Since most everyone I know is aware of my eating habits (i.e. no sugar or gluten…most of the time!), I get asked about the eating habits of my kids. A LOT.
Clearly making a 4 and 7-year-old eat meat, fish, vegetables and fruit (with a few “grains” — seeds actually — like quinoa and buckwheat) is rather impossible. I’m health-minded, not CRAZY.
But I also don’t have any Oreos or Cheetos in my pantry either.
There’s a middle ground, and until my kids are older and can make decisions on healthy eating for themselves, I can prepare good meals (and snacks) and hope some of it is rubbing off on them.
Like today. My 7-year-old wanted to bake something with me. We pulled out one of my favorite cookbooks for healthy snacks (Deceptively Delicious by Jessica Seinfeld) and decided to make the Oatmeal Raisin Cookies. They have old fashioned oats, zucchini and banana…just a tad healthier than most oatmeal raisin cookies 
I only made a few minor changes to the recipe: I used real butter instead of margarine and added more cinnamon (~1 teaspoon). I also skimped a bit on the brown sugar (somewhere between 1/2 cup and 3/4 cup).
We usually don’t make a habit of dessert at our house (go figure!), but a few nights a week, they have a popsicle (real fruit or leftover smoothie) or something like this. My son ate two of these and said they were perfectly delicious (and he helped me make them, so he knew fully well there were some green veggies inside). He’s the pickier eater between the two, so I’d say that’s a pretty good endorsement
I had to try one and I must admit they had good flavor…I liked the cinnamon and banana combination (you couldn’t taste the zucchini at all).
So if you’re a cookie-after-school kind of mom, you might want to grab a copy of this book (most libraries have one so you can test some of the recipes or they’re super cheap on ebay). There are 5 or 6 different recipes that I make fairly often for my kids. I really like some of her pumpkin and squash chocolate chip muffin/cupcake recipes (without the frosting), the brownies and the blueberry bars…
So what kind of snacks do I give my kids (other than the previously mentioned baked items with vegetables?)–Fruit leather, whole fruit, smoothies, kale chips, homemade sweet potato fries…think outside the box. Literally!
What other healthy snacks do you give your kids after school? (Or yourself after a long day of work??)
