Snack food - help!

[eleanorjane]

I know a lot of you are keen cooks and/or knowledgeable about food, so I'd like to ask for some advice and input. I'll put it behind a cut for the sake of those with eating/food issues.

(And for those with food issues who've braved the cut, I want to be clear - any judgemental language I use ("too much", "should" and so on) applies entirely to my own desires for healthier eating habits. If I talk about "too much" of X, I mean "too much for me", not too much for you or anyone else.)

So, I don't eat as healthily as I would like. I mostly try to avoid junk (although I need to cut down on my sugary drink intake), but my diet is not as well-rounded as it could be, and as I would like it to be.

Specifically: I eat too many carbohydrates (starches generally, rather than sugars). Particularly in the form of bread-and-breadlike-items, pasta and noodles (what Americans would call ramen, I believe). This is for several reasons:

* It's not convenient for me to nip out for fresh food on a regular basis; I get groceries (delivered) on average about once a week, and dried/frozen carb-y food tends to keep the best. By the end of the week, any remaining fruit & veg look rather wilty and unappealing, and any remaining meat is probably not in good shape.

* My appetite has mostly tended towards smaller, more frequent mini-meals and large snacks, rather than Three Square Meals A Day. When you're not hungry for much, it's hard to make that balanced, you know?

* Carb foods are generally a) quick and easy to prepare, and b) do not require attention while cooking.

So what I'm looking for, I guess, is suggestions for easy snacky food that's high on fibre and reasonable for protein, to replace some of the carbs. I'm particularly interested in stuff with low prep time, stuff that will keep well, and stuff that's easily snacked-on. Huge bonus points if it's savoury and satisfying.

Nutritionally, I'm somewhat Vitamin D deficient and low on both good and bad cholesterol. My blood pressure's a little high, and I wouldn't mind more calcium. I'm mildly lactose intolerant (I can cope with most dairy, but not full-fat milk) and I generally prefer savoury to sweet. And obviously I want to be sensible about calories, but I'm not asking for the sake of dieting; this is an effort to improve the balance and healthiness of what I eat, not control calorie intake.

Thankyou for any input you can offer!

(Cross-posted to a community and my own journal.)

Comments

[katarik]

These three all assume you have either a blender or a food processor, so if not, they will not be all that helpful:

If you can manage cheese, feta mezes might work for you? Throw one eight-ounce block of feta cheese (crumbled) into a blender with one eight-ounce hunk of cream cheese. Add a bunch of chopped parsley, some thyme, oregano, black pepper, and fresh garlic. Blend. It does obviously need to stay refrigerated, but it makes a very nice spread, and if the texture is off for dipping vegetables or something into add some yogurt.

If not, baba ghanouj? Slice two large eggplants in half and put them sliced side down on a big cookie sheet. Paint skins with a little olive oil and pop in the oven, six inches from the heat on "broil." Keep them in until they look done, forty-five minutes or so? Take them out, let them cool, ignore them for a bit, then peel the skin away and threw the nasty squishy eggplanty bits in the blender with two heaping spoonfuls of tahini, some fresh garlic, some cumin, some lemon juice, and some salt and pepper. Blend blend blend. Like feta mezes, this also needs to be refrigerated, and I can happily eat baba ghanouj with a spoon.

For something that is not intended to be a dip, hummus cakes:

2 15-oz. cans chickpeas, drained
4 green onions (chives), white and green parts, chopped
1/4 cup tahini OR unsweetened peanut butter
2 Tbs. lemon juice
2 tsp. garlic, minced
1 tsp. lemon zest
1 tsp. salt

Preheat oven to 350 F. Process one can chickpeas, green onions, tahini, lemon juice, olive oil, garlic, lemon zest, and salt in food processor until coarsely chopped and combined. Transfer to bowl, stir in reserved can chickpeas. Coat baking sheet with more olive oil. Shape chickpea mixture into patties. Spray or drizzle tops of patties with even more olive oil. Bake thirty minutes. For smaller, hors d'oeuvres-type patties, reduce baking time to ten or fifteen minutes. These refrigerate well and make, among other things, a nice base for some kind of sauce or stew, and can also be eaten offhand.

My go-to snack food tends to be the basic scrambled eggs with any leftover vegetables that are sitting around. Protein, fiber, calcium from the milk... a frittata uses pretty much any kind of leftover and is easy to snack on or use as a complete meal.

4 large eggs
1/4 cup liquid, such as milk, tomato juice, broth
1/4 tsp herb of your choice, whatever you think works with your filling
Salt and pepper
1 cup filling of some kind, sort, or nature: vegetables, leftovers, whatever
2 tsp. butter

Set butter warming in skillet. Beat all other ingredients except filling until mixed, then add filling. Once butter's melted, pour in egg mixture; cook over low to medium heat until eggs are almost set, about 8 to 10 minutes. (You don't need to be babysitting and stirring this, in fact ideally you're not going to be stirring it at all.) Remove from heat, cover, and let stand for a couple minutes, until all your eggs are set and no liquid egg is visible. Eat! It's good hot or cold, it travels well, we're good.

[eleanorjane]

Thankyou thankyou thankyou for all of these -- I'm definitely going to give them a try. Exactly the kind of thing I was looking for! :)

[lilacsigil]

If you're not getting enough Vitamin D, that's one deficiency that responds well to supplementation rather than dietary changes.

I also only get groceries once a week and so I make a big pot of whatever and put it in single-serve containers - this week I'm making a beef pasta sauce one day and an eggplant and cauliflower curry the next, and that will last all week. When I want a meal, I can either just eat that, or add rice or pasta. Cooked, it all keeps in the fridge for a week with no problems.

[eleanorjane]

Yeah, I've got some good recipes I should try for cooking-in-advance. My big stumbling block at this point is for easy snacky between-meals foods (or for super quick meals when I don't have time to defrost/cook stuff) :)

[musesfool]

My favorite thing to recommend people lately are mini egg-white frittatas. I mean, you can do it with the whole eggs, but I find it too eggy that way, personally.

Anyway, you'll need 5 or 6 egg whites (you can buy them separately, or you can separate them and use the eggs elsewhere if you bake or make ice cream), 2-3 tbsps of milk (fat-free is fine), 1/4 cup grated parmesan cheese, salt and pepper to taste (I find the cheese salty enough so I add garlic and onion powder instead). I also add shredded mozzarella, but the original recipe recommended shredded spinach so you can add just about anything to these that you like (mushrooms, ham, cheddar, other veggies, onions and shredded potatoes, etc.).

Beat the eggs and milk together with the parmesan cheese and whatever seasonsings you like. Pour into greased muffin cups. Add whatever you're adding (mozzarella, spinach, mushrooms etc.) to the cups - they will be very full if you use 6 egg whites, slightly less so if you only use 4 or 5 - and bake at 350F for 15-18 minutes, depending on your oven. They'll puff up and get a little brown on top - that's when you know they're done. They will then deflate and leave you with little disks of frittata. I make them on Sunday evening and eat them for breakfast or lunch during the week - as long as you keep them refrigerated, they'll last for five or six days, and they're really good at room temperature.

(If you use whole eggs instead of just the whites, I'd cut it back to 4 or 5 eggs.)

[eleanorjane]

These sound *amazing*; I'm going to try them this afternoon. Thankyou so much!

[eleanorjane]

Oh my god these are SO GOOD. I used shredded mozzarella and chopped baby spinach leaves as my 'filling', and om nom nom nom nom.

[musesfool]

I'm glad that worked out for you. I find them really tasty and a great breakfast/lunch kind of thing to take to work.

[st_aurafina]

We switched out the carbs we eat for carbs with better GI factors - so, long grain rice instead of short grain, wholegrain bread instead of white, soba noodles instead of wheat noodles. We make our quiches pastryless now - we stir a 1/4 cup of flour into the egg mixture before we bake it - one quiche gives us six servings, which makes for a good lunch. Neither of us eat much bread at the moment - we might split a roll at lunch time and have half each. Otherwise our carbs come from cereal for breakfast and rice or pasta for dinner.

I love salad, so shopping once a week took a while to get the hang of how to buy and store lettuce - I buy a whole lettuce, don't wash it or tear off the excess leaves, but wrap it up in paper towel and store it in a plastic bag. When I want some lettuce, I tear off the leaves I want, wash and drain them, and put them in my salad. It's worked well for me. Celery goes floppy in the fridge, but if you give the ends a trim and float the sticks in cold water, they become crispy again. Carrot, cucumber, capsicum all keep for a week in a plastic bag.

[eleanorjane]

Oooh, quiche! I should definitely try quiche - what a good idea, thankyou :) And I'll definitely try the pastryless quiche; that will cut down the hassle no end.

And yeah, when I first started this project I was all about cutting down on carbs; now my focus is more on cutting down *and* switching to low GI stuff. It's a work in progress.

[thorfinn]

Controversial opinion alert: Eat more oil/fats.

To unpack somewhat - I don't mean just eat a heap of it - too many input calories vs whatever your output calories are is still bad.

But fats, of any kind, pretty much are "extremely low GI" in metabolic terms. This means if you eat some amount of fats, you have a continuous source of calories that your body will burn. This will actually reduce your need for snacking.

The other thing that I do is cook chopped meats in bulk - chicken thighs or boned maryland fillets are particularly good for this purpose. I even use dried garlic bits, just apply them to the wet meat, throw the whole lot (I usually do 2-3 kilos worth) in the oven in a tray with a bit of white pepper and salt to taste.

Then it's easy to add some to a sandwich, or noodles, or even just on top of basmati rice with some frozen peas. Voila, balanced meal, near zero cooking.

ETA: Err, obviously this advice is inappropriate if you're vegetarian, I've forgotten if you are or not. If you are, roasted tofu of the right kind works well too, actually. I can provide more details if anyone is interested.

[eleanorjane]

That is really good advice, thankyou. (And no, I'm not vegetarian, so it works for me. :)) I generally eat a very low fat diet, and I've really noticed that even when I'm full, I don't feel satisfied - I'm planning on adding more unsaturated fats to my diet, and hopefully that will make a difference.

[thorfinn]

Nifty. :-)

Nuts are also awesome as a snack - purchased in bulk you can often get the kind of mix you find tasty for not much more or less than pre-purchased nut mixes... and nuts are basically protein and oil and a small amount of carbs.

Protein is the other thing that sits somewhere between oils and carbs in terms of how quickly your metabolism can burn them.

[eleanorjane]

I'm not a huge fan of most nuts, unfortunately; my opinion of them generally ranges from "meh" to "ick" depending on the type of nut. I don't mind them (except peanuts, which I actively dislike except in satay) in cooking or recipes, but I wouldn't ever go out of my way to eat them. Plus they get stuck in the teeth! ;)

[thorfinn]

How ... nutty.

...

I'll get me coat. ;-)