Summer Snacks for Busy Families #LMDconnector

Summer time is a time when all the kids are around and choosing snack food can be a challenge.  What can one do when trying to find healthy alternatives at home at any given time?

 With our home starting to look more like grand central station, there is one easy option that starts in spring and pays dividends throughout the summer.  Box gardens!

This is an activity that we all start in spring as a family.  Each spring our family goes together to the green house to pick out the seeds and plants.  Each of our daughters have their own box garden. We help them tend to their garden daily and we practice patience while we wait for the fruits of our labor (pun intended) to grow.

While at the green house we are conscious about what will grow fast and the kids will like.  Thankfully our children love their veggies and so do the neighborhood kids when they see what they can all eat fresh from the garden.

Our first choice in our garden is tomatoes. Tomatoes grow fast. They can be ready later in summer, however if you get the right kind of Cherry Tomatoes, they can be ready quite early in the season.  These are great for kids who like to graze throughout the day.  We make sure to plant lots Cherry Tomatoes and the children are free to snack away.  With some plants producing over 100 tomatoes, the children will surely be coming back and as parents we have the comfort of knowing there will be some left for us too.

The next fast growing veggie in our garden is wax beans.  With both green and yellow, these are ready in the early part of summer and are a great snack.  Our children love to walk to the garden, picking up one of these beauties and snacking away…they are not ready yet this year, but it’s getting closer!

Of course we can not forget the cucumbers (which never have a chance to get full grown with the kiddos picking the tiny ones) and the chives are a daily snacking treat…who knew?!

With our daughters having their own garden there is always the quick options of having a healthy supply of snacks ready at any time.  We do not use pesticides or chemicals in the box gardens so we know they are safe to eat after a quick rinse with some water. Of course we love to make our lovable lunches sometimes too…it’s amazing how quickly a “pretty” snack/lunch will get gobbled up!

I love to cook and bake, but sometimes with the busy pace of summer it is nice to have quick and easy snacks available for everyone…these box gardens not only provide quick snacks for the kids, but also are handy to make a quick veggie platter for those last minute BBQ parties!

Disclosure: I am part of the Life Made Delicious Blogger program and I receive special perks as part of my affiliation with this group. The opinions on this blog are my own.