Tag Archives: healthy homemade treats

Vegetables With Hummus – Day 10 of 30 Days of Healthy Homemade Summer Treats

30 Days of Healthy Homemade Summer Treats

Kids either love hummus or hate it, I think. If they love it, hummus is a wonderful way to encourage kids to eat more vegetables when they’re home. I have a simple hummus without tahini recipe I like to use – tahini is impossible to come by in my area so far.

Slice up a selection of your kids’ favorite vegetables. My youngest goes wild for orange, red or yellow bell pepper, almost to tears if we run out of them. Celery is another great choice – she did have a screaming, on the floor tantrum a couple years ago when I told her we were out of celery. I choked back my laughter (very difficult!) and offered her some cucumber, that being what I had at the time. She accepted and calmed down. Yes folks, veggies can be a bribe if you’re that lucky!

I just put a selection out and let my kids go at it. Sometimes I keep a supply of sliced vegetables in the fridge so that they’re easy to grab as snacks. Hummus or another dip can add to the appeal.

Vegetables With Hummus - Day 10 of 30 Days of Healthy Homemade Summer Treats

Fruit & Vegetable Smoothies – Day 8 of 30 Days of Healthy Homemade Summer Treats

30 Days of Healthy Homemade Summer Treats

I love making smoothies. I do these year round. Really can’t say I have a recipe as such, as it’s pretty much toss whatever looks good into the blender (my beloved Vitamix, of course!), and mix it all up.

We buy big bags of frozen fruit and berries regularly, so there’s no ice in any of my smoothie recipes. I do have some ingredients I use regularly, and that’s what I’ll list here. I don’t use all of these at once; it’s more of a mix and match thing.

Possible Ingredients (don’t use all, make your own mix)

Mixed frozen fruits
Mixed frozen berries
Banana
Carrot
Fresh spinach (NOT frozen, taste is wrong)
Fresh kale
Soaked chia seeds
Bee pollen
Fruit juice
Lemon juice
Honey
Cacao nibs (may need sweetener & yogurt to cut bitterness)
Yogurt
Oatmeal (cooked & cooled may be less grainy)
Cocoa mix

Place selected ingredients in your blender. Add enough fruit juice or other liquid to help it blend and keep it from getting too thick to drink. Taste before serving to make sure you have a good flavor, and have fun experimenting.

Fruit & Vegetable Smoothies - Day 8 of 30 Days of Healthy Homemade Summer Treats

Homemade Pudding Pops – Day 7 of 30 Days of Healthy Homemade Summer Treats

30 Days of Healthy Homemade Summer Treats

I loved pudding pops as a kids. Chocolate, of course. While these are probably the least healthy suggestion I’ll give during this entire 30 days, they’re also a lot of fun and you can make them healthier with some additions.

Ingredients

1 3.9 oz (small) package pudding mix
2 cups milk
1/2 cup frozen whipped topping

Make pudding according to package directions. Allow mix to cool if using a cooked pudding. Mix in whipped topping. Pour into popsicle molds.

You can add fresh fruit to make this healthier. Real whipped cream rather than whipped topping is another option. You can also be more ambitious than I am and make your own pudding. This will let you have more control over all of the ingredients. There’s a good recipe at Rodale for chocolate pudding. I haven’t tried it, but I imagine you could use avocado chocolate mousse rather than chocolate pudding to make these healthier.

You can also have fun and use more than one flavor of pudding. There are some really fun ideas at Our Best Bites.

Homemade Pudding Pops - Day 7 of 30 Days of Healthy Homemade Summer Treats

Lemonade Popsicles With Fruit – Day 5 of 30 Days of Healthy Homemade Summer Treats

30 Days of Healthy Homemade Summer Treats

Lemonade popsicles are very simple to make. You freeze lemonade in the molds. Slice up some other fruits, add them to the mold first, and you have a much more interesting snack.

The one thing you need to consider is the space your popsicle stick will require. Make sure you can get it far enough into the mold even with the fruit there.

Use a good lemonade to keep it healthy. It’s easy to make on your own if you have some lemons around.

Lemonade Popsicles - Day 5 of 30 Days of Healthy Homemade Summer Treats