SNACKS

I'm a firm believer that snacks are more of a habit than a necessity. The traditional snacks of candy, pretzels, chips and so forth are not in the picture. They simply don't exist for me!

We always keep a bowl of fresh fruit on the counter. Want sweet? Eat fruit. I also always keep some cleaned and trimmed carrot sticks, celery and cherry tomatoes along with a few assorted pickles and olives in the crisper. Crunchy comes from there, not from a bag or box.

As a little extra treat now and then I spread a thin layer of fresh ground peanut butter from the health food store on a celery stick. (Commercial peanut butter from the grocery has added FAT.)

Not very exciting? Tell me what's exciting about chips or pretzels? It's all habit anyway. I just choose a different habit.

Barb does fix up some more traditional snacks for me. I like a handful of salty and Cajon spicy roasted nuts now and then.

We fix a combination of almonds, filberts (hazelnuts) sunflower seeds and pumpkin seeds. The almonds and filberts don't have nearly the fat that peanuts and cashews have. And sunflower seeds and pumpkin seeds have fatty acids that promote health.

The biggest deterrent to this snack is the work involved in making it. Everything needs to be roasted separately and then mixed to avoid burning the goodies. The good news is that once made it freezes very well. We make it about twice a year and put small separate baggies in the freezer to take out once every week or two.

We go to the health food store and buy the best quality raw almonds, filberts, sunflower seeds and pumpkin seeds available.

Then we make up a fresh batch of Emeril Lagasse's Cajon essence. You can find the recipe for essence on www.foodtv.com/ We buy the top quality non-irradiated Modern Products spices to make the essence with at the health food store.