Maybe you are lucky and have an office that has snack food at the ready. I'm going to guess the snack food consists of cookies, crackers, chips basically anything in a package that was easy to order and is able to be left out for long periods of time without spoiling. I'm sure you already know that is the worst stuff for you to snack on. Right? Or maybe you are lucky and your company orders things like Cliff bars and things similar to those. OR maybe you are really lucky and your office has vegetables and hummus dip or peanut butter and fruit.
Most of us would agree it's easier to have these things readily available so we don't have to think about what we are snacking on. The veggies and such are obviously the healthiest choice of snack, with the cliff bar and their equivalent being the next best choice. Hopefully you would agree that the chips and such should be avoided on a daily basis.
So then what do you do when you don't have these at your finger tips? I have been playing with a few recipes on homemade no bake snacks. These snacks are higher in protein and lower in carbohydrates that their store bought equivalent and take about 30 minutes to prepare a batch of 6 servings.
You are probably wondering why I mentioned higher in protein and lower in carbohydrates. I mention that because many of the store bought snacks can be as high as 13:1 carbohydrate to protein ratio. This is quite a high ratio even for someone who is doing an Ironman event of several hours. For the most part many Americans get more than enough carbohydrates in their normal american diets, but fall short in their protein intake, especially women. My goal with these snacks was to get this ratio closer to a 4:1 ratio for better nutritional balance.
What you need:
1 medium sized, medium to ripe Banana
5 TBSP Peanut butter or Almond butter
1 tsp Pure Vanilla Extract
1 TBSP Cinnamon
1/4 Cup Unsweetened Shredded Coconut
2 scoop (44 g) Vega Protein Smoothie Vanilla protein powder
1 Cup Old Fashioned Rolled Oats
1/4 Cup Raisins, Blueberries or dried fruit of your choice
How Do You Do This No Bake Thing?
1. Mash the banana in a bowl, then mix in the nut butter. You can also use seed butter if you are allergic to nuts. If your nut/seed butter is quite dry, warm it up in the microwave to soften it, then mix it in with the mashed banana.
2. Next up add your Vanilla Extract, Shredded Coconut, Protein powder, and dried fruit. Mix these up well.
3. Last add the oats and mix well. If you find its too dry and the oats aren't sticking together, I added a tsp of water at a time until everything gently sticks together. Be careful not too add too much water as this will make the finished product too moist and sticky.
4. Use a tablespoon to scoop out the mixture and roll it into little balls. This recipe will give you 12 tablespoon size balls. Once they are all rolled up, place them in the refrigerator for 2 hours to set.
5. At this point you now have 6, two ball servings. They will last 3 days in the fridge or 3 months in the freezer.
Happy Snacking!
NUTRITION FACTS
SERVING SIZE 2 BALLS
PEANUT BUTTER ALMOND BUTTER
CALORIES 224 216
CARBOHYDRATES 25.5g 26g
FATS 9.5g 8.8g
PROTEIN 10.5g 9.6g
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