Laura Fuentes - The Best Homemade Kids Snacks on the Planet: More than 200 Healthy Homemade Snacks You and Your Kids Will Love

As a huge fan of healthy and easy, my copy of this book will be dog-eared in no time! The majority of these recipes have five ingredients or fewer (see, I can do this!), and they all have my #1 recipe requirementthe real stuffnothing fake or processed. Back to basics is best, and The Best Homemade Kids Snacks on the Planet is jam-packed with the best snack ideas for your kids! Kelly Lester, founder of easylunchboxes.com I have trouble getting my three year old to eat real meals so I love having this seemingly endless source of healthy snack ideas. He doesnt need to know that his Super Green Smoothie or Chocolate Avocado Pudding is actually nutritious shhhh! Heather Gibbs Flett, co-author of The Rookie Moms Handbook and co-founder of rookiemoms.com

More than 200 Healthy Homemade Snacks
You and Your Kids Will Love Laura Fuentes Founder of MOMables.com Mom, can we have a snack? Do you hear this question all the time at your house? I do! When our days are packed with activities, homemade snacks are a great way for my kids and their friends to fill their bellies with good, fresh food between meals. I grew up in Spain where fruit was the only snack option. In fact, the whole concept of snacking was quite foreign to me until I moved to the United States and had kids of my own. Of course, things are a bit different now.

As a mom, Im constantly on the move with my three kids, working our way through a busy schedule filled with after-school activities, play dates, classroom parties, sports, birthday parties, and lots of other social gatherings. With so much time spent outside the home, on-the-go food logistics can become an issue. We also have to accommodate everything from allergies to personal taste preferences, and no one wants to do that with a prepackaged, not-so-healthy choice, right? As the founder of MOMables.com, Im also always working on recipes for the MOMables community and remaking prepackaged foods into homemade versions. Our lifestyle is busy and hectic and, like most parents, I use convenient snacks to help me out often. As a mom running a company with the sole purpose of helping parents make fresh foods appealing to kids, you could say Ive become snack obsessed! Of course, my kids have fully embraced the art of snacking, so utilizing fresh real ingredients in my recipes is very important. Im not sure if its because Im always testing recipes for them or because I am constantly receiving samples of single-serve items conveniently sold as snacks, but at times it seems as if we are all snacking.

A lot! I will tell you this, though: Going to the grocery store with three kids in tow isnt fun. Its as if the brightly colored boxes are calling their names and all of a sudden, they are starving! On more than one embarrassing occasion (Im sure youve probably had one too!), Ive had to open cheese sticks for everyone, allowed my youngest to eat a banana, even opened a bag of nuts in the middle of the store! Why do those snack boxes have to be so colorful and appealing to kids? Ah, yes marketing. But a trip down the snack aisles at the grocery store can be more than a little discouraging. Boxed goodies piled from floor to ceiling are just waiting to be purchased and gobbled up by young and old alike. Buying snacks nowadays can be a complicated endeavor. Designed to be convenient, portable, and tasty, most boxed snacks come with big promises and little nutritional value.

I used to take comfort in buying whole grain, naturally sweetened, healthy-labeled snacks for my kids. I believed that those with the organic label had better ingredients, were less processed, and were healthier than the conventional ones. But during my journey as a parent and snack expert, Ive learned that kids need to snack on real foods, ideally, snacks that are minimally processed, contain no unidentifiable ingredients, and better yet, have been made at home. On occasion, I find myself buying boxed snacks because I havent figured out how to re-create my kids favorites at home. Coincidentally, in 2014, I competed (and won!) in a Food Network television show called Rewrapped, where I had to re-create a popular snack food. Ultimately, there is no challenge I wont take on, and many of the recipes in this book are no different.

Even the most unhealthy snack foods from the store can be replicated in a healthier, wholesome way at homeand its easier than you think! In this book youll find lots of recipes that make fruit and veggies more appealing, easy ways to dress up basic ingredients, and homemade versions of classic store-bought snacks. Some recipes are clearly intended as treats, so Ill leave portioning to your discretion. As a full-time working mom of young kids, I, like you, struggle to find the time to get it all done. Its because of this and my familys love for snacks that this book has become a reality. I know youre busy, and you want the best for your kids. Inside youll find many of my time-saving and prep-ahead tips, storage ideas, ingredient substitutions, allergy-friendly options, and transportation how-tosbasically every secret in my snack-making arsenal! From this day forward, together, we can feed our kids uncomplicated, freshly made foods using real ingredients that are much more nutritious than the store-bought alternatives.

Start here and youll pave a path of health and wellness for your children starting with the snacks and treats they love. A final note before we dive in; the recipes in this book come with the support of an active community of thousands of parents who, with my help, are feeding their kids real food they love over at MOMables.com. If and when youre ready, join us! Now, lets get snackin!

Do your kids love to snack more than they like to eat their meals? If so, you are not alone. With the recipes in this book, youll never run out of awesome snack ideas. Expensive, processed boxed snacks? Those will be a thing of the past! For a few years after my oldest came of snacking age, I bought packaged snacks from the store.

Most were labeled whole grain and organic and claimed to be nutritious. But in reality, what we trade for the ease of buying prepackaged snacks is nutrition and our childrens health. Many of the ingredientsincluding artificial sweeteners, preservatives, emulsifiers, stabilizers, coloring dyes, and leavening agentshave been linked to health risks, autoimmune diseases, and even cancer. I dont know about you, but Ive had enough! And what about cost? The ingredients in boxed snacks can come at a cost to your familys health while also making a dent in your wallet. When I removed the packaged snacks and convenience items from my grocery list, my food budget stretched tremendously. I had more money available to buy better ingredients to make all of our favorite foods.

Simply put, it is much cheaper to make your own snacks than it is to buy ready-made ones. Health risks and food budget have played the biggest role in my decision to make my own snacks from scratch. You can make many of the same treats that your kids already love with real ingredients! Im not a low fat, zero sugar, low carb kind of gal, though, so you wont find any recipes of that kind on these pages. But I am a

Next page