Storable Snacks - dehydrating fruit and making granola bars

This has been a wonderful summer and looks as though we are heading into a beautiful fall! Each season brings so much to offer and to look forward to. Yay, it’s exciting!! At our house, we have transitioned back into the swing of school schedules, dance and soccer practices, music lessons and earlier bed times. Our days fly by!! I’m sure you can all relate this to your own schedules. Thankfully, I have found ways for us to save time and money using local and online resources. A little digging can go a long way. :)

Each morning I make lunches for my kids to have at school. I’m one of those “mean moms” who wants her kids to have a healthy, clean lunch and balanced snack. Mean, right? These lunches also need to fit within the guidelines for food allergies we’ve been tackling. But, like I said, a little digging can go a long way in finding healthy, alternatives to replace store bought, over processed items-that although still good and convenient, I find myself saving for emergency meltdown situations.

So, luckily I was asked to theme my newsletter around healthy storable snacks. How do you like that for timing? I’m not an expert in any way, but this is what works for us and if it works for you too then that’s GREAT!!


This season we have taken advantage of fruit and vegetable harvests and enjoyed trying lots of new projects and recipes. Usually I do several batches of canned fruit, but we still have so many jars that I didn’t can this year. Instead we dehydrated LOTS of peaches and pears. Great snack to store for long term or short term storage.

We also made several batches of peach fruit leather. There are various recipes and ways to make leather. I have made fruit leather before BUT this year what I did worked better than any recipe or technique. It was easy, tasty and just plain awesome! AND according to the National Center for Home Food Preservation, fruit leather will keep up to 1 month at room temperature and up to 1 year in the freezer. (Note from Tammy Price: Without humidity in Idaho, dried fruits and leathers will last a year or more just on your pantry shelf stored in an airtight container or ziplock bag.)

Here is the recipe if you would like to try it.  YUM, YUM! 

Ingredients:

4 Large unpeeled peaches (softball size)

2T Agave

Preparation:

Preheat your oven to 225°. Wash and cut peaches in half. Remove seed. Place unpeeled peaches and agave into a blender and puree until smooth. Pour mixture onto a sprayed baking sheet. Use a spoon or spatula to evenly spread with width and length of baking pan. Be sure to keep it even. Place in oven and bake for 5 hours. Cooking time will vary based on oven and thickness of leather.

After baking the leather, I cut it with a pizza slicer and wrapped them individually and stored them for lunch or snack options. With three young kids, lunches, snacks and lots of little friends over, the leather lasted 30 days in our kitchen. The shelf life is longer but we ran out!

Another great, healthy, storable snack to have on hand that you can make from home is granola bars. We loooove granola bars at our house! And now we make our own! My kids don’t ever prefer the store bought ones anymore! It’s great!! Granola bars are healthy, filling and you most likely have all the ingredients in your pantry to make some. Look online and scroll through recipes that fit your families preferences and tastes. There are SOOOO many out there! Whichever you choose, check the shelf or freezer life. It can range anywhere from a few weeks to several months.

This last spring I stumbled across a recipe. We call them Sprinkle Granola Bars. They are simple no bake, gluten free, vegan, dairy free, organic, no sugar added, no oils, no bake and no salt added. What’s in them? Just healthy yumminess!! Try it if you would like.

Ingredients :

1 C Quick Oats (Organic or gluten free if you prefer)
1 Tsp Vanilla Extract
1 Medium Extra Ripe Banana
1 Packet Truvia
4T Powdered Peanut Butter (PB2 works too) Add the Powdered Peanut butter in the powdered form (Do not add water)

Sprinkles, optional

Mix everything together.

Shape into bars.

Add sprinkles for fun color.

I add sprinkles for fun color which is why in our house they are called Sprinkle Granola Bars. But you don’t have to. :) Then I place them in the freezer to harden. After a few hours, I place them in freezer bags or containers and whala all done!

When I pack lunches for school or soccer games, I grab a few and by the time we need them they are soft and chewy! I keep several in my freezer. They last for months. We go through them quickly and it’s so nice to be able to grab a healthy snack for on the go!

I hope you have a chance to take advantage of the fall harvest. It truly is a blessing in our lives to have the resources to become more provident in our living. You can save time, money, and energy from running out to the store to buy the things you already have and that are hopefully healthier for your family in the long run.


Have a great fall season!!