Sarah’s Favorite Quick and Easy Snacks

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Holy heck do I get hangry.  If the man and I are ever having an argument he usually pauses the fight to get me a snack. Seriously. It usually works too. Being hungry can hijack your brain and cause you to do and say crazy stuff. It’s all about survival though so before we blame our monkey brains, let’s just make a snack instead.  Here are my favorite quick and easy snacks.

live seasoned spring 16 jumbalaya-1-2Kefir! More often than not, I drink kefir directly from the bottle. It’s actually quite rare that I fancy it up with frozen berries, chia seeds, coconuts and sliced almonds, like shown above.  Kefir is a life saver.  If you’ve never tried it, kefir is like a tart drinkable yogurt, but better because people with lactose issues should be able to tolerate it since kefir’s abundance of beneficial yeast and bacteria provide lactase, an enzyme which consumes most of the lactose left after the culturing process.  Kefir also has a bunch of beneficial yeast as well as probiotic bacteria found in yogurt. Kefir is loaded with valuable vitamins and minerals and contains easily digestible complete proteins. All in all, it’s a damn good snack.

live seasoned spring 15 sarahs favorite quick snacks-1

Avocado with chips, crackers or pretzels. Super simple and majorly delicious. I used to eat avocados plain with a spoon, but after five years of that I upped my game a bit. Now I like to drizzle a tad of olive oil, a sprinkle of salt and pepper, and most importantly, I crush one clove of garlic on each half. SO tasty. live seasoned spring 15 sarahs favorite quick snacks-3

I’ve been munchin’ on fruit, cheese and nuts for at least a decade.  My favorite Wawa snack? The grapes, cheese, and cracker packs.  Seriously, fruit and cheese are a match made in heaven, add in the nuts (or seeds like pictured above) and you have some good fats and proteins to round out your snack attack. Not all fruits and nuts are created equal though, so do your research if you’re going to eat this every day or just go by the tried and true rule of everything in moderation. live seasoned spring 15 sarahs favorite quick snacks-4POPCORN! Now that I’ve mentioned being moderate, let me be honest, I’ve been knee deep in popcorn every night for the past two weeks.  A few years ago, I worked on an organic, off the grid, mountaintop farm and every single night we ate the most enormous bowl of popcorn.  It was the perfect intersection of cheap and easy meets salty and satisfying. The magical people at this farm also introduced me to nutritional yeast and just wow wow wow.  I had never even heard of it before then, but now I’m hooked. I put this stuff on everything, but most importantly, I put it on my popcorn. It tastes exactly like cheese! On this farm, we didn’t have a microwave, just a gas range stove, so I also learned the great art of stovetop popcorn.  It’s super simple and you don’t even need one of those fancy popcorn pots to make it. Here’s how I do it:

Perfect Stovetop Popcorn

  • Drizzle enough olive oil (or coconut oil – it doesn’t affect the taste) in the bottom of a sauce pot (or large pot if making a larger serving) with a lid.
  • Turn the pot on to medium heat and add only three kernels of corn to the pot and put the lid on.
  • Once the kernels pop, remove the pot from the burner, but don’t turn off the heat.
  • Add the rest of the kernels to the pot – I make anywhere from a 1/3 cup to a 1/2 cup at a time – give the pot a shake to coat the kernels and put the lid back on.
  • Set a timer for thirty seconds.
  • Once the timer beeps, return the lidded pot to the stove and wait. Don’t shake or stir or mess with the pot. I never shuffle the kernels around and I’ve never once burned a single kernel. It takes some self restraint 😉
  • After a few minutes you’ll hear all the kernels start to pop at once. Once the popping slows and eventually comes to a stop, turn off the burner and dump your popcorn into a big bowl.
  • I always add 1 tablespoon of melted butter, a few sprinkles of salt, and a hefty amount of nutritional yeast. I’m a creature of habit, so I stick with that combo, but go crazy if you’d like.

Now go get your snack on!

 

4 thoughts on “Sarah’s Favorite Quick and Easy Snacks

  1. We eat our popcorn spicy! I only cook it on the stove too, almost the same way you do. After those three or four kernels pop signaling that the oil is hot, I pour in the other kernels and then dump in a tablespoon of hot sauce. (I prefer Texas Pete, but have also used Tabasco.) Be careful though — the hot sauce reacts with the oil immediately, so it has to be covered quickly. The only difference from the regular popcorn is that it makes a lot of sizzling noises, but follow the rest of your recipe for a spicy treat.

  2. Such good ideas, I have been in such a lunch rut-sometimes all I want is a snack! These are awesome well-rounded options.

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