Attack of the munchies

After doing the #sugarfreeseptember challenge (no refined sugar for 30 days) a friend asked for a few kid friendly healthy snacks. Although I suspect that his enquiry might be more likely for him to get through those mid morning munchies at the office (am I right, Jay?)

So here are a few ideas but I am saying straight up this important thing I have learned:

You WILL NOT NEED a snack if you have nutrient-dense healthy main meals. Let’s take breakfast. Before I ditched grains from my diet, I was most days having toast or cereal. These breakfasts do have you reaching for a snack by 10.30am. I found that once I switched to green smoothies (or more recently meat and vegetables - predominantly dinner leftovers), I rarely even thought about a snack until well past 12 noon. The dense nutrient rich smoothies with their combination of dark leafy greens and fruit with little boosts of extra fats from seeds or other superfoods are SO super satiating that I recommend a change of breakfast before even worrying about snacks...but still that's a big leap for some people, so I will include a list here of my favourite (mostly kid friendly) snacks that are pretty easy to prepare.

Trail mix: This is a fairly easy one to get you through those energy dips mid morning. I like to make up my own with my favourite combinations of nuts, seeds and dried fruit. But the best cheeky add in to any trail mix is some dark chocolate pieces (and we are talking about the good stuff – 70% cacao or above!) That way you are less likely to spill the entire contents on your desk and hunt down every piece and gobble it up. Dark chocolate has a quick “I’m over it now” point.

Nut balls: These are also super easy to whip up if you have a high powered blender. Essentially these are just a combination of nuts and dates and some flavouring. My favourite recipe is the Changing Habits chocolate nut balls. You can substitute dried apricots for the dates, substitute other nuts and play around with what you roll them in (e.g. coconut, goji berries, cacao, sesame seeds). I have found with my kids, they are a bit more likely to eat them if I reduce the cacao flavour by using half cocoa/half cacao.

Pikelets/Pancakes: My kids love pancakes and this is our Saturday morning ritual. We mostly go for the River Cottage recipe when it has to be floppy pancakes (ones they can roll up with lemon and sugar). We use GF flour with these ones. But I find a good afternoon snack is pikelets that you have with some jam and cream (coconut cream based or dairy). I love this recipe from Elana’s Pantry.

Chocolate bread: Well, to be honest it isn’t even chocolate but it is a dark brown colour and my daughter always refers to it as chocolate bread so I have been hesitant to correct her since she gobbles it up. This is a favourite of mine too because all the ingredients go in blender then you pour it into a baking tray and you’re done. I can do this on a school morning...although the almond butter does mean it is not appropriate if you are in a nut-free school. It works with coconut butter substituted though. Its actually Elana’s pantry paleo breakfast bread but I reckon our name is more fun!

Crudités and dip: I actually don’t know what crudités mean but I read it once and I loved the name. Essentially its just cut up vegies and dip. Carrots. Snow peas. Cucumber. Its really easy to prepare and you could start off with some store bought dips but hummus is super easy to make. Here is a really yummy beetroot hummus and as I have been recently on the AIP diet I have been boosting the organ meats and this is very nice to have as a dip – if pate is your thing! A healthy cracker alternative (grain free) is these plantain crackers (I eat far too many of these at the moment!).

Fruit straps/chips: I got this idea online – search for fruit leathers. My kids are always asking for these and they are pretty easy. It’s basically mushing up some fruit and then laying it out flat on some baking paper and then slow cooking in a low oven for a few hours. It took me a while to get the hang of it because the thickness of the fruit mix is pretty important.

I love to experiment so there are ways to use your normal favourites but make them with a slightly healthier slant. For example:

• Substitute sugar for other sweeteners such as rapadura sugar, dates, honey or home made golden syrup.
• Substitute flour for gluten free flour or another type of non-wheat based flour.
• Substitute butter for coconut oil.

Best of luck and hope that helps!

 

Free Pass

I’ve been feeling crappy. My daughter has been sick and I think I might have caught her bug. But still, I dragged myself out the other day and visited my new chiropractor. I told him I felt sick with a headache, body aches and that my youngest was sick with a bad cold. He said it was the perfect time to visit him! Huh? He is really good at explaining stuff to me. It may be because I am new and I gave him the heads up I was a bit sceptical. I have some serious hardware in my spine so I was nervous and expressed my reservations. But he has been very open and descriptive. He explained to me that when your nervous system is not firing at its optimum, it is hard for your immune system to do what it needs to do (heal!). Your body has an innate capacity to heal itself but for this to happen, the message channels in your central nervous system need to be working properly. Another interesting thing he told me was that your body puts a specific amount of energy into healing. This may cover my day to day aches associated with my chronic back pain. But when inflammation, viruses or other sickness attack, this innate healing needs to be diverted to the “emergency” situation. There is no leftover energy for masking any ongoing pain. So it made sense that I had a bug and I had a pain flare at the same time. I really wanted to just check out and give my body the time to heal itself. I needed to rest. It reminded me of something....

When my daughter was younger we were often trialling new bedtime routines (Ummm, she is nearly 7 and we still haven’t found one that works!). She has always been a night owl and never seems tired when it is bedtime. So for a while there, we would read her a story, do the teeth, toilet and all that stuff, tuck her in and say goodnight...then we gave her this strict rule. If there was some very necessary (borderline emergency) reason then she could come out and talk to us. We called this a free pass. Then she was supposed to stay in her bedroom after that and go to sleep. Anyway, it worked for a while....

So it comes back to how I was feeling yesterday, in pain and on verge of tears. This situation could have become worse if I had have let my thoughts get out of control, continue with blame and guilt and feeling bad about myself. But I took myself out for a walk and cleared my head. On my walk, I recalled the “free pass” rule. There will be days when I don’t feel crash hot. That’s true for everyone whether you have chronic pain or not. So I decided it would be OK to allow myself a free pass every now and then. I needed to just breathe, ditch the stress, give in to the need to re-charge. So, I gave myself a free pass. I had a PJ day, complete with nana nap and movie!

Obviously free passes are for borderline emergency purposes....so not to be used too often. My body was telling me something and I had to listen. I also acknowledged that after this “free pass” I need to still be committed to returning to my self pain management routines….but that’s tomorrow.