Welcome back to week #2 of Smart Eats!  I’d love to hear if any of you tried the recipes I posted last week.  I know we enjoyed having snacks and lunches ready to eat, and even my husband commented on how fantastic it was!  Each morning as we were getting ready to go, he eagerly asked what he got to eat today.  Such fun.

This week and last have been crazy in our household.  We are finishing our basement beginning on Wednesday, and we have spent the last 4 years saying, “just put it in the basement!” We aren’t hoarders by any stretch of the imagination, but we have still amassed a good deal of old furniture, exercise equipment, and just stuff!  So, we have spent every waking moment packing things up and hauling them upstairs.

This includes a HUGE classroom library and boxes and boxes of teaching supplies that got moved to the basement when I began sharing a room with 3 other teachers last year.  I hate seeing my hundreds (maybe even thousands) of books packed up in boxes, but I just don’t have anything else to do with them right now.  Anyway, it was essential that this week’s snacks and lunches be speedy, but I was secretly looking forward to putting them together so that I could take a break from hauling boxes up!

{Total Side Note: I found my bibliography I did in my graduate studies.  There is a brief narrative of every single book in my library.  I kept this up as I continued teaching, and the students loved this “catalog” of the books in our classroom library.  I would have students choose to READ the bibliography to read the summaries of books.}

Now on to the good stuff.. Snacks for the week!

Easy, Healthy Snacks for teachers.  I added “and those who love them” because my husband reaps the rewards of my packing lunches and snacks…I make two of everything so that he has goodies, too!

I got my baking fix this week by whipping up some muffins that Cyndie at Chalk One Up for the Teacher  shared with me!  They are SO easy and SO delicious.  You SO have to make them.  (I just had to throw in another “so,” but I mean it.  Make them.)

I got a box of carrot cake and a can of pumpkin and stirred them together (That’s it.  Don’t add the oil, eggs, or water that this mix may call for).  The mix that I got came with raisins and carrots, so I threw those in, and then I added a few chocolate chips (about 2 tablespoons).  I put them into greased muffin tins and baked them at 350 for 30 minutes.  Check them a bit before 30 minutes as mine were slightly overcooked, but oh, so good!

I put away two for our snacks this week, saved 4 out for the kids, and froze the rest so that I wouldn’t just eat them all up.  Yes, they are that good.

The other thing I mixed up that was super easy and pretty light was some yogurt peanut butter apple dip from This Beautiful Life.  I’m pairing this with apple slices.  The dip is tangy from the yogurt, but it’s delicious and packs a good punch of protein with the apple!  I made one batch and split it up into two containers for my husband and I.  I topped it with a tiny sprinkling of cinnamon sugar.  Easy, easy, and so yummy!  I will definitely be making it again.

Since life is exceptionally busy this week, I pulled out some of our favorite pre-packaged snacks that don’t make me feel too terribly guilty.

The apple chips are so yummy (from Costco).  My girls love them, and they are a snack that I don’t mind them feeding me (because feeding me their snack is all the rage right now).  They are just dried organic apples, but oh man, they are good!  I pair the brown rice cakes (I got these from Whole Foods, but you can get rice cakes anywhere) with peanut or almond butter and raisins.  If you have access to a knife, you can spread them, but I usually just dip the rice cake in my portioned container of peanut butter.  The Boom Chicka Pop is just one brand of popcorn that is about 35 calories per cup.  There is another brand that Costco sells that I love, too, but this is what Target had this week, so it’s what we got.  Yum! (Count up the number of “YUMs” in this week’s post…Ha!)

Here is everything all in one place, ready to go into the fridge or our snack basket.  It feels so good to be completely ready for the week and not have to worry about grabbing something unhealthy at school.

Here is the full menu for this week, including the lunches I am making…

I have planned out our dinners for the week, so I am anticipating some leftovers in my lunch plan this week, but they should make for yummy lunches!  The chicken tacos are bubbling in the crockpot right now, and we have had them before, so I know they will be great.  I eat mine with a Flat Out wheat wrap to cut down on the white flour tortillas.  I’m SO excited about the Asian Quinoa Salad and can’t wait to scarf that down!

A note on my tuna salads…I don’t make a regular tuna salad, not by any stretch of the imagination!  I use a tiny, tiny bit of fat free Miracle Whip, add in some sweet gherkin pickles, celery, and hardboiled eggs if I have time.  I know tuna salad gets a bad rap sometimes for its high fat content, but I try to make it so that it’s simply a yummy, high protein, healthy lunch.

What’s on your menu for the week?  I’d love to hear some more ideas!