Saturday Morning Kitchen

 Every once in a while I get crazy and find myself ambitious to take on what is seemingly a big project. Every once in a while I actually act on that mood and roll up my sleeves to get the job done.

Saturday morning was one of those times.

A friend recently shared on Facebook how in a short amount of time one afternoon she had accomplished a whole bunch of meal/snack prep. I felt inspired and vowed that I should again hop back into at least prepping some ready to go snack options for my family. Mainly, for the kiddos.

On Friday evening, I perused my Pinterest boards to compile a small list based on in-house ingredients.

Saturday morning I rallied the troops and being that 4/4 of them were in good spirits, I decided to move ahead and enlist their help. Gosh, those big kids sure are capable of more than I probably allow them to do! Between grabbing ingredients, consulting recipes and little girl patrol, we were able to work together to make four different snacks in about 2 hours.

The kids have already tried some of each recipe, so I will link to them here. Each of the recipes was pretty easy, minimal ingredients and quick to prepare.

First, we made Breakfast Cookies. These are made to be a bigger cookie and eaten only one at a time. I've made that clear to my household  that they are a snack or can be eaten with a yogurt for a relatively quick (aka during school time) breakfast.

For the dried fruit in this recipe I used both raisins and some cut up dried apricots along with the pecans for nuts. Although the directions state white and brown sugar, the recipe post omitted the white sugar and I did as well. Just use the brown sugar.

My kids enjoy smoothies for snack or along with their lunch. I decided to prep some smoothies in my Ninja and then spoon them in little cups, pop a Popsicle craft stick in and throw them in the freezer. Jonah was especially helpful with the Ninja for this recipe. It is so easy to throw in my frozen blueberries and strawberries that I picked last summer to enjoy the fruity goodness of this treat. After a coupe hours in the freezer they were ready to eat. I have no recipe for this as I just eyeball my ingredients and whip them up.

Next, we moved on to Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookie Muffins. I did this recipe 1 1/2x so that it made roughly 2 1/2 dozen mini muffins. I've been electing to go the mini muffin route as it seems less get wasted. They are the perfect size for the girls and if someone else from the household wants two, that's ok too. I used regular all purpose flour (not whole wheat as suggested) and then 2 eggs to make my recipe.

Lastly, we made up one more batch of No Bake Chewy Granola Bars. I had tried this one for the first time earlier in the week and since we all liked them so much decided to make another batch with different mix-ins. These are definitely our favorite homemade granola bar recipe to date.

There I was, two hours later with a bunch of goodies for the upcoming week. The granola bars I placed in a airtight storage container and put on the shelf in the pantry with the other snacks. The other items I bagged up in Ziploc freezer bags and threw in the freezer. I even cleaned out the freezer, threw some unknown random stuff away and created room for a plastic basket to house all the snacks. This way, my hope is that it makes it easy enough for myself and the older kids to grab the snacks and know exactly where they are when hunger strikes.

How's that for a productive Saturday morning? I hope you enjoy the recipes as much as we have.

Happy Snacking!