Moscow Food Co-op Earth MotherThe Snack Drawer Solution
by Julia Parker, from the January 2007 Newsletter
“Mom, I’m hungry!” is the rallying cry of every child. Quickly followed by “What can I eat?” I have devised a happy solution to the constant call for snacks for my young daughter and myself. I cleaned out a drawer that was within her reach and filled it with a variety of fairly nutritious and appealing snacks. Together, we separated large servings into small snack servings, and we created a few snacks together to fill the drawer.
When she is hungry, she goes to the snack drawer and picks something out for herself. It saves me from having to make a snack (usually at the exact moment that the breakfast dishes are done). Also, this is something that helps my daughter gain some independence over her food choices and gives her some ability to do something for herself. We also get to talk a little bit about nutrition when we’re making the snacks to fill the drawer. For example, when we make trail mix – nuts, dried fruit, cereal and chocolate, we can talk about balancing different food groups. That’s all the food groups, isn’t it – protein, fruits and veggies, grains and chocolate? My daughter and I also have an understanding that if you pick a snack you have to eat all the ingredients – not just the chocolate.
Currently, our snack drawer has these goodies:
Sometimes, if I have made cookies, muffins or some other treat, I put a few of these in the drawer individually wrapped. This helps these get eaten before they get stale and keeps kids from constantly being in the cookie jar!
I feel a little guilty over buying individual-size boxes of raisins and applesauce because they are more expensive than larger sizes, and because they have more packaging than larger sizes. So, sometimes I refill the boxes for raisins out of a bigger container (what a nerd!). I buy a box of snack size plastic bags once every 6 months or so and I wash and refill them until they fall apart. I try to re-use the applesauce cups for painting and other art projects with kids. I find that nearly every time we open a big jar of applesauce it gets moldy before we finish it.
To organize the snacks in the drawer, we cut the bottom quarter off some cereal boxes and line up small snacks like raisin boxes inside these containers. We also cut one cereal box in half lengthwise and lined up the bags of goodies in there. Simone decorated the insides of the boxes with her artwork. With the boxes in place, everything doesn’t slide around and get jumbled. My daughter can open the snack drawer, and easily see everything. This summer when we went on a long car ride and camping trip, we used a shoebox instead of a snack drawer making snacking a bit easier and cleaner.
Here is one easy recipe for a snack drawer goodie:
Tamari-roasted pumpkin seeds
2 c. pumpkin seeds (hulled, green)
3 T. tamari
Roast pumpkins seeds in a skillet for about 5-10 minutes. They will puff, crackle and wiggle around like they are alive, but rest assured, they are not! Add tamari while the pan is still hot. It will bubble and steam and appear to forever stick to your pan. Stir and scrape the tamari and seeds until it has all dried. Take off the stove and let cool, stirring occasionally. The tamari will easily rinse off your pan, I promise.
I hope you and your family can put together a nice drawer of snacks so that everyone can enjoy easy food, good nutrition and an occasionally clean kitchen.
Julia Parker writes for the Community News every month and snacks every day.
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