Uhhhh, I know it took me soooo long to get this recipe on here!! This has been a crazy week for us!

So no more waiting here is Orlando’s delicious recipe for our snack balls: (he took the receipe from Whole Living and made it his way)

power Snack Balls

To make the small batch:

• 1 cup of random dried fruits whichever you like, just make sure they have no sugar added (whole foods). I used 2 different types of dates, figs, and dried banana.
• 1 cup of raisins
• 2 cups of your favorite nuts (we did 1 cup almonds 1 cup pecans)
• 1/4 cup of healthy seeds (we used chia, flax, and hemp)
• Sesame seeds
• Dry, unsweetened shredded coconut

DIRECTIONS:

• Put nuts in food processor and process until they are chopped small (30 seconds or so). Remove to a bowl
• Put dried fruits in food processor until it forms a paste. You will know its done when the paste is formed and starts to roll around in the processor like dough in a mixer.
• Knead the fruit and nuts together until all the nuts are incorporated into the fruit. It takes a couple of minutes. At first it will appear as if you will never get all the nuts into the paste, but keep kneading it and they will all incorporate into the paste.
• Form into a meatloaf size loaf.
• You can now either roll them into 1/2 inch balls or slice the loaf with a knife and cut them into small squares (much less time consuming).
• Now press the balls or squares into a bowl filled with coconut and sesame seeds. You can do one or the other or both.

Note that when I made the above recipe those things lasted only one day in my house, so next time I doubled the recipe.

A little side note:

Food has become a major part of our life as a family. Eating healthy requires planning, preparing, shopping, cooking…its a process. ESPECIALLY, when its a learned behavior like it is for us. Sounds exhausting, but its actually really nice. We talk about what we’re going to eat for the week, we explore new ingredients and recipes together, and we each have our roles in the kitchen. Orlando is the head chef, I take care of most of the raw stuff, i.e. breakfast and lunch, and the boys help us with the preparing of food (as much as they can on the days we can afford the mess!)

The process makes all of us conscious and aware of what we’re putting in our mouths.

So if you have kids old enough to help, and you want to make them a part of your health journey, invite them to the kitchen and let them get a little dirty rolling balls in sesame seeds or kneading nuts and fruits. I believe this encourages them to try new things and empowers them!