Photo courtesy of uk.pinterest.com
Every day, the first thing I do when I get home from school is go to the snack cabinet. It’s like brushing my teeth in the morning; it’s routine. I always end up stuffing myself with Sunbelt granola bars and Cheezits before I sit down to binge watch the last season of Gossip Girl. But afterwards, I feel gross and guilty. How come I can eat healthy all day, but as soon as I get home from school, I eat like an overweight kid who just got out of fat camp? I decided enough was enough and went straight to a girl’s best friend: Pinterest. I searched “healthy afterschool snacks” for hours. I never knew there could be so many variations of protein balls and kale chips. After my research I decided to make the four that looked the best.
Ever since I first signed up for Pinterest, energy bites and protein balls have cluttered my feed. I always thought about trying to make them, but I was too lazy and never had the time to. Now I had an excuse. Most of the ingredients are simple and should be found in your pantry at home, like peanut butter, chocolate chips and honey. The recipe is super easy and it only takes 15 minutes to make. Just mix all your ingredients in a bowl, freeze the contents for 10 minutes and then form your energy bite mixture into balls. I didn’t know that you could make such a delicious snack in 15 minutes. Though the bites are small, just two filled me up and I didn’t feel like I needed to eat anything else. The great thing about this recipe is that you can make it your own. If you don’t like one of the ingredients, they can be substituted or taken out completely. I decided to opt out of the chia and flax seeds in the recipe. But don’t worry, I made up for the missing ingredients with extra chocolate chips.
Prep: 15 min
Freeze: 10 min
Guacamole might be one of my all time favorite foods. I spend $1.80 extra on it every time I go to Chipotle and that’s saying a lot just for half a spoonful of avocado. As much as I love guacamole, I’ve never actually made it at home, and it clearly showed when I started the recipe. Cutting the avocado and juicing the lime was no problem, but dicing the onions and tomatoes was a bit of a challenge. All of the onion pieces were huge and the tomato was squashed. After adding two teaspoons of salt accidentally, the guacamole was ruined. While still edible, it didn’t have that Chipotle taste I was hoping for. I decided not use the garlic powder in my guacamole that the recipe calls for, which could’ve been a reason for its bland taste. Guacamole is a little bit more costly to make, about $15, and takes more time than the other recipes, but can still be a great after-school snack. I recommend pairing this guacamole recipe with Tostitos chips or carrots. Hopefully you’ll have more success than I do in making this recipe, because it has the potential to be flavorful and tasty.
Total time: 15-20 minutes
Smoothies have always been one of my go to drinks, so I wanted to find a healthy, but delicious smoothie recipe. A strawberry banana smoothie is about as plain as you can get. Every coffee house, breakfast place and ice cream shop has a strawberry smoothie on their menu, probably because smoothies are easy to make if you have all the ingredients: strawberries, bananas, yogurt, milk and a blender. Just place all of the ingredients in the blender and mix to your liking. I like to make my smoothies thicker than normal, so I can either drink them or use a spoon and eat them. I’m a sucker for cute food blogs, so I found my recipe off of the blog Back to Her Roots. There isn’t a bad recipe for a strawberry banana smoothie, but this one I would particularly recommend recommend. Not every smoothie recipe calls for yogurt, but I think the yogurt adds more flavor. One of the best things is how easy smoothies are to make. The thing that takes the longest is for sure cleaning the blender, but that’s what a dishwasher is for.
Total Time: 10 minutes
Frozen Yogurt-Covered Blueberries
I love yogurt and I love blueberries, so this recipe was certainly one I had to try. The recipe was simple: all I had to do was cover blueberries in greek yogurt, place them in the freezer and you’re done. I thought this sounded easy, but really it’s time consuming. As a perfectionist, I couldn’t stop dipping the blueberries in the yogurt until it was perfectly covered. Luckily, it was worth the struggle. The creaminess of the frozen yogurt and tartness of the blueberries was a perfect combination. I had to stop myself from eating the whole bowl of them. While this recipe takes the longest, it is my favorite and definitely something I will keep in mind when snacking after school.
Total Time: 30 minutes