Weekly Snacks

I realized that I have only posted the dinners for each week but in addition to those I typically arrange for some snacks to be pre-made and ready for the week.  I haven't been as good about making these from scratch lately (except the granola) but this week I made these:

GRANOLA- In our house, homemade granola is a MUST.  I think it's been a year and a half since I made my first batch of granola and I have been making it every week since without fail.  Nick and I eat a bowl of granola pretty much every night as 4th meal around 9pm.  The kids all love to snack on it and Liam just learned to eat it with milk "just like daddy" so now he eats it that way too.  Gavin prefers to snack on it dry.
I use the recipe from 100 days of real food  but I modified it to make it vegan and infant friendly for our Ellie. It's the same recipe as the one in the link BUT I use 6 TBSP of coconut oil instead of butter to make it vegan and I use maple syrup instead of honey.  I substituted maple syrup at first because of Ellie, since infants should not consume honey, but I made a batch with honey a few months ago and it turns out that we find the taste of the maple version MUCH better.  I still cannot believe we never get tired of this but it's just so darn good.

NO BAKE PROTEIN BITES-  The My Whole Food Life blog has awesome no bake bites recipes.  I love them because they don't require baking and the kids devour them.  They're full of protein and make for a quick snack.  Our family favorites are the ones in the link, the high protein energy bites made with almond meal, coconut oil, ground flax meal, chia seeds, almond butter and maple syrup....mix it all up and put in the fridge.  I add about a TBSP of unsweetened cocoa powder to them and they also fulfill any sweet craving I may have and they're good for after a workout snack too.  I usually double this recipe so that it lasts us all week.  All 5 of us love these little bites.

CHIA PUDDING- I made this chia pudding for the first time and it was delicious.  It's a coconut vanilla chia pudding and while it does not look pretty, it tastes really good.  It was SO easy to make, I'll definitely add this to the rotation of snacks/desserts.

These are of course in addition to fresh fruits and vegetables that we snack on.  I just like to have a little something extra for the kids.