it together to end where it did not spread to thin. O helped by pouring and mixing the dry ingredients, but she does not like the effort that is required for cooking from (almost) scratch and gave up mixing the banana in the oats for doing gymnastics in the living room. She then spread the blueberries using a slotted spoon over the first oat mixture and enjoyed crumbling the rest on top of that.

They smelled delicious baking with all that cinnamon and blueberry!

We ate a snack size oat bar with two slices of bacon. I had been waiting to eat later in the morning since we had been up so early and coffee is really all I need to start when I have the morning for leisurely home time, and I knew I wouldn’t be able to resist these once they came out of the oven. O was happy to be having ‘second breakfast’ (ahh, my little hobbit) and she asked to bring Papa his upstairs once we finished out plates at the table.

O has been asking for another bar all day! I have found it hard to resist the temptation of a sweet and healthy treat.

Half a oat bar fits perfectly in one of O’s lunch containers, and since they do not contain nuts, I really want to save these for lunches. And as planned, they will be a perfect additional to my lunch for work as well! This is a perfect snack for children and adults, with a not-too-sweet baked treat with the benefits of fruit and whole foods.

Happy snacking!