Fits the Feingold Diet - Snack Time

Surprisingly, the transition to making most of our food from scratch has been a relatively easy one.  I am getting more comfortable in the kitchen, making bread twice a week as well as several snack foods.  These honey graham crackers are so yummy and easy to make.  I make up a double batch of the dough and freeze it in several rounds.  That way, I can just pull out a round to thaw when we need some more crackers and bake 'em up.  I'm not patient enough to roll out a perfect rectangle and cut graham crackers out that look like the ones you buy at the store.  So, I just scrounge around in my cookie cutter box and use whatever looks like fun at the time.  The Beast called the ones in the picture above "pirate cookies", because he said they looked like gold doubloons.  Whatever works, right?!  I've also made them in teddy bear shapes - giant teddy grahams.  Anyway, you can find the recipe I used here at Foodie Bride.  

Another favorite snack around here are animal crackers.  Only, ours never look like animals.  Sometimes they look like maple leaves or stars or hearts, but mostly the kids choose alphabet shapes for their cookies.  The Beast prefers only letters that exist in his name, the number 3, and the number 8.  The Spud likes to get as many cookies out of the dough as possible so there always ends up being a lot of sevens, lower case l's, and ones - ha!  Anyway, I mentioned this link before in a potpourri post, but you should definitely try this recipe for animal crackers.  Like the graham cracker dough, you can freeze this dough too in portions to be pulled out and thawed as needed.

However, the snack of choice around here are my homemade granola bars.  I found this recipe a year ago and have made it countless times since.  When made with a cup of chocolate chips (Feingold approved, of course) and a cup of shredded coconut, they are so good that you think you are cheating on granola bars with cookie bars or something.  I make 24 bars at a time, but they are always gone within a few days.  So good!

It's snack time!  Pick one to try with your family today.

Fits the Feingold Diet: Crunchy Cheese Stars

So in case you haven't noticed, I have four kids ages six and under.  This means that their little tummies are often empty, and the little beggars will come around looking for snacks.  Pre-Feingold, I would give them cheese and crackers, carrot sticks, tortilla chips, granola bars, goldfish, popcorn, etc.  While some of those are still good options for the offspring, manufactured snacks such as goldfish, graham crackers, and chips are out unless I want to shell out a lot of money for the organic, no-additive variety.  The frugal me says that's not okay, especially when my kids chow through a little box of crackers in one day.  Just sayin'.  So I have been on the hunt for recipes to make my own crackers (thank you Pinterest!) with these three goals in mind:  1) it has to have healthy ingredients  2) it has to be simple and not-too-time-consuming  and 3) it has to be tasty enough that the kids will eat it willingly - otherwise, it's so not worth it!  And in my search, I found this recipe for cheese crackers.  Five ingredients.  Prep sounded simple.  Baking sounded easy.  Pictures looked awesome.  And so I tried them.  Here's how my version went down:

First, I made the dough.  It's really just like making a pie crust, with the addition of cheddar cheese of course.  I took 4 TBS of butter, cubed it up, and threw it in my food processor.  Next I shredded up the cheddar cheese to get 8 ounces (make sure to use Feingold approved cheese) and attempted to add that to my food processor.  It was then I realized that I did not own a full-size food processor, but rather a "mini", which was not large enough to fit this recipe.  What to do, what to do?  I moved the cubed butter and shredded cheese to my blender, added a cup of flour, 3/4 teaspoon of salt, and pressed the button.  What happened next was a whole lot of nothing.  The blades whirled merrily around, doing nothing.  I shook the blender and did a lot of very-unculinary-like things to try to make it work.  Nothing.  Still persevering, I transferred the whole chunky mix to my Kitchenaid mixer.  I put that baby on high until finally the mixture was incorporated enough to add the 2 TBS cold water.   I then transferred the cracker dough (finally!!) to plastic wrap, wrapped it up tightly, and put it in the fridge for thirty minutes.  (Or maybe it was an hour, I did get pretty caught up in some Facebooking and Pinteresting...)

The next step was to put the dough on a sheet of wax paper and roll it out as thin as you can.  Realizing that I only had parchment paper in my pantry, I decided it would work just as well and commenced with the rolling.  This takes some muscle work, ladies!  The paper kept shifting on the table, and my only solution was to get one knee up on the table to hold down the paper while I rolled that dough.  And no, I did not get you all a picture of that athletic feat!  Eventually, I got a nice, even, thin slab of dough to cut out my stars.  Our Ordinary Life creatively made her own cutters out of a soda can.  I happened to have a little star cutter that worked just fine.  I cut and cut and cut and cut and put all those cheesy stars on my cookie sheet, close together because they wouldn't spread at all.  And then I baked 'em for fifteen minutes at 350 degrees.

Results?  Crunchy, buttery, cheesy, tasty crackers that were more than just a little addictive!  I rerolled the remaining dough a few more times to cut out the rest of the stars and baked them too.  What crackers actually made it past the hungry crew lying in wait in the living room were stored in an airtight container for future snacking.  And despite all my struggles with evil kitchen appliances and slippery dough, I felt it was very worth it.

I did some math for you all to figure out the cost of making a batch of these yummy crackers.  I used average costs for butter, cheese, and flour, with the final total being about $1.50 for 12 ounces of delicious cheesiness.  That's a lot cheaper than Annie's Homegrown Cheddar Bunnies!

I made these crackers a second time this past week, using the mixer straight away instead of messing with the other appliances.  My dough was not as pliable that time around and was much harder to roll thin.  I think I'm going to have to spring for a full-size food processor.  Me thinks there will be many more recipes in my future using this machine...

Homemade Granola Bars

For snack time, invariably my kiddos will choose granola bars. They love the ones with mini chocolate chips in them and scarf them down like cookies. Between my own kids and the one I watch each afternoon, we can finish off a box of ten in two days. And at $2.50 a box, that gets to be quite a pricey snack!

So, I decided to attempt making my own granola bars. With our long road trip coming up soon, I figured it would be very beneficial to have lots and lots of granola bars on hand for the munchies. I found this easy and yummy recipe at Kitchen Stewardship, one of my favorite cooking blogs.

When the Beast learned I was making granola bars, he quickly volunteered to help. He especially enjoyed adding the honey and then mashing the whole mixture into the pan as firmly as his muscles would let him.

Of course, we decided on mini chocolate chips as our add-ins. The coconut and sunflower seeds sound delish, but unfortunately I would be the only one eating the bars if I used those ingredients. The Drama Queen also assisted in making a batch of bars.

By following the recipe and putting it into two 8x8 pans instead of the 13x9 pan, we were able to cut 24 bars. Then came the taste test. Amazing! Sweet, thick, and absolutely granola-y, everyone enjoyed our first attempt at making granola bars. I made them a week ago, and they are still as fresh as ever. The Nerd grabs one for breakfast on his way out the door, and the kids all clamor for them at snack time. In my opinion, these are a lot more filling and tasty than the store-bought kind. Best of all, I know exactly what ingredients are in each bar. And since it looks like there are not that many bars left, it looks like we will be making these again soon. ;)