our favorite {clean! allergen-free!} summertime snack recipe!

Baby steps. Sometimes the path to clean eating comes in baby steps. For my family, we are trying to clean things up little by little. We’ve read a lot of those articles out lately “What happens to your body when you eat sugar” or “Why cane sugar is the better choice” or “The health benefits of honey” and decided to clean up our sweets a bit over here.   This doesn’t mean no sweets or desserts.  (My kids would start a revolt and I would be useless against them without a little sweet in my coffee).  I’ll go into more detail, but first:  THE recipe!

This has been the go-to snack for my kids for 8 years.  And I’ve used Heavenly Organics to help clean it up even more.  We call them powerballs–they are full of protein and taste like a cookie.  And with the addition of Heavenly Organics honey, they are healthier than ever!  And super simple.  And require no cooking.  Mix 1 cup of nut or seed butter with 1 cup of Heavenly Organics honey. Add 3 cups of oats and 1/2 cup ground flax seed.  Stir.  Add in up to a cup of your favorite “mix-ins”  (we opt for chocolate chips and dried cranberries or cherries.  But we’ve also used coconut and crystallized ginger, so you know, mix in whatever sounds great to you!)  Roll into balls.  Store in the refrigerator.  Easy and a winner for all of my kids.  One prefers his with no “mix-ins” at all, so I just roll a bunch up before I add those in–and add a bit more flax seed to firm them up a bit.

Thankfully there are a few ways to have your cake and eat it, too. We’ve tried to switch over to organic, wild honey as a sweetener when we can. And use organic cane sugar when honey doesn’t work as well. Yes, we’re still eating sweets. But my goal here isn’t calorie counting–it’s eating more nourishing food.  When we first made the switch to honey, I knew the benefits of eating raw honey, so we ordered some through a local farmer.  But I had no idea that even organic, raw honey is not nearly as beneficial as wild honey, far away from the pesticides of farms and pollution of cities.  Read here for more details about the benefits of wild, organic honey.

Heavenly Organics only uses wild, organic, sustainably sourced honey–so whether you’re buying pure honey or some of their super yummy chocolate honey patties, you know it’s safe, pure and absolutely delicious.  And since we’re on the topic of the chocolate honey patties, can I just tell you how good these things are?  The mint is my favorite, but my kids love the peanut and pomegranate flavors.  So so good.

For times when honey isn’t the best option (I prefer sugar for some baking), Heavenly Organics also has the highest quality organic cane sugar I’ve been able to find.  Not only is it pure cane sugar (most conventional sugar is from GMO sugar beets), but it also sun-dried to preserve the natural nutrients and reduce the carbon footprint.