Eating easy, real food is liberating for me. I don’t know about you, but I do not have time to make everything from scratch, nor do I want to. So, I prioritize most of my daily meal prep time (I’d say a max of 60 to 75 minutes each day for all meals, if I had to guess) to plan and make dinner, because that’s the meal my family eats together regularly. It’s definitely our best, most healthful meal, mostly because I keep it simple and ban refined carbs most of the time. And I try to plan on leftovers once or twice a week, because it’s super efficient.

That said, in full disclosure, some lunches and most breakfasts could use some improvement in our house. We are always a work in progress. But snacks are my lowest priority in terms of time spent preparing. While it’s important to me snacks include real foods, they need to be fairly brainless. Here’s a list of easy, real food snacks that go over well in our house.

Fruit and Vegetables (Organic if possible):

• Apple slices with almond butter or peanut butter
• Baby cucumbers
• Bell peppers, all colors, sliced
• Carrot sticks with hummus or peanut butter
• Celery sticks with cream cheese or peanut butter
• Cucumber slices, or sticks with Ranch dressing
• Dill pickles (spears or slices)
• Dried fruit, unsweetened (cherries, apple slices, mangos, for example)
• Edamame (soy beans), lightly salted
• Freeze-dried unsweetened apple slices
• Frozen blueberries
• Frozen grapes
• Fruit cups packed in juice
• Fruit leather (only if 100% fruit)
• Grapefruit
• Kale chips
• Kiwi
• Mangoes
• Melon (cantaloupe, watermelon, honeydew)
• Mini bell peppers
• Olives (you can buy single packs of black or green olives)
• Oranges (Clementines are small, seedless and sweet)
• Seaweed for snacking (comes in a variety of flavors)
• Strawberries
• Sugar snap peas, raw with hummus or Ranch dressing

Dairy (Organic if possible):

• Cheese sticks
• Cheese cubes, rectangles, slices (change the type and shape up!)
• Yogurt (full fat) with fresh fruit and honey, or a teaspoon of fruit and honey jam
• Yogurt and fruit smoothie
• Yogurt and fruit smoothie popsicles

Nuts:

• Almonds
• Cashews
• Mixed nut packets (Planter’s or Trader Joe’s, for example)
• Peanuts
• Pistachios
• Trail mix of mixed nuts with dried fruit (and sometimes a few dark chocolate chips)
• Walnuts

Grains:

• Popcorn (homemade in the microwave)
• Popcorn (Store bought packages with olive oil and salt)
• Tortilla chips (organic if possible) and salsa

“Treats”

• Fruit salad with fresh whipped cream
• 1 ounce dark chocolate (72% cacao) with 1 tablespoon almond butter