zero waste munchies

 

Happy Sunday folks. Not sure what the weather is like where you are right now, but here it’s sunny, windy, chilly, warm, cloudy and that was in the last 5 minutes… but all in all nice.

There’s a lot I want to write about but I’m going to continue with my Sunday chill mood and talk about food.

I feel like I want to write about food because I hear this a lot:

“Wow, you’re so thin! And you’re a Mom. How’d you lose your baby weight?”

“So you’re like one of those granola Moms aren’t you? You don’t give your kid candy and shit?”

“What the heck do you eat then if you are doing zero waste?”

All appropriate questions. Right? Right?

In my previous blog I complained about how I miss certain things. Like sea weed snacks, rice crisps and cheese. I have yet to go to Whole Foods here in Ottawa to see if they’ll cut me off cheese and put it in my jar.

I am not on a diet, but a diet is simply: “the kinds of food that a person, animal, or community habitually eats.” So my diet has changed and yes I do miss certain things, but honestly the more time passes, the less I miss them. Most of the snacks, the salt content was high and overall not that great for you. Besides, anything that can last longer than 4-5 days shelf life or fridge life, freaks me out. And now I’ve found other things to munch on that are just as satisfying!

So, I’m going to give you an example of things that I eat now as snacks that you can easily get in bulk and without plastic.

But before I do…. the first thing I will tell you is this: Have patience. 

Society and this instant gratification thing, posting to the internet while you’re enjoying a sunset or in the company of people, checking social media to see if you get likes every couple seconds, wanting things immediately without wanting to put in the effort, stuffing your face with fast food – it is starting to irk me.

I have a toddler who wants things right away and screams at me that “he doesn’t want to be patient. He wants snack now!” Society is the larger version of my son on his worst days.

My son is actually a very patient toddler and “hangry” is normal for him, like it is for everyone. The problem with today and the fast food industry is that it teaches us that we don’t need to be patient. So what I tell him is this, “I understand that you’re hungry. So am I. But the food will come a lot faster if you do something else instead. I can give you a slice of apple if you’d like, but I want you to be able to eat all your lunch/supper and it will taste really yummy when it comes. I know you’re a patient boy. Thank you for being so patient.”

Of course screaming still happens so I’ll either give him something else to do or ignore his screams until he goes and does something else on his own.

And then once everything is cooked/baked/made, he’ll sit down happily with me and enjoy every little bit.

So all that to say, these snacks; some take 5 minutes, some take longer. Have patience you little wonderful and marvellous vultures.

I promise you your health, your heart, and soul (and waistline) will thank you in the long run.

1) Potato chips

• You get a whole potato. I buy ones that say they are from Canada.
• Wash it. You can remove the skin if you want. I don’t.
• Slice into the thinnest possible slices you can cut them. Put them on a baking sheet.
• Heat oven to 375 degrees.
• Sprinkle with dash of sea salt
• Pop them into the oven for 15 minutes until brown or to your crunchy liking.
• *note sometimes I use a little bit of olive oil and spices to mix before placing on the pan, but most of the time I literally just spread them out, sprinkle with salt and bake.

2) Kale and Spinach Chips

• Wash kale and shake dry.
• Rip off kale from stalk and tear into pieces (keep them fairly the same size) If using spinach, I just trim off the stems.
• Put into bowl and drizzle with olive oil. You can add spices like cayenne pepper if you want.
• Massage olive oil into leaves
• Spread out onto pan and sprinkle with dash of sea salt
• Bake 10-15min at 350 degrees
• *note these do not store well. The key is to eat them right away.

You can do this with almost any vegetable. I’ve done it with sweet potatoes, zucchini, carrots and parsnip.

3) Roasted Chickpeas

I buy my chickpeas in bulk. So the first step is to soak them overnight. Then you cook them. I cook large batches so that I can make these snacks, hummus and use the chickpeas in salads. But once they are cooked you:

• Put chickpeas in a bowl and rinse. Shake off excess water as much as possible and discard any shells.
• Drizzle with oil and spices like cayenne pepper, salt, pepper.
• Spread evenly over baking sheet and bake at 400 degrees for 30-4o min.
• If you want it to be a bit more crunchy, turn down oven to 250 degrees and stay close by for another 5-10min.

Other snacks I enjoy and can buy in bulk:

4) Salted Pretzels 

5) Trail Mix or plain Almonds

6) Dried Plaintain chips or banana chips, but I don’t go to Kardish or Whole Foods often and some places use monosodium glutamate (MSG) and I avoid this because it makes me sick, bloated and gives me a headache.

7) Whole Wheat Kaiser buns (when I don’t feel like baking flatbread) that I’ll cut into three thin pieces, toast and spread peanut butter and jam on.

8) Pickles -these come in a jar and we reuse the jar. My son is obsessed with pickles. We only get a certain kind from the Polish deli because every ingredient is natural unlike some other brands that put not so great ingredients.

9) Yogurt – Our yogurt which we very rarely buy is in a glass jar, from a farm and is organic. You return the jar to the store for a deposit. We eat it with chia seeds, flax seeds and fruit.

There are a lots of other snacks we eat like home-made crackers and salsa, no bake energy balls that I shared one recipe for here, muffins, zucchini/veggie pancakes (can be for dinner), banana pancakes (can be for breakfast), even home-made popcorn (but we don’t really eat corn products anymore) and so many other goodies but I’ll share them with you another time.

What about you? What do you munch on?