And yet, today, snack foods take up a large chunk of the grocery aisles, and the consumers' dollars. In my own quest to keep my grocery spending in check, I make most of our snacks. I don't make chips or crackers (at least not very often), as those are so time-consuming to make. So I try to find other snacky foods that satisfy the same type of cravings.
Nuts make very healthy snack material. but they're expensive. Seeds, however, have many of the same nutrients and snack appeal, but at a much reduced cost. I've told you that I buy raw sunflower seeds, then pan-roast them at home, myself. I spend $1.34/lb for sunflower seeds, putting them at the high-end of what I find acceptable in expense for snack foods (but still okay with me, as they are so nutritious).
These aren't pumpkin seeds. (But home-roasted pumpkin seeds from your Jack-o-lantern are also a super cheap snack food.) These are the seeds from winter squash, 2 small Delicata squash and 1 acorn squash.
I save the uncleaned seeds in the refrigerator, in a small bowl of water, up to 1 week, until I have enough seeds to make it worth my time to clean them and roast them. It took me a week to cook 3 squash and accumulate enough seeds to roast squash seeds this week.
To clean and roast, I dump them into a colander in the sink, and under running water I separate the pulp from the seeds. When clean, I toss briefly with oil, right in the colander. Then spread on a baking sheet and roast in a 350 degree oven, for about 10 minutes, remove from oven and stir, and roast for 5-minute increments, stirring between, until they are just golden. Sprinkle with salt and they make a yummy and super healthy snack (high in minerals, notably magnesium and zinc). If you have previously been throwing out the seeds from winter squash, then these would be a basically-free snack.
For that salty, cracker or chip-like crispy/crunchy snack, I turn to garlic toast. As I'm cleaning out my freezer, I went looking for bread products in there.
I found 1 hamburger bun, which had been frozen, thawed and frozen again, a potato roll from the sandwich lunch we had a couple of weeks ago, and this half-slice of homemade French bread. In a small dish, I mixed some butter, garlic powder and salt. then spread this on the halves of rolls/buns and bread. Broiled for a couple of minutes, until toasty.
And since I sometimes want a sweet snack, I made muffins, using up the last of the baked acorn squash from lunch and breakfast this week. Quick breads also make good snack material, and are easy to make.
I spent about 1 hour making snacks the other day, and prepared about 2 days of snacking stuff for my family (we're big snackers, here, and there are 5 of us). What I made not only was less expensive than commercial snack foods, but much healthier than anything I could buy in a store.
