Twelve Days of Cooking: Day 2

         Hey! Today is the second day of the Twelve Days of Cooking! Today’s post is all about healthy holiday snacks.         

         During the wintertime, there aren’t very many fruits and vegetables grown locally. This means there are fewer options for snacking. Yes, you could eat processed and packaged food, but that’s not very healthy. We need to eat our daily servings of fruits and vegetables, and snacking on them is a great way to meet our requirements. When there aren’t many options for fruits and vegetables to eat, what do you do?

            Most people buy non-local produce during the wintertime. However, as I explained in yesterday’s post, local foods are better for the environment and the food system. We should definitely be snacking on local foods instead of fruits and vegetables grown thousands of miles away from home. By only purchasing local fruits and vegetables, we barely have any snacking options. So what should we snack on during the holidays? My favorite holiday snacks are frozen fruit. It might sound weird to eat frozen fruit plain, but it’s actually delicious.

I love frozen blueberries. I eat a small bowl of them every day when I get home from school. I like frozen blueberries much better than fresh ones, and I don’t really know why. They’re both delicious, but frozen blueberries are better. Even though blueberries can’t grow in December in Washington (or most places, for that matter), they can still be a local snack. This is because a lot of local farms grow blueberries during the summer, pick them at their peak of perfection, freeze them and sell them. In the Pacific Northwest, companies like Remlinger Farms (located in Carnation, WA) and LaPierre Organics (located somewhere in WA) sell amazing frozen blueberries for great prices. I’ve been able to find local frozen blueberries at QFC, Whole Foods and PCC. I haven’t checked other stores, but I’m sure they have them.

           
            Another great frozen snack is frozen peaches. These aren’t something to eat straight out of the bag, but you can thaw them and make creative comfort foods with them. For example, you could thaw the peaches and cook them with a bit of honey and cinnamon until warm. You could eat this plain, add thawed and heated frozen blueberries, serve it over ice cream on Christmas (you deserve to splurge and eat ice cream on Christmas), etc. Frozen peaches are another local item; Remlinger Farms sells frozen peaches. There are other types of frozen fruits that you can find in your local grocery store to snack on. Be creative with the tools you have and the foods you find!

             

           Enough talk about frozen fruits. What are some other snack ideas? Nuts are a fantastic, healthy holiday snack! Nuts have lots of protein and healthy fats in them that our bodies need. My favorite kind of nut to eat around the holidays is hazelnuts. The hazelnuts that we have in my house are from Oregon, which is pretty close to being local. Nuts keep for a long time, so you don't have to worry about the seasons with them. If you do some digging, I'm sure you can find out where the nuts were grown and packaged. Remember to buy dry roasted (salted or unsalted) nuts; this means they aren't roasted with any oil. The oil that regular roasted nut are cooked with adds bad fats to your snack, and you want to try and avoid that.

            Thanks so much for reading this post! Please subscribe to this blog, follow me on Twitter, subscribe to me on YouTube, comment on this post and email me! All of my contact info is on the right-hand side of this site. Also, please vote on the poll. I need ideas on what to post next! Stay healthy and happy holidays!