Safe snacks: Beyond pudding cups and tortilla chips
Posted
Aug 25 2008, 11:46 AM
by
Donna Freedman
Rating:
"Snack food" manufacturers make a fortune on things like potato chips, microwave popcorn, granola bars, pretzels, flavored tortilla chips, pudding cups and protein bars. When I was a kid, such things were expensive luxuries and bought in extreme moderation. And yeah, we had to walk through six feet of snow, uphill both ways, in order to buy them. Also, our pudding was not prefab, protein bars hadn't been invented yet and no one knew that you could cook popcorn in the "radar ranges" that were owned only by the wealthy.
When we got home from school, our choices were fairly limited. Usually it was peanut butter on saltines, or peanut-butter toast (made with "used bread," of course). If there were carrots in the fridge, we'd eat them with salt. A jar of dill pickles was fair game, too. If there were home-baked cookies, we could eat only one or two -- my mom kept track of how many should be left. Sometimes there would be a bushel of apples from a local orchard. When all else failed, my brother and I favored catsup on white bread. I get queasy just thinking about that now.
Does a snack have to be different from what's already in the cupboard? I asked Smart Spending message board readers for easy-to-fix and/or healthy alternatives to ranch-flavored tortilla chips and tubes of sweetened yogurt. They responded with some great ideas, even though one or two copped to having eaten catsup on white bread too.
Or worse: "FL cheesehead" says her grandmother used to fix her toast with sour cream and brown sugar. "My kids think it's really disgusting, and so does my husband," she admits.
Frozen grapes, slow-cooked spuds
As a kid, reader "Beesmoker" loved butter and sugar on white bread. Now Beesmoker makes pudding out of uneaten bread heels (very thrifty!), divides it into small plastic containers with a dab of syrup and freezes it. These "pudding cups" are lots cheaper than the ones you'd buy in the store, and really brighten up a brown-bag lunch.
Beesmoker also cuts up celery and carrots to snack on during the week. "Have you seen the price they charge for precut celery and carrot sticks?" he asks.
(That's a sore spot with me. Those "baby" carrots aren't baby carrots at all. They are grownup carrots lathed down into miniatures and yes, they are way too pricey. It takes me only a minute to peel and cut up a carrot.)
"Insightful-123" suggests carrots dipped into sugar (honest), green beans dipped into butter or "peas shelled straight from the pods." Reader "Mac 7000" loves radishes. Can't miss with a Granny Smith apple and peanut butter, suggests reader "icantbreev." Reader "surfacing" says that sliced apples sprinkled with cinnamon sugar are a big hit with her three children.
Freeze some grapes, suggests "stareared kid." I do this, too: Leave them in the freezer until they're icy, not frozen solid, and they taste like sorbet. So do blueberries, which to me taste better frozen than fresh, and blackberries, which are free for the picking here in the Pacific Northwest.
I'd like to put in a vote for edamame, or soybean peas, cooked in the microwave and eaten with a bit of butter. I'm also fond of potatoes baked in the slow cooker. When potatoes are at loss-leader prices, or if you live in a farm area and can buy 50-pound bags, you might pay a nickel or less per spud. They're good with just a little butter or margarine, but you could also set out whatever toppings you have on hand: salsa, shredded cheese, chopped onion, black olives, leftover chili.
Ask the expert
As the owner of a home child care business, reader "KandRsmom" is the queen of the treats. Here are some of her tried-and-true favorites:
• A boiled egg sliced and served with salt and pepper and Triscuits or Wheat Thins. (Note: Eggs are pricey these days, so watch for sales.)
• Sliced carrots, celery, peppers and yellow crookneck squash (little ones) dipped in ranch dressing.
• Peanut butter and jelly on bread, toast, tortillas or leftover waffles or pancakes.
• Celery with cheese or peanut butter.
• Fresh fruit, plain or dipped in yogurt.
• Mini bagels with a little marinara sauce and sprinkled with cheese, then baked until bubbly.
• Breakfast cereal mix -- "basically any cereal I have left, mixed together with some dried fruit."
• Homemade Rice Krispie bars.
• Jell-O Jigglers, Jell-O with fruit in it, Jell-O and yogurt parfaits.
• Homemade smoothies.
• Egg, tuna or chicken salad on crackers.
• Homemade popsicles.
• Tortillas spread with a little refried beans and sprinkled with cheese, then heated.
• Tortillas spread with peanut butter, rolled around a whole banana and then sliced.
(Anyone else want to go to her house at snack time?)
Cold and crispy
"ManyaP" serves tortilla chips with whole pinto beans to her teenage sons. It's protein that "keeps hungry boys happy." Lately they've been noshing on in-season fruit, "ice cold out of the fridge," because they live in Arizona and anything cold is a big hit.
ManyaP's sons also like cereal with milk, a snack that can get expensive really fast. Without supervision, some teenagers could eat an entire box of cereal in one sitting. (So could some adults.) Unless you luck into loss-leader prices plus coupons, we're talking about four bucks for one snack. Consider putting snack-sized servings into plastic bags (which you would, naturally, wash and reuse).
Or try hot cereal. Oatmeal or Cream of Wheat eaten at 3 p.m. can be a novelty. Dried fruits or nuts improve both flavor and nutrition. (I get dried cranberries for a buck at Walgreens.)
"Surfacing" likes to mix a package of fat-free vanilla pudding mix into a big tub of fat-free plain yogurt, and let it sit for a while to set up. The reader will also add frozen blueberries to cheesecake-flavored yogurt. "The berries freeze the yogurt as they thaw -- so yummy!"
(Memo to ManyaP: Both the yogurt snacks are cold.)
The Dorito days
A couple of readers suggested hot dogs, which are frequent supermarket loss leaders. (If you're worried about ingesting pigs' lips you can choose beef, chicken or turkey franks.) Fry briefly or broil in a toaster oven for a different taste altogether from boiled coneys. The toaster oven can make a mean quesadilla, too: grate a little jack cheese on a tortilla and slide it under the broiler.
Reader "teenstweensandatot" says her three kids love graham crackers, or graham crackers with cream cheese. "Think 'cheesecake.'" (Of course, a dab of strawberry jam would further that impression, right?) This reader likes to serve quick breads like banana or applesauce breads, too.
Plenty of you are probably protesting, "I don't have time to bake!" And plenty of you probably don't. But that doesn't limit you to prefab snacks. As the suggestions above show, a lot of snacks can be thrown together using what's on hand, especially if you plan your shopping accordingly.
Reader "right2space" notes that cutting back on crackers, chips, granola bars and other convenience foods means more money in the budget for vegetables and fruit. "I am (trying) to make my grocery dollars work the best for our health," the reader notes.
Old habits die hard, though. "Boy, do I miss nacho-flavored Doritos. I remember the days I would sit down and eat half a bag without even thinking about it," says right2space.
These days, it would be quicker to do that thanks to the downsizing of Doritos. No healthier, though.
