Food On The Go
Cranberry, Date and Orange Crumbly Bars
Are you looking for a new twist to the typical fruit bar? This recipe is delicious and nutritious and full of fiber. You can take these to your next summer picnic for a tasty dessert or snack or serve them as a breakfast bar for a high energy “running out the door” breakfast. Store them in a tupperware in the refrigerator until ready to use but once you pack them to go they do not need to be refrigerated and they will be gone before you know it!
Ingredients
2 cups chopped dates
1 ½ cups fresh orange juice
1 cup dried cranberries
1 Tablespoon grated orange peel
3 cups oats
3 cups flour (I used a combo of whole wheat, white-wheat and almond meal flour)
1 cup brown sugar
½ teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon salt
1 ½ cups butter (I used 1 cup butter and ½ cup coconut oil
1 Tablespoon water
In a medium saucepan combine 1 cup orange juice and dates and cook over medium heat for 5 minutes. Stir often so dates do not stick. Add remaining ½ cup orange juice, ⅔ cup dried cranberries and orange peel. Stir and set aside to cool. In a large bowl, combine oats, flour, sugar, baking soda and salt. Mix until combined. Cut in butter/coconut oil until a coarse crumbly mixture results. Press ⅔ of the crumbly mixture into a lightly greased 9 x 13 pan. Spread cooled date, orange, cranberry mixture evenly over cookie crumble base. Add remaining ⅓ cup dried cranberries to the oat mixture with 1 Tablespoon of water and mix thoroughly, to make topping. Sprinkle topping over date mixture and press down lightly. Bake in a 375 degree oven for 25-30 minutes until slightly golden on top. Cool and cut into bars. Makes 24-30 …
Read MoreOh! The Places Your PackIt Can Go
I love my busy, fun, on-the-go life with my girls. Sometime it gets a little crazy, but I find that we work better when we get out of the house every day. This is why I love my PackIt and why it is such an essential part of my every day routine.
Packing lunches for myself and the girls keeps us healthy and nourished throughout our day. I love to fill our PackIt with our cold food and snacks. Our family favorites are cheese, nuts, sandwiches, veggies, salads, scrambled eggs (yep I’ll eat them cold!), and fruit.
I have a small Lunch size PackIt for most days or days i just pack snacks, and my Picnic PackIt is essential for day trips.
We love to fill our PackIt with our favorite snacks and you can join our Wellness Wisdom Campaign to get your free Growing Weisser snack list printable here.
Experience all the places you can go with PackIt by getting your own! BUY A PACKIT.
We want to see where you take your PackIt and how it fits into your life. Post a picture of yourself and your PackIt adventures on social media with #packitandgo and tag us @growingweisser and be sure to add #gwwellnesswisdom anytime you enjoy one of our favorite snacks!
AND Click the link below to be entered to WIN A PACKIT.
Mickey says, “Oh boy. These PackIts sure are swell! Make sure you get one and see ya real soon.”
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Read MoreAthletes PACK-N-GO when you are on the go!
One thing to the next. Always on the go. You barely have enough time to squeeze a run in let alone think about packing a lunch. That is why the pack-it is perfect to throw some easy pack-n-go snacks in an already frozen lunchbag. As an athlete, a fit-mom, a busybody, a gym rat… you always want to have some easy ready things on the go. If you keep moving, you will get hungry. Burning all those calories, you need to refuel. So it’s time to get a system to replenish your body with our pack-n-go snacks. (Which you can get this list by clicking here). One thing I always run into when packing snacks is most things I love, melt, or get hot before I have time to eat them. That is why the Pack-it is perfect. You can throw bars in there, fruit, water, etc. and my snacks do not get hot.
Why healthy snacks? Because taking care of your body matters. What you put in your body gives you energy, affects your mood, your productivity, your stress level, your self confidence, your life span, and the people around you. Eating healthy takes awareness and a little bit of planning. But it is possible. Your just have to think through the combination of different food groups that gets you everything you need in one healthy snack or meal. Eating fruit will give you a quick energy boost, but won’t sustain you. Eating carbs, protein, and fat at the same time in one snack or meal, gives you a balance. If you are on the go and don’t have much time, it is best if you find snacks that you like that have each one of those components. And it is important to fuel your body before you …
Read MoreThe Best Way to Keep Your Pack-N-Go Snacks Cool
Did you all sign up to get our FREE PRINTABLE – “Top 20 Healthy Pack-N-Go Snacks”? If not, check above to sign up or click here ! Once you sign up, you may be thinking…
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Summer is coming which means HOT, HOT, HOT! One of the top challenges in the summer is keeping your snacks cool when the sun is shining. So, what should you do?? We have a solution for you:
PACK-IT Freezer Bags!
Check out Pack-its reasons for Why It’s Great!
Pack-its are our FAVORITE cooler/freezer bag for our
On-the-Go Snacks! We use them for Day Trips, Road Trips, Daily meal packing, and more!
There are so many Shapes & Sizes for any type of occasion to keep your snacks, food, or drinks cool, including Baby Bottles!
Rachel uses her Pack-it in her Smart Planning for Day Trips!
“I LOVE LOVE LOVE my pack-it cooler. It is so easy to just pull it out of the freezer the morning of and “pack it” with my food that needs to stay cold. Because the bag itself is insulated, I don’t have to add bulky ice packs.”
Now that you know how passionate we are about the Pack-it products…..you can purchase one:
And, we have a treat for you! We are giving away one Pack-it Freezer Bag! Enter the giveaway below!!
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Peanut Butter Super Power Ball Snacks
Since we have been focusing on the the theme, REVIVED, I wanted to post a recipe I made for a girls weekend. This snack is easy to make, super delicious and extremely nutritious. These healthy treats store in the refrigerator or freezer for many days, even weeks. They are easy to take in a ziplock bag in your purse, or transport in a tupperware to an event.
This new recipe was based off of Bekah’s original Power Ball recipe with a few things added that will help you feel physically REVIVED!
You can find Bekah’s original recipe at the bottom of this post or click the link above.
We will call this newer version, Peanut Butter Super Power Ball Snacks.
Ingredients
1 cup natural peanut butter (I used creamy but you can use chunky)
2 ½ cups old fashioned oats
¼ cup flax seed meal
⅛ cup chia seeds
⅛ cup hemp seeds
⅓ cup chocolate protein powder
½ cup unsweetened coconut
½ cup raisins
½ cup mini chocolate chips
½ cup honey
Mix all ingredients in a large bowl until wet ingredients are evenly distributed within the dry ingredients. With your hands, form 1-2 inch balls rolling until solid and firm. Place on waxed paper lined cookie sheet with sides. Place cookie sheet into refrigerator for 20-30 minutes until chilled and then transfer to tupperware. Makes 30-40 power balls.
- Ingredients
Saved by Smart Planning
Today I took my girls to Sea World with some friends. We loaded up my awesome van–even took my friend and her daughter–and drove down to San Diego. We had an amazing time.
I have learned a lot taking these small trips to fun places with my girls and I feel like I have finally got a good system down for saving time, money, and sanity when doing trips with kids. Here are a few of my tips:
1. Carpool – save on gas, split parking, and enjoy the time with another adult!! (That is something so precious in this stage of life). I LOVE my Toyota Sienna van and we recently put the two big girls in the back row together. They love it, and it easily frees up one of the captain’s chairs and our removable 8th seat for guests if and when we need it.
2. Pack your own food – I treated myself and my friend to a Starbucks for the drive, but other than that purchase I spend $0 today (not including gas). I pack lots of snacks, lunch, more snacks, water, and I ALWAYS bring my own treats for incentives. I like to occasionally reward good behavior with a little treat and they come in handy for unexpected wait times (such as our 1 hour wait today in the hot sun to redeem our passes! yikes!). I also try to pack the kid’s favorite meals and snacks to let this day be all about easy fun. Their favorite snacks are fruit snacks, pirate booty, raisins, freeze dried fruit, and pouches. They love lollipop so I usually throw in a dumb dumb lollipop for them.
3. Along the same lines – Pack your own treats! Like I said, little treats can be great incentives …
Read MoreHomemade LARABAR
Our family absolutely loves Larabars and we eat them all the time. I found a few different recipes on Pinterest to get some ideas about how to make them myself and after a few experiments, I made four different flavors-all extremely delicious. I tried to keep an accurate account of the price of the ingredients I used for each batch and it worked out to be about 25-40 cents a bar. That is an incredible savings since Larabars are usually about $1 a piece. So if you love healthy snacks and you have a bit if time to experiment with delicious healthy ingredients, you will have fun creating your own flavors of Lara Bars. Here is the basic recipe I created…….
INGREDIENTS
½ cups pitted dates
½ cups dried fruit (figs, apricots)
⅔ cups almonds
1 tsp cinnamon (with fig)
1 small piece of fresh ginger (with apricot)
In Cuisinart, blend dates and dried fruit of your choice. When a ball forms stop the cuisinart and remove chopped dried fruit ball to a medium bowl. Add almonds to cuisinart and chop until coarse ( few small pieces of almonds remaining in the nut mixture works fine). Knead nuts and dried fruit together and form into bars or balls. Refrigerate for 20 minutes and eat or wrap in saran to enjoy later. Homemade Larabars can be frozen. Each batch makes 6-8 bars or 20-25 balls.
Here are a few of the variations on the original recipe above that we tried. These were delicious…
Peanut Butter and Jelly
1 cup peanuts
½ cup dried cranberries
½ cup dates
3 tablespoons natural peanut butter
Follow direction above for chopping dates and cranberries in Cuisinart. Remove to a bowl. Chop peanuts. Add to date mixture along with peanut butter. Mix …
Power Balls
Power Balls are a great snack for a busy, on-the-go day or when you need a protein packed, peanut buttery deliciousness pick-me-up after a hard workout! They are delicious, healthy, and so easy to make!
[Makes about 20 balls]
INGREDIENTS:
2 Cups Dry, Old Fashioned Oats
1 Cup Peanut Butter (I used Trader Joe’s Creamy Salted Peanut Butter from unblanched peanuts in one batch and Skippy Creamy Peanut Butter in the other for a sweeter version for my husband)
1 Cup Ground Flaxseed
1/3 Cup Honey
2 Tsp Vanilla
3/4 Cup Chocolate Chips (Optional, but a good option :D)
1/4 Cup – 1/2 Cup Raisins (Optional)
Saran Wrap
The fun thing about this recipe is the possibilities are endless. You can add other dried fruit, coconut flakes, nuts or other types of chocolate 🙂
DIRECTIONS:
Combine all ingredients into a large bowl and stir well (you can also use a stand mixer on low with a paddle attachment to mix the ingredients). Because there are so many options for this snack, you can also separate the recipe into two halves to make two different flavors. Once everything is thoroughly mixed, cover the bowl with saran wrap and place in the refrigerator to chill for about 30 minutes. Once it is completely chilled, roll into balls and store in an airtight container in the refrigerator.
Your kids and husband will love these! And, you will too! It is also a great recipe to let your kids help add the ingredients and use as a fun activity! Here are some fun ideas to make an easy recipe into a great learning experience for your kids! A peanut butter protein power ball is a filling, but light snack so one batch will go a long way! Enjoy! 🙂
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