One of the ways I sabotage eating well, aside from not eating breakfast, is eating lots of not-so-good snacks during the day. I make a lot of excuses for myself, but it really comes down to the fact that my office is full of salty pretzels, flavored popcorn, and candy. Lots of candy.
I know better than to prohibit myself from snacking, so I have decided to replace the junk food in my office with healthier snack options. I thought some of you may be able to relate to being snackers, so I would share some of my favorite healthier snacks with you: roasted chickpeas instead of flavored popcorn, Larabars instead of candy, and kale chips instead of salty pretzels or potato chips.
Spicy Roasted Chickpea Snacks
Creates: More than enough to share
15 ounces of chickpeas [from a can or rehydrated from dried]
1 tablespoon olive oil
Sprinkle of sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
1 clove finely minced garlic
1/2 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes
Preheat your oven to 425 degrees. Make sure the chickpeas are rinsed and dried. The drier the better for this recipe. In a large bowl, toss the chickpeas with olive oil to coat. Add the salt, pepper, garlic, and crushed red pepper flakes and toss again. Spread the seasoned chickpeas onto a cookie sheet and bake for 10 minutes. After ten minutes, remove the cookie sheet from the oven and shake the chickpeas to prevent them from burning on one side and return them to oven to bake for an additional 10 minutes.
Kale Chips
Creates: a generous snack portion
About 1 cup of kale, de-stemmed and well-washed
1 tablespoon olive oil
A sprinkle of sea salt
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Dry the kale leaves as much as possible, just like with the roasted chickpeas, the drier, the better. On a cookie sheet, toss the kale with olive oil and spread the kale leaves out evenly across the cookie sheet. Sprinkle with sea salt and bake for about 10 minutes. Test one of the leaves, they should be crunchy and delicious, some of the larger leaves may need to cook slightly longer.
Cool and inhale. Seriously.
Deb July 25, 2011 at 9:00 pm
This sounds great! I recently got some Himalayan pink salt and organic peppercorns from Sustainable Sourcing https://secure.sustainablesourcing.com and I’ll have to try them out in the chick-pea recipe. Thanks for sharing!
Robin July 26, 2011 at 9:40 pm
Hello Deb! Thank you so much for your comment. I love the idea of using different kinds of salt, peppercorns, and spices that are sustainably sourced. Please let me know how it goes when you try out this recipe!
-Robin