snack size

I seriously do not like grocery shopping.   I find nothing about it fun.   As I walk up and down the isles and pick things up I think to myself "Sam will eat that but Jessika won't", or "Wyatt will eat that but Sam won't".   It is a battle I am sure every mom or dad goes through as they buy food for the family.    You figure you raise your kids on the same food they should like the same food, right?   Sheeesh if only it was that easy.   We were joking last week when we were eating stew with rolls that Sam doesn't like bread.   She didn't want a roll with her stew.   We told her it was because TJ LOVES bread and always ate all of it and never left her any so she never gota chance to like it.    When I say TJ loves bread, I mean I think it is the only thing he lives on.  It is a good thing he pole vaults otherwise he would be a chubby thing.    Maybe it was all the Little Caesar crazy bread I ate when I was pregnant with him. hmmmm. 

So back to grocery shopping.  I hate it!   I also hate when you look in the pantry and find half eaten bags of chips and no one eats the last half of the bag and you are left with stale chips.   Does that bother anyone else?  At the beginning of the school year after a few weeks of seeing snack foods go to waste I started something and I seem to quite like it.   I am sure every mom in the country already does this but I am a slow learner and I like to do things when I think they are my own ideas.   So this is what I do.

I normally grocery shop on Thursday or Friday, but this week I did it today because I am leaving this weekend and wanted to get it done.    So this is what I do.    I started a snack box.   One day it will be a cute box but for now it is just a brown box.   Inside is all the kids snacks in snack size packaging and they can just grab and go and there is no half opened anything left to go bad.   I usually buy big bags of snacks and then take time when I put groceries away and divide them into these little bags.

I get the snack size not the sandwich size bags.    My kids eat like birds so if your kids eat more then get the sandwich size, but my kids usually grab a few different snacks so the snack size is always enough.

For example.

See this bag of Munchies was $3.88 and I got 15 snack bags out of it.   That big bag will not go stale.   To be honest that bag would never go stale anyways because I could eat the whole thing myself, but for a bag of chip not everyone likes it would go stale if you didn't put them in snack bags.   Got it?

See that's my snack box.  I buy snacks that are already snack size and some I bag myself.   Pringles I will never bag myself because who likes broken Pringles, not me.  I snack bag cookies and goldfish and anything the kids will eat. Things you will usually find in the box that I don't bag myself are pop tarts, granola bars and I am even nice and throw in bite size candy bars.  The snack box is mostly for the kids to take to school but they always grab from it after school too.   They don't have to dig through the pantry for snacks they just go to the box.  

I also started doing it with fruit too.   I would buy grapes and just like the chips I threw half of them away because they get lost in the fruit drawer.   Now I bag them in snack bags and the kids grab and go.

The last thing I try to do every couple of weeks is.......

I make breakfast burritos and freeze them.   My kids eat these for breakfast and sometimes for an after school snack.   They are just sausage, egg and cheese.   Easy breezy and saves time in the morning, and.....

there is not a mess every morning from having to cook them every day.   My kids never run late for school but these would be great if you have kids always rushing out the door and they need breakfast on the go.  I have even made these and sent them back to college with TJ. 

After bagging them in snack bags I put the snack bags in a gallon freezer bag so the burritos don't get frost bite.    They are usually gone before they could get frost bite, but you never know.

So that is what I do with my snack size bags.   I know it's not anything new to everyone else, but it is "my new" and I am kinda liking it.   I am hoping it spreads to the rest of my pantry so everything is organized and easy.  I still have my pretzel jar and cookie jars on the counter for friends who come over, that way my snack box lasts almost the whole week. 

If you use snack bags for anything creative let me know, I would love to expand my snack bags to other things.