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108: Easy Whole Food Plant Based Snack Ideas!

August 12, 2021 Regain Your Energy & Reclaim Your Life Episode 108
Power On Plants | Meal Prep Ideas, Plant Based Diet, Vegan Food, Fatigue, Blood Pressure, Cholesterol, Healthy Food, Vegan Recipes, Weight Loss, Christian Healthcare
108: Easy Whole Food Plant Based Snack Ideas!
Show Notes Transcript

Sometimes you just need a little sumthin sumthin! You don't want a full blown healthy meal, just a tasty natural snack to put a smile on your face and some pep in your step.

You've recently decided to eat more whole plant foods, so what in the world should reach for?  Are there even any quick and easy snack options that are whole food plant based or vegan that actually taste great?

The answer is a resounding...Yes!! 💃 

In this episode, we're sharing some of our favorite go-to snacks that bring plant-based joy on a regular basis.

Click here to find the best nuts in the world! 🥜

We love these silicone baking cups...

And, here is our favorite Apple Slicer

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Anita:

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INTRO:

Hey there sunshine. Welcome to the power on plants podcast. We're your host, Jared and Anita Roussel and we're absolutely head over heels for whole plant foods, and helping you navigate this incredible plant based journey. That's because our lives have been completely changed by plant based goodness, we used to struggle every day with excess pounds and low energy, vascular disease, joint pain and lack of sleep, just to name a few. And even though we're medical professionals, we still weren't getting practical answers that actually worked. So we dug into the research, we started living what we learned. And now we both have our lives back. And that's what we want for you to the truth is you can do this, and it's not hard. You just need a way that will bring real and lasting change. And that path, it has to be simple and enjoyable. And it's got to be delicious to you. So are you ready to live your life to the fullest, then you're in the right place because living without limits. That's what power plants is all about. So pull up your chair, grab a matcha latte, and let's get started. Hey there friend. Today we are talking about something that goes great with the last podcast episode. If you haven't heard that, you definitely want to check that out. That is about our five, actually, it's more than five, we gave a bonus favorite plant based movies. And if you're watching a movie, you definitely made a good snack eat snacks.

Jarrod:

You had mentioned popcorn in the last episode. But maybe you don't like popcorn or you've had enough of it or you just want some... some extra variety.

Anita:

We're all about snacks. We like snacks. We eat snacks on the road when we go on car trips. So

Jarrod:

You know the most important rule about snacking?

Anita:

What?

Jarrod:

There are no rules.

Anita:

I like it. I love it.

Jarrod:

But seriously, there are no rules with snacking, you really you can do whatever you want. We're going to point you in some of our favorite ones, but use that as just a launch point.

Anita:

But I have to say one of my favorite things about healthy plant based living is there's it's no math like we leave the math at the door because you don't have to keep up with the calories and points and things. So you're you're not going to go Okay, probably what you're not going to do is have a garbage bag huge size filled with snacks that you're just going to keep eating now that's why you watch a movie, right? You're just going to pour out a reasonable portion and eat it and if you want a few more, you're going to get a few more and not worry about it. Because you're eating healthy foods that are good for you right and people worry about well the higher calorie foods will make you fat Guess what? We have a podcast about that. You know the nuts they're not going to make you fat nuts are not what's making your carry extra

Jarrod:

common misconception that the the fats and calories and nuts are gonna make you fat. But the truth Well, you just have to go listen. Yeah, you need to go listen that episode. I don't even

Anita:

know what do you remember what it was called? Or what episode number it was? We're probably gonna have to look that up. Can you? Can you pull that up real quick?

Jarrod:

Yes, it's episode number 103.

Anita:

That was lightning fast. I think there might have been a little editing involved.

Jarrod:

I will never tell.

Anita:

All right, so the next thing we're just want to talk about snacks. We'll jump into that. So you've got that episode number 103. Definitely don't miss that episode. It's about what was it called the Great disappearing fat

Jarrod:

it was set up. I know the magical disappearing fat nuts as a weight loss food.

Anita:

It's amazing. You guys have got to hear that. You want to drop some pounds. Listen to that episode, you'll be glad you did. And that's all I'm gonna say about that. And talking about nuts. One of our favorite snack foods or one of mine is trail mix. I love trail mix. Now. I wasn't going to go into and I always think this you know, we've got this great little plan of what we're going to talk about and and Nate is always got to give

Jarrod:

good short

Anita:

well and I've got to always give these extra action steps because I want if it was me, and it was me at one time and actually it still is me because I love to learn. I just want to know what else to do with that thing. So if I'm saying to somebody Hey You need a trail mix, it's really hard for me to stop at eat trail mix without saying, if you're buying it in the store, turn it over and look at the ingredients. And please don't buy one that has added oils because you're adding nine calories per gram and inflammatory fats that can also cause you to have things like diabetes and heart problems. And, you know, I could go on and on, but I'll stop myself.

Jarrod:

Well, another thing that makes me smile about this is that we say that we're inviting you into our living room in a conversation. This is exactly what we do in a conversation with anybody we talk to we have maybe a topic and then we just get off on all these other little additions.

Anita:

Somehow, we always managed to bring it back home, which I'm very thankful for.

Jarrod:

Well, we do yes. Back, but what you're experiencing here is it's a real Ile de Yeah,

Unknown:

well.

Anita:

This is it. So with that, yeah. trail mix. Absolutely. So what are your favorite things and trail mix?

Jarrod:

I think my absolute favorite is cashews. Yeah, I like them to say something about a roasted cashew. That's just it's so delicious.

Anita:

I like them raw too, but roasted on with you. It is really, really tasty.

Jarrod:

or some kind of flavor boosts that happens with that.

Anita:

Yeah, absolutely. Nuts are different depending on where you buy them to. I'll say that and they're, the longer you eat this way, the more you're going to hear I go again, the more you're going to taste sweet things in your food, like I can eat lettuce now and our tastes sweet. Well, if you get a high quality net, and you're eating it, you're going to taste sweetness in it. And you won't even believe how sweet it is and how good they are. And we'll drop our lane to our very favorite company where you can get some of the most incredible nuts you've ever put in your mouth. They cost a little more than other places, but I'm going to tell you, so worth

Jarrod:

the quality difference. You can't explain it you

Anita:

can't. You've got to eat them because they're amazing. Alright, so we'll drop that down for you. And now to bring it back to one and the trail we take silicon bagging. I love to do this to go to the pool. And we'll throw that of course the dried fruits with no added oil or anything else preservatives nothing added will dry float throw the dried fruits. What are some of your favorite dried fruits to throw in the trail mix?

Jarrod:

Well, our most common one is the reason but sometimes we'll have dried cherries, those are good. They aren't super sweet and they go really well with the nuts. on a few occasions we've done goji berries, I like

Anita:

dried mangoes dried pineapple are very good,

Jarrod:

dried pineapple. I forgot about that.

Anita:

Find this and the kids will almost just go well, I'm just going to say go nuts. They'll almost like fight to take them out of the bag. They will love the dried pineapple. But again, you want them without oil. Always Always check your ingredients list. Alright, then for the nuts you can add any kind of nuts make it a variety. Don't put just one kind in there add some almonds, add some cashews, add some pecans and walnuts pistachios that are wonderful, great for you great source of selenium definitely a mineral that you need to be getting on a regular basis. I'm trying to think of other pistachios Did you say

Jarrod:

those are the most common ones we do. We've had hazelnuts before those are good.

Anita:

Those are good macadamia nuts. Seeds. Don't forget your seeds, right. Um, so seeds pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds are one of my all time favorites. Now, if you're going to throw them directly in there, you probably want to do shelled versus the the shell con that you might just eat plain to throw it into a trail mix. Yeah, with this with the shells on and then just be weird. It would be weird. But that goes to the next snack. You know, you can just eat the nut and ones that are good for snacking. I think it's fun to eat pistachios in the shell. That's really fun. So you can crack the shell Anita but it does slow you down a bit. So you might not eat as many depending

Jarrod:

on that if you've ever had a pistachios or some of them that have just that the slightest little little slit and

Anita:

I've got a tip Can I do it? Can I go? Yeah, go ahead. Okay, so once you have a couple of pistachios that you've eaten, or even one, you're gonna have a half shell. And then you find one that you can barely There's barely a crack there. All right, you're gonna take the shell from the first one that you were able to open and you're gonna use it to pry open the shell of the one that you can't get open. The ones that are so hard that they break your fingernail. If you tried to get in, take the pointed tip of the of the pistachio that you just ate. wedge that puppy in between into that little hole and start twist and back and forth, back and forth, back and forth counting.

Jarrod:

Yeah, like a like a little like using a screwdriver if Yeah, if you were to have one,

Anita:

kind of like a lever. Yeah, yeah. And so you just do that and pretty soon If it will cooperate with you, and most of them will, you'll find that you'll probably get many more pistachios and you can ever get before out of the shell without using a hammer.

Jarrod:

Angel save your fingernails. Yeah, that's

Anita:

true, too. These are important. sidetracks Don't you think

Jarrod:

this is yes, really important. And I would not encourage you biting down on any of those shells. Now you may crack a tooth.

Anita:

Yeah, I'm glad you brought that up not to get I

Jarrod:

don't think I've ever attempted that I probably had the thought and thought it's not worth the dental. No.

Anita:

And we're gonna leave the net category now. And let's go on to something else that we love men, Nana, muffins, banana bread muffins. I love those as a snack. Okay, they're so good. We have the recipe in the cookbook. But they're not hard to make. And if you do make a banana muffin, or any kind of method for that matter, we highly recommend that you get silicon baking cups will also we can put the link to those as well down in the description of the podcast. But they worked so much better. You're not having to stand and slave over your kitchen sink, trying to wash out your little muffin pan holders. Because I'm telling you something else. Those were the easiest things to clean, you hold them in your hand, cut them in your hand, take a brush, a dish brush,

Jarrod:

a bottle brush,

Anita:

and just squeeze that just lightly. You know you mold it like you mold that silicone cap around that bottle brush and you just get back and forth with

Jarrod:

the brushes is good and soapy. And just kind of wiggle it back and forth. Boom, you're done. That's the next one. Boom, you're done.

Anita:

It works amazing. It also cooks faster than trying to cook a whole banana bread or something like that. And can you believe Go ahead, I

Jarrod:

was gonna say and it peels out of it so easily. I'm like a paper cup.

Anita:

It's beautiful. I mean, they're beautiful. They're not stuck. It's a wonderful, less mess. We're all about saving time, I just don't have time to waste. So silicone cups are where it's at. But it also speeds up your cooking time. So you're not having to wait for it to cook as long which can be torture if you start smelling banana bread, especially this recipe and knowing that it's healthy for you that there's not a lot of white. Well there's no white flour, right? There's really no flour and the one that I use and then you're not getting the oils and the sugars and things in there as well. So banana muffins we love I love those. What else What do you want to what do you like the best? Can you think of anything specific neck ideas? We have so many

Jarrod:

we do we have so many and it's like I said there really are no specific rules. I know sometimes we'll even just do a simple leftover like when we do a big pan of potatoes. Need is not as much of a fan of this but I'll take a potato that's cold and just even eat that cold. Maybe put a little ketchup. You know if I'm wanting some extra flavor hold

Anita:

it and dip it hole and catch up and eat it skin and all Yeah, yeah, it's like a french fry. But they like it cold the kids do. Yeah, I'm not a big leftover potato fan. I really love fresh potatoes. But Madeline will take the cold potato and slice into rounds, pop it back in the oven and let it crisp up a little bit. And those Yeah, those are those are good. I actually do like those a lot. I'll tell you what one of your favorites is at Emami and I mean we even get those at organic when I recommend ordaining with any kind of soy products. So buy organic and we get those at Costco and huge freezer bags and you just drop them in boiling water they're done in about five minutes or less. And then you can dress them in some organic tomari which is gluten free or you can use coconut aminos or you can just use a little bit of salt and pepper. You can use vinegar. There's a lot of different things garlic, whatever you want on there, whatever flavors you like edamame a is fantastic. It's easy to prepare and it's good for you. It's a light game, but just by organic

Jarrod:

or another leftover snack that we love is when we make the tofu crumbles we make it in the cubes and then you put the sauce on it rise we do a large quantity at a time and we do it so that we have leftovers. But we've got enough we'll put something

Anita:

about when I put the nut butter sauce from the cookbook is that what yes yes this how good mF is addictive. Not in a bad way it really delicious and you put you cook it and then but we like it. Some of us even like it better called so you just grab the little cubes is what you're talking about out of the fridge and then you eat them the next day just playing as a snack. I love those too. And obviously you know we're talking about just easy and quick things will fruit in its natural package is one of the easiest snacks just to grab and go you can grab it thrown in your purse, your bag, your diaper bag, whatever and it's just the most wonderful snack because it's already wrapped is prepackaged for you can't get any quicker than that. And how do you get kids to eat more of it? Well, you keep it on your counter and a beautiful bowl take off the stickers make it look pretty. Even more so pre cut it pre cut pineapple and keep it in your fridge

Jarrod:

the melons Like my guy, yeah, you cantaloupe, watermelon, we'll cut some of those ahead of time.

Anita:

And then wedge things like even the oranges and things stir up a fruit salad with apples, oranges, things like that and put some citrus on it. And it would last maybe a day or so without, it'll go dark after a while, but the citrus does help with that. But fruit is amazing. And the kids like to take and I even like this actually, the skewers like you can take wooden skewers or stainless steel skewers and skewer some fruits on there as well. And that's a fun little snack kebabs. It really is a lot of fun. Actually, I think we did an Instagram post about that for Fourth of July where we did the the stars and the blueberries. So yeah, that's fun. And then let's leave the sweet arena for a moment and harvest palms straight out of the glass jar. I mean, I think you can also get it in a can but you just get one that just has a palm in it.

Jarrod:

It's funded at Costco, organic and the glass jars. It's a two pack three pack, I think but we keep those in our pantry.

Anita:

They're amazing. I mean, we just love to open a jar of those, pop them out, hold them and eat them or I like to slice them in little circles and have them just in little circles. But you can hold the whole thing and just bide by or ask for it. I do balmy Can we open a can of heart apom It's so so good. Yes, absolutely. I'll tell you another thing about that. It's not snack based. But I've been using that creating a brand new recipe that's about to go into the membership for a crab dip. That is amazing. Of course it doesn't have any crab in it. It's got hard apom in it. And it is what do you think about it? You try it. It's amazing. Yeah, he was my taster tester. And then I had to make it and then I had to make it the next day because the kids were flipping out about how good it was because we used to have something like this at a relative's house for holidays and they liked it better. I mean, it was amazing. It's kind of like a smoked salmon dip or crab dip. And harder palms. Great for that. But

Jarrod:

it was the right texture and it's it's obviously you're not going to eat it and think I'm eating crab. But if you're going plant based and a crab dip was something that you really enjoyed. This is a very satisfying substitute and we do love it better.

Anita:

We do so delicious. Okay, next rice cakes. Now there are a lot of different varieties of these again, we recommend being rice. Yeah, he's having a free

Jarrod:

Well, not just the rice cakes, but I found one a few months ago. It was on sale and they haven't had it since I'm afraid it was a close out where it had Yes, it had the

Anita:

it's like Nori sheets or dog likes or

Jarrod:

flakes. It had the seaweed on it. I think it had a little bit of the soy sauce. It just kind of sprinkled on top of it was so good. savory. It wasn't sweet. It was all it was so delicious.

Anita:

Absolutely. And the children love that. They'll spread a little bit of that better and put fruits like banana on there. Or what else

Jarrod:

do we use it almost like an open face sandwich drilling. Oh, we

Anita:

winches? No, we've made sandwiches too. But yeah, that's a good point for that, like a PBJ or something, right? But we put our vegan mayo on the air that we make. And in under two minutes. We'll put a little bit of that on there. And then tomato lettuce, whatever sandwich toppings you want to put on there. We've used those as a sandwich base. And that's a great little snack sandwich

Jarrod:

when you get the crunch too.

Anita:

We love that. Yeah, you don't want to let them sit. You eat that right away and it's crunchy and delicious. We'd love it. All right, what else you

Jarrod:

got a good one the the roasted chickpeas. Ooh, that's another favorite.

Anita:

Okay, the recipes in the cookbook, but I'm gonna tell you how to make these so wonderful. You can take canned chickpeas or you can take homemade chickpeas, you drain them off. You put them on your sheet. Well actually you put them in a bowl first. Then you're just going to stir on your absolute favorite spices. What do you like, add it, add it, make it taste like you want do a little taster test. Pop it on your sheet pan, okay, and when I say Shi pan I'm talking about a rimmed baking sheet like you'd make cookies on and before you put it on there, put some parchment paper or some silpat mat because that way, we're all busy. We don't have time for all that cleanup. It is like a two second cleanup afterwards. you bake them in the oven until they're the crunch that you want and if you make them long enough, they will break your teeth without oil crunchy so

Jarrod:

you don't want to get that fine. The sky's the limit. You can put whatever flavor whatever seasoning you want on it. I mean you could do more like a taco seasoning. You could probably put cilantro or lime or maybe put something like a cinnamon on there.

Anita:

Anything you want anything Indian flavors, Curry, wonderful. Get those pop in the oven. They are wonderful. I love that. I'm so glad you brought that snack out because that's probably one of my favorites.

Jarrod:

Now there was another one you had mentioned earlier on. Are you ready to go the next one This is one that our daughter loves to make as she will take dates. Now Medjool dates are one of our favorites. We have tried some others that are delicious, but modular is one that we keep on hand pretty regularly. And she will put that around a pecan. And she may even chill those in the refrigerator or in the freezer. When you put a magical date in the freezer, it gets chewy, almost like caramel. And then you have that pecan flavor. And you can put whatever nut you want. But pecan works really well with this. Almost like little pecan pie,

Anita:

if that's what it tastes like.

Jarrod:

It's like a little pecan pie by

Anita:

but honestly, I'll say if you're using a half pecan you just use a half date is that what you'd said you don't use a whole date because it really they're super sweet Medjool dates, it only takes about a half date to just, it's almost like you cradle the half pecan in that half date. And it's

Jarrod:

amazing how big your date is, and how you can kind of flatten it out

Anita:

and you can freeze them, but you don't have to freeze them. I mean, you can just make them and eat them right then and there. It was just wonderful. Just

Jarrod:

a little extra tip because it gives you that caramel like

Anita:

it makes them more like caramel. It really does. And that's exactly what they taste like. And some people eat them. Just plain. But you were talking about them with pecan with pecan. Yeah, you can do plain plain and just have a plain old caramel. If you freeze it, it's absolutely wonderful the date. But don't forget, most dates have pits inside. You don't want to chop down on that and end up with a broken tooth either. So remove the pit before you enjoy your dates. And I mean, there's so many other things like our nacho cheese dip recipe and buffalo cauliflower bites and what other things can you think I mean, there's just so many, I know that I have over 100 that we share with and a resource inside the membership. So that's going to be opening up soon. If you want more detail of just exactly what those 100 are. They're available for you inside the membership as a member. And we have loved to share these ideas with you because there's so many that you can do and you probably have a lot of your own. I mean think about the snacks you ate. Some of them may already be plant based Derby, there may be a way that you can tweak those very easily right. So get out there and find and build your light color Arsenal build your arsenal of whole food plant based treats and snacks to just enjoy when you're going to the beach when you're going to the pool when you're going on a car trip when you're going hiking with a ballgame or when you're hanging out at home watching the plant base movies. Right.

Jarrod:

Exactly.

Anita:

All right. We are so glad you could hang out with us again today. And before you go and grab that amazing snack Be sure to get your name on the waitlist because the membership is opening again soon and it won't be open for long so you don't want to miss out. It's waitlist dot power on plants society.com. Again, it's p o w e r o n plants with an S and society.com. We look forward to hanging out with you again next time on the Power On Plants Podcast.