easy & healthy snack ideas! 🌼

Now don't get me wrong, I'm the kind of person who can eat the same breakfast every single day and somehow not get bored of it. I think at one point I ate the same protein oats for like 4 months in a row and I was fine with it, but when it comes to the rest of the meals in the day I can't do it.

I need variety and I thought how many of you guys are the same. I came up with these new snack options recently, well, one's not too new - I posted it on my Instagram a little while ago but I don't think I've ever shared it on here so I wanted to do that. And these snacks are gonna be far more interesting and delicious for you rather than just slapping some peanut butter on a rice cake.

I did also want to thank Squarespace for sponsoring today's video - they are my chosen web host and if you do decide to jump on over check out my blog and see all my other recipes.

That site has been hosted by them for the last five years but I will talk more about them at the end of the video. Okay, let's start off with a high-protein bean dip recipe. It's not just beans, don't worry! Um, so with this one, I really love savoury foods.

I love crunch, I love salt, I love savoury, that's just like my thing. Back in the day I used to love having chicken Twisties, I don't know why and I think it was just like the crunch and the salt. Not that this will taste anything like that but it still has the saltiness and it will still have the crunch if you like those two factors. So for this recipe you're going to need access to either a food processor or a really high-powered blender. I'm just going to use my nutribullet for this.

Ingredients wise I'll pop them on the screen as well so you can see them and also if you do decide to check out the blog post which I'll leave linked in the description box I'll have all the macronutrients, calories, all of that kind of information over on the blog too.

Now, you can choose what you want to use for a dipping utensil. For this if you like, but I'm just gonna use chopped carrots because they give me that crunch that I really want. For the dip itself I'm going to use a tin of cannellini beans, I'm going to use some olive oil, some salt, lemon juice, tuna and spring onion. And basically what you're going to do is throw it all into a high speed blender / food processor / whatever floats your boat and blend it all up.

This will keep in the fridge as well. The longest that I've kept it for was three days and it was okay potentially it could last longer but it didn't last longer in my fridge because we ate it. I should mention as well you might not want to blend the spring onion through I use that just as a garnish on top. Ok next, we've got protein waffles. Now I haven't included any toppings in the macros for this recipe but here are some ideas for you.

You could go with the basic fruit, you could go with some sugar-free maple syrup, you could go with a stevia based chocolate sauce (they exist).

I made this recipe one morning when I woke up and I really wanted waffles and we had a little waffle maker and I just experimented. I was very happy with how they turned out. I would recommend though, pairing them with some kind of liquid or puree whether even it's like blending up fruit and putting that on top something like that. The flavour of them will actually depend on what type of protein powder you use.

You don't want anything that is too granulated, so I know some of the proteins like a Tropeaka one will not work in this.

A good example of one that will work in this is what I've been using which is an ISO 100. I believe the, how do you say that brand name, Alani Nu plant-based protein would work in this as well and it depends on the flavor that you have too so I used a gourmet vanilla iso 100. The kind of protein powder that we're looking for in this recipe, I like to base it off the consistency, so the consistency you're looking for is if you mix one scoop of protein with the water it's a very smooth thin drink, not the kind..

. you know the kind when you mix them with water and it's granulated? We don't want that or you mix it with water and it gets really thick and really creamy we also don't want that. So you're looking for one that has a very watery consistency when it's mixed. So for this recipe we're going to need two scoops.

Now I have a small Urban Outfitters waffle maker so this amount of ingredients makes 8 small waffles.

If you're using a full proper sized waffle maker I'd say it would make two pretty large ones. We're going to need whey protein, egg whites or liquid egg whites depending on what you have access to, cinnamon, baking powder, vanilla extract, oats, banana and a coconut oil spray for the waffle maker. Again, I'm just gonna use my nutribullet. I'm gonna put everything except for the coconut oil spray into the blender cup thing.

We're gonna blend it up and then we're gonna pour the batter onto the waffle maker. Allow them to cook and then serve with toppings of your choice. Do you remember how I said that I love crunchy and I love salty? Well we are baking some kale chips now and we're gonna pair it up with some homemade salsa. The tip for keeping the chips crunchy here is after you've washed your kale - which yes you need to do or otherwise this potentially could be full of dirt because kale grows in dirt - you want to dry the kale extremely well.

So what I'm gonna use to make the kale chips is kale, spray olive oil, garlic powder and salt. We need to preheat our oven to 180 degrees Celsius which is around 350 Fahrenheit. To make kale taste better we want to actually massage the leaves. If you rub them too much you'll overdo it and they'll fall flat. Before we massage the leaves, we're going to be tearing a few bits and pieces off - we don't want that middle stem.

We do just want the leaves. Put them into like a ziplock bag or on some paper towel or something, we're going to massage them with the spray olive oil. Then we're going to transfer the kale over onto a baking tray which is already lined with baking paper. Try not to overlap it too much, we do want to make sure that there is a little bit of space between and we're going to season with the salt and the garlic powder.

Now we're going to bake for between 10 to 13 minutes, this is going to depend on the kind of oven that you use.

So just make sure you're checking on them now and again to make sure that they're getting crisp. For the homemade salsa, um, you can sort of put in whatever you really like for this one. And you can either chop it by hand or again you can save time and throw it in some kind of blender situation.

So I'm going to use diced tomatoes, green chilies, garlic, onion, jalapeños, coriander, salt and lime juice. You only need to blend it for about 30 seconds and then it's ready to serve with your kale chips.

I finally, I know you guys went absolutely bananas over my chocolate granola recipe that I put up a little while ago - I've so many of you recreate it which is really cool. I know I really like it and we just eat through it so fast if we ever make it. So I want to share with you my goji granola recipe. If you're baking your kale chips you can bake this right after because we need the same oven temperature and again we're going to line a baking tray with baking paper and the ingredients that you'll need for the granola are old-fashioned oats, linseed (which is super high in omega-3 - there are so many fantastic benefits to including linseed in your diet particularly if you follow a plant-based diet you're not likely to be getting any omega threes because you're not having like fish based products - throw some linseed in.

It's fantastic.

I'm also gonna be using lemon zest, flaked almonds, salt, cinnamon, sugar free maple syrup (I have one by the brand called Queen, there's also another really good one that I also recommend to clients, the brand is called Walden Farms, that's another good one. And then I'm going to be using some dried goji berries. You can use any kind of dried berry that you want in this so even if you wanted to switch it up to like dried raspberries or dried blueberries...

I know a lot of health food stores do stock them. The reason that I chose to use a sugar free maple syrup is because we're already getting a lot of our sugars from the dried berries and we're getting a good serving of carbohydrates from the rolled oats as well. In a bowl we're just gonna combine all of these ingredients. Mix it together well - you want to make sure everything has the maple syrup on it.

Once it's mixed through well put it onto the tray and then we're gonna bake it.

Keep an eye on it when you are baking it but it might need up to 20 minutes. You wanna make sure that it does go a little bit golden, even slightly brown - you just don't want to burn them. Once it's cooled down you can store it in a pretty glass container in your pantry and it will keep in your pantry for a few weeks or you can even freeze it if you have extra freezer space which I don't and you guys know me I love to serve this with some Greek yoghurt.

Proper Greek yoghurt is going to have live cultures in it and be fantastic for your gut. Plus it will give you a really good serving of protein to mix in with your granola.

All right, let me show you where you can find these recipes. So this is the back end of my blog so you can see all the little menu and everything which is where I go through to upload these recipes. You can find them all under the recipe index tab and can you believe them from next month I've been using Squarespace to host my website for six years?! It's such a long time and it's because the platform is so good and it's so simple to use.

You can see how easy it is for me to put together a blog post. The, the formatting is very simple, they've got handy menus there for you and they've even got templates set out already so that you can just take their templates and customize them. I'll put a URL on the screen as well because if you have thought about starting a blog or you want a new place to move your website which is really easy to use jump over to that URL and it will give you 10% off your first purchase with Squarespace. They've also inbuilt the ability to use it to book calendar appointments, send out your posts to social media and even do your email campaigns all in the one place. Hope you guys enjoyed this video!

If you do end up trying any of the recipes let me know - share with me on Instagram if you like.

My tag is at @rachelaust. I hope you're well and I hope you have fun preparing some of these - I'll catch you guys next time, bye!.