Try It Tuesday

I don't eat a lot of chips or crackers, but I've found the Special K Multi-Grain Crackers and love them!

My kids love when I pack them "picnic" lunches of mini pepperoni or ham cubes, cheese cubes, Goldfish and some sort of fruit (think homemade lunchable). When I make this lunch for them, I'll often pack my own picnic lunch.

I use, of all things, a craft box that has 6 small squares and 1 larger rectangle. Today's lunch has cheese cubes, cauliflower, rolled up ham slices, teeny tiny baby carrots and these crackers.

I love that you get a lot of crackers for not too many calories. The box here says 90 calories for 17 crackers. My nutritional info says 24 crackers for 120 calories. Works for me. They are slightly salty and slightly sweet. Whole wheat flour is the first ingredient, and there isn't any high fructose corn syrup (not that I really pay much attention to that).

I noticed online you can get these in a box of 6 individual bags (a 90 calorie serving). I hope I can find those!

Try It Tuesday

Chickpeas...garbanzo beans...whatever you want to call them. I've read lots of recipes with them, but really haven't ever tried them. This Try It Tuesday is two-fold.

First, I tried cooking dried chickpeas (can you say cheap?!) in the crockpot. It worked! I soaked the dried chickpeas during the day. When I got home from school, I rinsed them and put them in the crockpot with fresh water on high for 3 hours or so. Then I drained them and stuck them in the fridge. Frankly, they were pretty good as is to snack on. I've frozen a few bags of them from that batch. The bag of dried chickpeas made the equivalent of 4 cans of beans.

For the second part, I took one can's worth and roasted them. It was definitely an experiment and didn't work the way the the recipe said. I roasted them on 400 for about 40 minutes, tossed them with 2 tsp. oil, 1 tsp. cinnamon, 1 1/2 tsp. brown sugar, and 1/4 tsp. salt. They weren't very crunchy and still had that bean texture. So I stuck them back in the oven for another 10-15 minutes. The ones that were only halves turned out really good...crunchy, almost airy. The whole ones just didn't seem to want to dry out.

Overall, I'd do it again. It just might take a little trial and error to get it just right.

Try It Tuesday

Here is something you have to try!

I found the Better Oats brand of oatmeal on clearance at my local grocery store, so I picked up a few boxes. I got the Chai Latte flavor because I love me some chai. It has a very subtle, not-too-sweet flavor. I really haven't been eating a lot of oatmeal lately.

But then, I found this:

Dark Chocolate oatmeal! It is so good! I added just a splash of unsweetened vanilla almond milk after I had cooked the oatmeal. It didn't feel like a breakfast at all. I can see myself snacking on this stuff before bed.

The Better Oats oatmeal comes in 9 brands, including Oat Revolution, Abundance (includes flax seeds), Lavish (there's the chocolate one!), mmm...Muffins, OatFit (100 calories, no added sugar), Raw Pure and Simple (there's my chai; includes whole grains and seeds).

There are lots of flavors, although my local store doesn't carry all the brands or flavors. I currently have the chocolate, chai latte, peaches and cream, cinnamon roll, and apple cinnamon. Nothing beats the chocolate though!