Friday, January 13, 2012

Snacks and Appetizers We Like

The Four Moms are having a linky for snacks and appetizers for a crowd.  Since many people would probably consider our family of eight a small crowd, I'm listing snacks we've used at various times, some for larger crowds, but many for just us.
These are many of the snacks and appetizers we like.  We also love using fairly healthy snacky stuff as a fast and fun meal, especially for a quick lunch, or when Daddy's out of town.


  • Yogurt dough crackers... or you can use the dough to make your own homemade "poptarts."  Yogurt dough can be used for many different things and is pretty easy to work with.  You can find a recipe for yogurt dough in the book Nourishing Traditions, but it's basically the same as the recipe at Heavenly Homemakers on the poptarts link above.
  • Cheese and crackers (one of my children's favorites)
  • Nuts (caution w/littles of course)
  • Nut butter on bread or crackers
  • Fruit
  • Apples slices with peanut butter as dip
  • "Concoction"=my husband's name for peanut butter and honey mixed together, a favorite snack of his, which the children also like.
  • Celery w/peanut butter or cream cheese
  • Hard-cooked eggs
  • Granola or granola bars (preferably homemade but we do buy sometimes)
  • Trail mix
  • Popcorn
  • Cheese quesadillas (or other kind, but cheese is usually quickest)
  • Honey quesadillas, yummy sweet treat
  • Bread w/butter or other spread
  • Muffins -- our favorite are these blackberry muffins
  • Cookies :)
  • Frozen peas
  • Frozen blueberries
  • Frozen grapes (careful of choking w/littles of course)
  • Frozen bananas (half works well) on a stick 
  • Yogurt or cottage cheese
  • Smoothies in the making
    Smoothies
  • Homemade popsicles -- smoothies work well for making
  • Banana, zucchini or other "quick" bread
  • Raisins or other dried fruit
  • Fruit leather
  • Waffles or pancakes cooked ahead and either frozen or refrigerated, served cold or warmed up in toaster or toaster oven.
  • Applesauce
  • Custard -- my grandma always used to make this for us when we visited her house and I always thought of it as a sweet special treat, but it's really pretty good for you.
  • Homemade "jello" made from unflavored gelatin (we use Knox) and juice is far healthier and just as easy as brand-name.
  • Cheese Ball
  • Spinach-Artichoke Dip
  • Bean Dip -- spread refried beans, mixed w/some spices and/or taco sauce, in the bottom of a casserole dish, then spread sour cream over them and top with shredded cheese, and olives or whatever else you want. 
  • This Cream Cheese Salsa Dip, hugely popular and super-duper easy to make.  Thanks again to Laura at Heavenly Homemakers!
  • We happened to try this Carribbean Quesadilla recipe this week, which John and I thought was pretty good, though we might change the ratio of the ingredients a little on a repeat.  The children didn't care for it, though, and said they'd rather try something w/chicken, bacon and cheddar another time (maybe Ranch dressing they wouldn't mind?)
  • Cinnamon rolls can be snacks, right?  ha, I was just looking for another photo (I thought we had a photo or two of making the poptarts linked to above) and ended up finding ones I wasn't looking for instead, including this one of some cinnamon rolls the children made a while back.  Now I want some. :-P

Visit one or more of the 4 Moms to see more snack and appetizer ideas!

This post is linked to Real Food Wednesday, hosted by Kelly the Kitchen Kop. Check it out for more real food recipes and ideas.

Follow this link for more of my recipes.

4 comments:

  1. We like "homemade jello" too! Great list here. That link-up sure is handy, right? ;-)

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    1. I love the link-ups! Usually I don't get anything together fast enough to link, but this was pretty easy since I had a list of snacks already on hand, just not online.

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    2. That was my attempt at being playful...I was sorta giggling b/c I wrote a post about quick snacks as part of a "favorite food" series in my own blog--I noticed when I linked up that we both posted about snacks. I love it when serendipitous things happen like that!

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    3. Ha, that's cool. I went over to your blog, at first to see your snack post, but you are way more prolific than I and I'm enjoying going through some others too. :)

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