Home-Made Snacks

It's been crazy lately.  I guess that means it hasn't been so simple!  Haha

It really hasn't, I'm guilty!  It's been eating out and buying way more at the store than I usually would.  Shame on me!

Actually, I've been feeling rather icky lately.  That coupled with the massively over stuffed schedule had led to a backslide in our home.  I think this week is the first week in a few months that my house has stayed fairly clean!

Over the past few weeks I've taken several steps toward simplicity; I just haven't had time to update you!

For today, I'm going to share just one of the big changes being made.

A couple weeks ago, my beautiful little princess turned 2!  That meant we had to take her for her 2 yr check up.  I decided that I was tired of my girl being on Singulair (for crazy allergies) and that I wanted her tested to see what on earth she is reacting too!  Well, long story short she is allergic to cats and dogs, but not their dander.  She is also mildly allergic to soy.

After talking to the doctor and then realizing how ridiculous her comments on the topic were, I decided that I needed to cut the soy out of my daughter's daily diet. Why cause her body to be constantly fighting something that it thinks is poison?  Why weaken her immune system that way?  Why limit her body's ability to heal that way?  Why ignore her need to make my life easier?

Don't get me wrong, I'm not going to freak out if someone gives her something with soy in it and I'm not going to forbid her from having store bought cake mix occasionally.  I just don't want to allow her body to be always fighting because it's easy to ignore or her reaction isn't overly noticeable to me.

My journey into this challenge began with a trip through my pantry.  Almost all of my daughter's diet has some kind of soy in it.  I guess I've allowed too much convenience food into my house!  Actually, it's cheap and that's why we have it, but that will have to change.

It continued when I went to Wal-Mart (my closest grocery store) to find a few soy free items including peanut butter, bread, buns, and crackers.  The only one of those I could find was soy free peanut butter.  Ugh!

Then I move on to trying to figure out what to give my daughter to snack on until I can make my way to a health food store (which I'm not overly hopeful about).  For this week, we've stuck with fruits and veggies.  She likes them, but they can get boring after a while.

I resorted to making them a little more interesting!  I made kale chips and beet chips!

Now, I know that there are a lot of recipes for these online so I'm just going to give you the gist of how I made mine.


Kale Chips:

1/2 bunch of kale
1 Tbl coconut oil
1/2 tsp iodized sea salt (purchased at Wal-Mart, believe it or not)

Wash, dry and tear the kale into pieces, but not too small because they do shrink quite a bit.  Toss the kale in a bowl with the coconut oil and salt.  Once the kale is evenly coated spread them onto a baking sheet and baked at 325 for about 20 minutes.  If you have smaller pieces, you may want to remove them from the oven sooner so they don't burn.  Place the sheet onto a cooling rack and once the chips are cooled you can eat away!

These were actually very tasty and my daughter loved them!  My husband ate them, but he said he prefers potato chips :-D


Beet Chips:

2 small beets
1 Tbl coconut oil
1/2 tsp iodized sea salt

Peel and slice the beets very thin.  I used a mandolin and set it for 1/32 thickness.  Toss the beets in a bowl with the coconut oil and salt.  Put them on a baking sheet in a single layer.  Bake at 325 for 20-30 min, then flip the beets and bake another 20 min or so.  You'll know they are done when they are a lighter color.  I had to take a few off at a time because they weren't all done at the same time.

These were delightful.  My husband liked them, but I don't think he'll continue to eat them since he insists that he doesn't like beets.  My daughter can't stop eating them!

That's all for today!  What types of allergies do you have to eat around?