2 new easy & healthy recipes

I tried out 2 new recipes this week and they're so good that I had to share them!  Best of all, they are both quick, easy, and healthy! Let's get to the recipes...

Homemade Croutons

 I love this recipe because it's a great use for bread that is stale or about to go bad. I found this recipe here on The Finer Things In Life and it takes all of about 5 minutes. 

To make it even better, I found a great bread at Kroger in their fresh bakery. It's Wholesome Harvest brand stone ground all natural whole wheat. Very few ingredients and name brand bread like that cost about $4.  I found a loaf of this Kroger bread on managers special for $1.99. 

Homemade Croutons Recipe

• cut bread into cubes and place on baking sheet
• drizzle with olive oil and stir them around/toss so they're all covered
• sprinkle with spices of your choice (we did garlic powder and pepper) and mix/toss again
• bake at 400 degrees F until browned. Toss every few minutes so they don't burn. Mine were in for maybe 8-10 minutes total.  

They added great flavor and texture to our salad!

Easy & Healthy No-bake Energy Bites

This tasty recipe can be found at Smashed Peas & Carrots. A new favorite blog of mine. It's a good thing these snack bites are considered healthy because they're addicting!! If you check out the recipe on Smashed Peas & Carrots, she uses coconut flakes. But I don't like coconut so I substituted with cereal. I had a free tiny box of honey nut cheerios but that didn't fill the 1 cup of substitute that I needed. After searching the pantry, I found some Chex rice cereal and chopped that up in the food processor to make up the rest of the 1 cup.   It gives these bites a great little crunch. It taste like a Whatchamacallit candy bar!  

Energy Bite Recipe (no coconut version)

• 1 cup oatmeal
• 1/2 cup peanut butter
• 1/3 cup honey (I ended up adding extra b/c they weren't sticking together at first)
• 1 cup chopped cereal (I used cheerios and chex rice cereal)
• 1/2 cup ground flax seed
• 1/2 cup chocolate chips
• 1-2 tsp vanilla 

mix everything together really well then place in the fridge for about 30 minutes.  After it's chilled, "roll" (though I ended up smashing/molding) them into little bite size balls.  If it's too dry, add more honey or peanut butter. If it's too wet, add more dry ingredients.   I had to rinse my hands off a few times during the molding process because my hands were sticky and it just wanted to stick to my hands instead of itself.

Store them in the fridge and enjoy a tasty and healthy snack!

**UPDATE:  See this post to find out how to make this snack even easier to prepare!