Healthy Zucchini Sticks

Yesterday was Super Bowl Sunday and I wanted to make my family a healthy snack that looked like a decadent Super Bowl worthy snack.  I had always wanted to try making these Zucchini Sticks from one of my favourite sites, skinnytaste.com, and were we ever impressed!

Served with a side of Marinara sauce, these 'crispy on the outside- tender on the inside' snacks definitively go into the 'don't tell them it's good for them' file!

It's a pretty simple setup really, zucchinis, eggs, seasoned bread crumbs.

Dip each zucchini stick in the egg, then your seasoned breadcrumbs, lay them on your sheet pan and bake.

Here's the recipe I used as a guide. I used a few eggs and opted not to put the breadcrumbs in the ziplock and just use 2 bowls to dredge them in.

Baked Zucchini Sticks (adapted from http://www.skinnytaste.com/2009/01/baked-zucchini-sticks-13-pts.html)

Ingredients: 

• 2 medium (7 oz each) zucchinis sliced into 3" x 1/2" sticks

• 2 large eggs

• 2/3 cup seasoned whole wheat bread crumbs

• 2 tbsp grated Parmesan cheese

• cooking spray

• 1/4 tsp garlic powder

• salt

• fresh pepper

• 1/2 cups marinara sauce

Directions
In a small bowl, beat egg whites and season with salt and pepper. In a ziplock bag, place breadcrumbs, garlic powder and cheese and shake well. Spray cookie sheet with cooking spray and set aside.
Dip zucchini sticks into eggs then into bread crumb and cheese mixture, a few at a time and shake to coat. Place the breaded zucchini in a single layer and spray more cooking spray on top. Bake at 425° for about 20-25 minutes, or until golden brown. Serve with 1/2 cup marinara sauce for dipping.

I altered the recipe a bit, sprayed the sticks with cooking spray before they went into the oven and baked for 10 minutes then flipped them and baked for another 15 minutes. Et Voila!  They come out crispy, crunchy and full of flavour. I urge you to try them the next time you need a healthy alternative that is fun and flavourful!

A special kind of Veggie

This is one of our new family favourites... always on the go, looking for a healthy alternative to chips, I present to you Garden Veggie Chips.

Brent found these during one of his trips to Costco. This box comes with 3 varieties that are fun and a 'cleaner' alternative to potato chips. Melanie loves the round, rippled ones, I like the straws myself.

Each bag contains 130 calories with a but of fibre, protein and fat. The ingredients are pretty clean as you can see and they are gluten free.

What I love though, is this Top 10 Reasons you will love sensible veggie snacks on the back of the box. Fantastic!

 

GoGo Quinoa- A little Cheer in your snack life!

I know right? It sounds like a cheer, GO GO QUINOA! But it's a name of this delicious product that Brent found at Costco.  You know I am a big fan of Quinoa and in trying to eat healthier, and wheat free as often as possible, here is a good alternative.

These little cookies are perfect for a snack because they are individually wrapped. You can eat one at a time and feel satisfied. They are about 80 calories per cookie and are totally delicious.

The list of ingredients is rather earth and figure friendly, and look... I even found out that there is such a thing as baby quinoa, it has a name- kaniwa, LOVE IT!

Organic Garage Visit- Organic Chocolate Chip Mission

I was on a mission, looking for some healthy ingredients for my 'whole' food baking one weekend and I needed some Organic- good for you- dark chocolate chips, so I took another trip to one of my new favourite stores- the Organic Garage.

 Valentine's week, so I had to put hearts around it because I really do love it.

So, as I mentioned, I was looking for some healthy dark chocolate chips... the choices were crazy...

I narrowed it down to this brand, cuisine camino, there was semi-sweet and bittersweet.

And let me tell you, I stumbled upon a whole bunch of organic-good-for-you snacks. Look at this one called Love Crunch. It's made by Nature's Path. There were 3 kinds, cranberry, apple and carrot.



I chose the carrot love crunch, so when I don't have enough time to make my own homemade granola, this is a great organic healthy choice.

These were great snack ideas- packed with peanuts and honey and some dried fruit, what a

great on-the-go snack choice.

In fact, I got in my car and had to have one for a snack, I was starving and it had been 2.5 hourse since my last meal, I gotta eat. Look at the name- Honey Bar- this one was Honey and Apricot.

Honey, Honey, Honey, this is why they are called Honey Bars, look at those wholesome ingredients. So because they were packed with peanuts, I could only eat half the bar at a time- they are 200 calories per bar, so half the bar is a good portion size.





Healthy Snack Alternative- Pretzels and Chocolate

You're probably saying.... WHAT? Well, apart from the salt, pretzels are a pretty healthy snack. They have very little fat, and because they are so crunchy, I find that you need very little to 'fill you up'. This was a nice way to feel like I was having a decadent snack.

Here you have a small bowl of pretzels- 17 of these little babies are 110 calories (I had about 13 in my bow) and some melted dark and delicious chocolate. I took a square and a half of the Lindt Excellence 70% cacao dark chocolate and microwaved it until it was nice and melted. Then I dipped the little bits of pretzels in the melted chocolate- yummmm! But what was even better was that Brent walked by with a bowl of strawberries... and that was even better dipped in the the hot chocolate. You only need a little bit of chocolate and let me tell you, it was like a fondue party on my lap (I was sittiing watching the Bachelor- I know, trashy!!!).  I think these would be even better if you dipped the ends in the chocolate and then put them on a parchment paper-lined cookie sheet in the fridge. They would come out delicious and with a 'hard' chocolate coating.

Here's the nutrional information:

168 calories

21g carbs

 8g  fat

 3g protein

 2g fibre

 3g sugar

Little Girl Snack- Princess Pretzel Parfait

Melanie just loves this little cookbook that my dearest friend Robin gave her one Christmas. So since she sees her mom scouring through cookbooks and making recipes she tought she would show me her cookbook. It's a Disney thing... so some recipes are not the healthiest, but we flipped through the book looking for some healthy recipes and look what we found.

We kind of modified it to make it with things we enjoyed. 
Fat-free Vanilla yogurt, strawberries and PC Blue Menu Alphabet Pretzels.

And there you have it!

Princess Alphabet Pretzel Parfait.

Healthy Alternatives to Halloween Candy

So, like I promised to myself and my blog universe, I did not have any bad, junk, unhealthy Halloween candy at all yesterday. I usually stay home and give out the candy, but since my husband was not feeling well, I went Trick-or-Treating with Melanie. We were out for 1 1/2 hours, that was good exercise let me tell you! We went to get candy from my friends home and she was giving out a great unhealthy chocolate alternative. I had seen these in the store and was interested in trying them out. So when we got home, I read over the ingredients and nutrional information and had a small pack and enjoyed my hot cup of Bengal Spice Tea.

They were delicious, and there were only 7 in the pack so it's really not too much, they were delicious and 'good for you' alternative on Halloween night. Dark chocolate and good for you fruits and berries.

Nutrional Information for a small pack of 15g:

65 calories
2.5 g fat
10g carb
and they contain Vitamin C and Iron

I tried the Dark Chocolate and Acai and Bluerry and they have other flavours I will try next time I have a dark chocolate craving.

Dark Chocolate Pomegranate

Dark Chocolate Goji & Raspberry

Healthy Snack- Yogurt Fruit and Granola

Here is an awesome morning snack. Many people say, and I am now following this new way of eating... you need to eat every 2-3 hours. And your snack needs to have protein and fibre. So this is my usual morning snack at work.

Delicious and nutritious! I take about 200g of Vanilla Fat Free yogurt, about 8 strawberries cut up (or any type of fruit you might have on hand) and about 2 Tbsp of my Healthy Homemade Granola and there you have a great mid-morning snack full of protein, fibre and carbs, and very visually stimulating! We eat with our eyes don't you know!

Nutritional information:
172 calories
27 g of carbs
3 g of fat (from almonds- good for you fat)
10 g of protein
3 g of fibre