Snacks

I should mention that, along with the 3 solid meals per day we enjoy, we also like a few snacks.  Over the years of parenting I have managed to find or create several relatively healthy, whole food snacks for our family.  My first choice for snacking is fresh fruit but we also like to have our treats.  My favourites are to have fruit and nut bar (recipe on side bar, photo in link) in the freezer as well as some energy orbs. We usually have some muffins (either banana, pumpkin, blueberry or applesauce) on hand. And every once in awhile I like to make these chocolate treats.

You start with dark chocolate (ours is from Rancho Vignola and, unbelievably, it is still leftover from last year's order.)

You add your favourite nuts.  These are walnuts from one of our walnut trees at our old home, I'm starting to realize just how crazy an amount of food I put away when I see that I still have a huge bag of walnuts to use up and we didn't even harvest any last year.)  Anyone with nut allergies can use seeds instead.

Melt the chocolate over low  heat.

Choose what else you would like to add.  I put in raisins, flax and hemp (also from RV) as well as some coconut.

Stir it up until everything is coated in chocolate and then drop by small spoonful onto cookie sheets and put in the freezer for a few minutes to firm up.  Then store in covered container in freezer. Now, the reason I say small spoonful is NOT because I think one should only have a tiny amount of chocolate (especially when it comes mixed with all these healthy ingredients), it is simply because we like to eat them frozen and if you make them small enough you can pop them whole into your mouth to suck on.  If you make them too big and have to bite them in half then you will end up with a big chocolate smear around your mouth....Every Time You Eat Them.  Trust me.

Plus if you make them small then you feel quite justified in having more than one.