heathy ?vegan? school snacks

[javamama]

I've looked through a few threads about healthy snacks, but I had a specific question and wondered about your thoughts/ideas.
At dd's school, each parent brings a snack (roughly 1/month). The parents have all requested "healthy" snacks. This is a great idea, but we have found there are many definitions of healthy. We are not vegan and eat alot of dairy and meat. For my family this is healthy and works for us......can you imagine 23 definitions of healthy??? So the kids are getting alot of carrot sticks and raw seasonal fruit and veggies. I want to be creative, any ideas? vegan is not a requirement (there is only one in class), but we are trying to accomodate her as well.
thanks for reading, I can't wait to hear some ideas
heather

[jtsmom]

First thing that comes to mind is celery with peanut butter and raisins. YUm How old are the kids we're talking about?

I will be watching this thread, as my dd (1) is allergic to eggs and milk. (we are not vegans, either)

Another thing we've done for her is (actually, *I've* done, as I'm the only one who does things like this.....) is make zuccini bread, the recipe I have calls for eggs but not milk, and I substitue 1 heaping T of soy flour and 1 T water for each egg. STill bakes up the same, so we can all eat it.

If you want the recipe, I can post it.

[jtsmom]

Oh, yeah, and the same for oatmeal cookies, Just substitute the eggs with soy flour.

[javamama]

thanks jtsmom, I didn't know what equivalent measurements were for eggs. Are there other methods for substituting eggs? I have lots of reciepes for zucchini bread, etc.

DD is in kindergarten. It was funny, at a recent parent meeting, we were discussing healthy snacks, etc. and a mom of an older child said," hey you guys are doing great, we eat donoughts in 2nd grade!"

[Erin Pavlina]

Ener-G egg replacer is great for use in baking. It's a powdered vegan egg substitute.

Zucchini carrot muffins or a banana cake or how about fruit kabobs? Each kid can get a skewer of fresh fruit. Yum!

[amnesiac]

One thing I would wonder about is protein. Fruit & veggies are great, but alone they would never be sufficient for my 2nd grade boys' afternoon snacks. They require a lot of protein to make it through the day & I've actually had one of them faint at school when he didn't eat enough before.
One problem we have is that they don't have much time allocated for afternoon snack, so the teachers ask that we not send anything "messy." They mostly like us to send dry, finger foods.
A few things my boys like are various finger sandwiches on whole grain bread, whole wheat tortilla roll-ups made with a bean dip or humus, muffins with cream cheese, yogurt cheese or ricotta inside, chicken strips (I pound out cx breasts, season & grill them & then cut into strips), almonds & dried fruit.
Be really careful about sending nuts to school for other kids though.

[jtsmom]

I was thinking the same thing about protein, too. I would think peanut butter on anything would be good, but I don't know, it seems like a lot of kids these days have peanut allergies.

[LavenderMae]

How about nuts and dried fruit. My dd loves this combo andso do I. Dried payapa and pitachios,almonds and dried cheeries,almonds and raisins ect... I have found it is a quick energy booster as well.

[menudo]

Wow! Where are these schools?!?! I was already looked at as a a freak for questioning the fact they serve hot dogs in the cafetria in my DD's school (she is in Kindergarten also). The only "non meat" lucn is a choice of peanut butter and jelly and mac & cheese every 2 weeks. Oh and pizza. It is gross. And I had just questioned the hot dogs b/c they are a choking hazard and are factually BAD for you. So my idea of asking them to at least offer non PB&J vegetarian alternatives was put to the side for now.

I have yet to meat a vegan out here. Maybe one other vegetarian... I HATE packing DD's luches though, we are so broke and it is hard to get something decebnt togetehr for lunch AND snack (she is a bit picky).

[yogamama]

I was wondering where this school is too. My problem is our park district programs all have parent turn to bring snacks.

At the Chicago Park District it is required that everything is store bought (I guess to prevent creeps from poisoing our children). Okay... so no cut up bananas or carrot sticks for us.

So other parents bring "juice" that is mostly sugar and cookies in little bags and chips (yep, doritos/potato chips/ crap).

I'm sort of at a loss for healthy pre-packaged individual snacks that don't cost alot of money. Little boxes of raisins is about all I can think of. What "healthy" convience foods can I bring when it is our turn to bring "snacks" for 20 kids. Ugh.

[jtsmom]

Little boxes of pretzels or granola bars or nutrigrain bars?

[javamama]

Thanks for all the ideas. I agree that a good snack would have a balance of protein and carbs. I tend to rely on meat, eggs and dairy to supply the protein at home. It is good for me to diversify a little.
Luckily there is only one child with allergies and it is not to peanuts. (he brings his own food).
I like the dried fruit and nuts.....that's my personal favorite, why not the kids?
Yogamama- could you buy a big bag of trail mix and divide at the school?

We are lucky to have this program in our district. To find such a wonderful group of caring parents in a public school setting (and it is free) is amazing!

Thanks for answering, keep the ideas comming!

Heather

[veganmamma]

If you like baking, you can make yummy cookies like almond and dried apricot in place of chocolate chips. This is healthier, but may pose an allergy risk, (chocolate will too.) What I do is replace eggs in cookie recipes with an eyeballed mixture of silken tofu (soft) which you can find at Safeway, and soymilk, to the consistency of a beaten egg. I put it in the blender to whip some air into it and get it uniform. There are some good ideas in the post a few down from this for the gluten, soy dairy, corn, etc. free birthday cake. I would also check out a vegan website, a lot of people don't realize that a lot of stuff that doesn't say egg or dairy is not vegan, like refined sugar is usually not vegan because it is processed with animal bone. A good replacement is maple syrup (just decrease another liquid, like soymilk) but you have to check to make sure they don't use lard in the refinging process. Sucanat is always my fallback. Anyway, fruits and veggies are always vegan. Whole Foods has put a Whole Kids line that is awesome, you might check that out.

Lauren