Eats on the Detox Part 2: Snacks and Smoothies

{Read part 1 here.}

So most of the time if the kids wanted a snack on the detox, I just said "Help yourself to a piece of fruit!"  That was easiest because there was no prep work involved for Mama.  We kept bananas and clementines that they could peel by themselves on a reachable shelf.

Other simple snacks:

Banana with peanut butter

Sliced cucumbers/carrots with hummus for dip

One snack that C really loved was whole-milk kefir.  If you've never had it kefir is SUPER tart and sour, but also very creamy and rich.  Adding a sweet dried fruit like dried pineapple, raisins, or dates took the edge off the sour and allowed us to enjoy the creamy.  C enjoyed her little bowls of kefir and fruit, and asked for this as a snack quite a bit.

Speaking of dates, these date balls are AMAZING.  Delicious.  Sugar-free in a completely natural way.  They made an awesome snack for the girls.  They are fairly easy to make; C and I made them together in about 30 minutes one morning while L was at school.  We even shared them with a friend at a playdate and she gobbled them up.

We got a few packages of organic brown rice cakes since they're minimally processed and wheat-free.  We ate them topped with nut butter, hummus or guacamole.  The girls loved them and we went through a lot.

I also made these corn chips, a variation on a More With Less recipe:

Corn Chips

1 cup yellow cornmeal

1/3 cup plus 2 T flaxseed meal

1/3 cup oat flour

1/2 t. salt

1 t. baking powder

1/2 cup water

1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil

Preheat oven to 350.  Combine the dry ingredients and wet ingredients in separate bowls.  Add together and stir with a fork.  Knead a little until smooth.  Cover two cookie sheets with parchment paper and sprinkle each with cornmeal.  Divide dough in half.  Roll out each half directly onto the cookie sheet with a rolling pin until dime-thin.  Prick with a fork and cut with a pizza cutter into squares or triangles.  Bake 10 minutes or until lightly browned.  Season finished chips to your liking with garlic powder, onion powder, paprika, or sea salt.

These were great for dipping in hummus, guacamole, or salsa.  I made a double batch and guess what... they were gone within a day.  So after that I cheated and bought sea salt popcorn chips (wheat free) when we needed something for dipping (packaged foods were technically taboo, but I just didn't have the time to make all of our chips homemade).

Also, don't underestimate the power (and economy) of a batch of stovetop popcorn:

2 T coconut oil, half a cup of popcorn kernels, throw it in the Whirly Pop (or just a covered saucepan on the stove), crank up the heat, and in less than 2 minutes you've got a hot and delicious snack.  We sprinkle about 1/2 teaspoon of salt on our pot-ful, and you could also add garlic, parmesan cheese... the possibilities are endless!  So cheap and super delicious (and of course, wheat- and sugar-free)!

On to smoothies... we relied heavily on smoothies to get us to the next meal.

To make our smoothies dairy-free in the first week, I subbed in silken tofu for our usual yogurt in smoothies quite a lot.  So our tried-and-true blueberry yogurt smoothie turned into a tofu smoothie:

(you must always drink your smoothie with Mother Duck watching, and while you play Thomas Dominoes, of course)

Dairy-Free Blueberry Smoothie

1 cup silken tofu, 1 ripe banana, 1 cup frozen blueberries, 1 whole clementine (I subbed this for our usual orange juice so that we'd be getting more whole fruit), 3/4 cup water, about 3/4 cup frozen mangoes, and vanilla extract to taste.

I don't really measure my ingredients... I just eyeball it... so hopefully those measurements are about right.  If it came out too thick, I just added more water and re-blended, and if it was too thin I added a bit more tofu and re-blended.  You can also use soy/almond/coconut milk instead of water.

Towards the end of week 1 I used kefir instead of tofu, and then in week 2 I could use plain yogurt again.  But we still keep tofu in the house now because it made such tasty smoothies!

Other smoothies we liked...

Pina Colada Smoothie

1 cup yogurt (or kefir or silken tofu), 1/2 cup frozen mangoes, 1/2 cup frozen (or fresh) pineapple, 1 cup coconut milk (I use the kind in the can that you get from the Asian food aisle... really rich and creamy... yumsters)

I also tried this subbing frozen strawberries for the mango.  Not quite as sweet, but still yummy.

Ab's tried-and-true Green Smoothie

1 ripe banana, 1 cup unsweetened soy or almond milk, 1/2 cup peanut or almond butter, 1 1/2 cups spinach/kale/whatever greens you have around, 1/2 tsp cinnamon, and vanilla extract to taste (I use a teaspoon or more!)

(this is an old pic... no toast on the detox :)

This vanilla milkshake smoothie is AMAZING.  I made it for "dessert" and add a little cinnamon 'cuz I'm spicy like that.

The "replenishing almond smoothie" in this post (scroll down almost to the end) is actually a misnomer.  It sounds all healthy and stuff, but it's actually a taste explosion of chocolatey coffee goodness.  Wow.

I think that's about it for detox snacks and smoothies!  One more post to come with dinner ideas...