How We Painlessly Switched To Healthy Snacks

Healthy snacking is hard, and I don’t just mean for kids.

It’s hard for adults too. I mean, first, you have to make something, or at the very least, wash and cut something, which takes time.

To be honest, I stopped keeping a stash of homemade goodies on hand when I realized how nutritionally devoid even most homemade cookies are and started switching to more nutritionally dense alternatives.

I still bake, of course, but that’s reserved for treats now – not everyday snacking.

But no matter what you do, you either have to make/prepare or buy something to snack on. Not to mention, the kids would much rather have something that comes in a package and contains at least 50% sugar.

I tried giving them celery sticks and peanut butter one time. The celery ended up under the couch, and they used their fingers to eat the peanut butter.

So… not a win.

It turns out carrot sticks are literally the only raw vegetable they like.

But if you read the title up there, you already know that all that has changed.

So what happened?

Well, recently, I got hooked on creating a long-term “home store,” meaning essentially, that I’m using part of my monthly grocery budget to stock my pantry with a variety of non-perishable food so that – when I reach my goal – I won’t have to make emergency trips to the store for items I’ve run out of, or worry about a snow storm (or tornado, or for some of your, hurricane), causing a short-term food shortage.

Part of that ‘home store” is cans of freeze-dried vegetables. (There’s freeze-dried everything, including cheese, but here, we’re focusing on vegetables, right?)

Freeze Dried vegetables are great for quick meal prep. You don’t have to wash or cut anything – it’s already done for you! – which means there’s zero waste. No cutting off ends or bad spots, no leaving leftovers in the vegetable drawer to rot – that sort of thing.

And the powdered tomato sauce is irreplaceable. In fact, that’s what originally got me into the freeze-dried food thing.

I remember my mom using powered tomatoes when I was a kid. She would scoop out a tablespoon (or however much she needed) and mix in enough water to make a paste. No more of this buying a can of tomato paste only to use a spoonful of it!

I know we’ve gotten off track, but dried tomato paste gets me excited. 😉

So, I got all these freeze-dried vegetables for cooking, but imagine my surprise when I turn around and see this:

The face of victory.

So I started opening cans of vegetables and letting both kids try them out to see how they liked ‘em.

Of course, I ended up opening the fruit and yogurt too, which tastes like candy, but they liked the peas and sweet corn almost as much as the fruit, and the only vegetable they really didn’t like was the green beans.

So we’ve started giving them freeze-dried vegetables for snacks, and I’ll be honest, I get a little thrill every time they ask for them.

Like, on what planet do kids actually ask for vegetables?!

Freeze-dried vegetables still taste exactly like their fresh counterparts, only better, because with the water evaporated out, the sugars in the vegetable concentrate to make them sweeter.

That’s now even counting the fact that they’re harvested at their peak of ripeness, nutrition, and flavor and then flash frozen right away, whereas the fresh veggies we buy in the store have to be picked before they’re ripe to survive transportation, which of course, means they’re not as nutritious – and they’re old by the time we get them.

But the main reason the kids – and everyone else – loved these freeze-dried vegetables is because they give you that satisfying melt-in-your-mouth crunchiness that’s so hard to get without resorting to tortilla chips.

You know the slogan “once you pop, you can’t stop”? Think that, only green vegetables instead of potato chips.

Amazing! And the best part is, I didn’t have to start spending more money to make the switch! I just started funneling the part of our grocery budget that would have gone into snacks and vegetables into a monthly freeze-dried food order.

Boom!

Of course, they eat dried fruit and yogurt bites as treats (even I have a hard time staying away from the yogurt bites!), but they get to eat vegetables whenever they want.

Oh, and those green beans the kids didn’t like? Those are my new, low-calorie popcorn replacement for movie night! I’ve been experimenting with seasoning them (and the dried kale). They’re amazing!

The kids still don’t like them (once they’ve made up their minds…).

But at least I can say that healthy snacking isn’t hard anymore. It’s easy!

I used to think Freeze-dried food was just for those “crazy preppers.” Ha!

Since I began ordering freeze-dried veggies from Thrive, our snacking habits have changed to be so much healthier it’s unbelievable, and I quickly found out that I’m not the only mom who has found this to be true!

So if you’re interested in providing healthy snacks and lunchbox goodies for your family, I encourage you to go to the Thrive Website through my link and set up a small trial “Q” (that’s what they call their monthly shipment).

I do get a small commission from your orders, which makes it possible for me to be available to help and answer any questions you have, and run our Thrive Life Facebook group to help support moms like us.

Since this is the “internet age” where everybody is trying to sell something, I feel like I need to add the disclaimer that, yes, I make money off of your purchases at no cost to you, but that is not why I’m recommending Thrive Life! When I first signed up, I told my friend, “yeah, I’m joining, but I’m not going to sell it. I am so over multi-level marketing!”

But since Thrive has been such changed our lives so much, I can’t keep it to myself anymore!