Snack time!

Does anyone else feel like all they do is prepare snacks nowadays? On the hour, every hour, it’s “Mum, can I have a snack to eat”, “Mum, I need a snack”, or when I say no “Mummy, but pleeeeeease, I’m STARVING!!”. EVERY. SINGLE. HOUR. Believe me, the rate we’re all eating right now, none of us are starving!

Now, currently we are in bizarre times and dealing with a lot more time at home than ever before, so it’s absolutely OK to bend the rules, or even just make your own new rules up. Who would know?! My weekly shopping budget over the past 6 weeks has almost doubled (I can’t completely blame the kids for this as I am 100% guilty of procrastination snacking!), and this will all come to an end soon. We are thankful that we at least have food in our fridges and cupboards to eat.

To help deal with this constant source of nagging from our children (plus occasional husband requests), I have decided to rearrange my refrigerator and once or twice a week prep snacks to just grab. So, I have things like veggie battons (these can be whatever you like, carrots and cucumber are our favourites), chopped berries, slices of apple (soaked first in a water and lemon juice solution to stop them going brown), cheese sticks and some hard-boiled eggs. All simple and easy stuff to prep, store and then grab and go when hungry.

We have our eco rascals sustainable organic bamboo suction plates stacked by the fridge and ready to use. I have stored all of this prepped snackage fodder on lower shelves of our fridge so that my older child can help themselves and when I need to prepare something for the younger one, it is easy to take and plate up in one simple go. No grating, chopping or cleaning up 5 times a day anymore for us!

Another advantage to having all of this healthy food prepped and ready to go, is that we are more likely to eat all of our recommended 5 a day this way. When we don’t plan what we eat, you can guarantee when we’re tired after a full day of working and running around after our little ones that we will reach for the unhealthy stuff. Which is still OK every now and then, but we feel much better when we are fueling ourselves with fresh fruits and vegetables.

Tell us in the comments below how you deal with snack time in your house?