Dan’s Favorite Trail Mix

Good Morning. I hope you are all having a great morning. Today is going to be another scorcher here. They are expecting us to tie the record high temperature of 102 degrees today. Yay? When it is 94 degrees at 9:30 in the morning you know you are in for a hot day.

Exercise happened inside again this morning at our house. Tomorrow we are expecting the delivery of our new adjustable dumbbells. I am really looking forward to them. As Heather said, “It is like Christmas is July”. That is a great description of how I feel. I will be trying them out as soon as they arrive, LOL. But I want to use them in a proper workout before I let you know what I think of them. I love getting new exercise stuff, LOL. Yes I know I am not right. ;-)

Today I have decided to try something different and make dinner in the morning to have in the refrigerator for when Dan gets home. Indian food sounded appealing to me this morning. We are going to have curried veggies over brown rice and a salad tonight. Well, that is the plan now we will see if I change my mind like I normally do. ;-)  I may have to work on a curried salad dressing to keep with the Indian theme.

This morning I wanted to tell you about Dan’s favorite trail mix. As I have mentioned before both Dan and I like to snack. This is something I made for Dan to take to work so that he gets a little healthy fat (from the nuts) that he can nibble on when he is drinking his fresh veggie and fruit juice that I send with him to work. Here is what I do:

Dan’s Favorite Trail Mix
Makes 10 servings

Ingredients:

1 cup almonds, soaked for 8 hours and dehydrated until they are dry (about 8 hours)
1 cup walnuts, soaked for 2 hours and dehydrated until they are dry (about 8 hours)
¼ cup dried wild blueberries (I used the Kirkland brand which is sweetened)
¼ cup dried goji berries (unsweetened)
2 tablespoons raw pumpkin seeds
¼ cup chocolate chips

Directions:

Combine and mix thoroughly. I store them in the refrigerator until I pack them for Dan’s lunch. He keeps them on his desk all day to nibble on. I only keep them in the refrigerator to keep the chocolate from getting soft.

I know some of you are wondering why I soak the almonds and walnuts. We have all read that they are more “nutritious” when they are sprouted. Honestly I have not seen any hard science on this so I can’t say for certain that soaking makes a difference in nutrition. But it does make the nuts more tender and easier to eat. The texture is the reason that I soak them. If any of you have seen a scientific study on the nutrition of soaked versus unsoaked nuts please send me the citation. I would really appreciate it.

Nutritional Information:

Amount Per Serving
Calories - 207.1
Calories From Fat (68%) - 141.47

Total Fat - 16.97g
Saturated Fat - 2.17g
Cholesterol - 0mg
Sodium -1.89mg
Potassium - 168.46mg
Total Carbohydrates - 11.96g
Fiber - 3.28g
Sugar - 4.3g
Protein - 5.9g

Comments:

This is one of Dan’s favorite things. Adding a few chocolate chips was what took this over the top for him. But he is a chocaholic so that may explain it. ;-) If you are looking for something to include with your lunch this is quite tasty. I haven’t tried it but I imagine a little bit of this on top of plain oatmeal would be really good.

Unrelated note:

With today being another hot one I am going to stay inside as much as possible. I think I will take this opportunity to watch a flick or two on Netflix today. I have a few things on my list I wanted to check out. I will let you know if they are worth viewing later today.  They will be health or nutrition related of course, LOL.

For now I need to go and water my garden and get dinner made and into the refrigerator for tonight. Talk to you all later today. I hope everyone is having a great day.