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During a recent trip to a large, well-known natural food store my daughter asked to make her own trail mix from the vast number of nuts, seeds, even chocolate candies in a “Make Your Own Trail Mix” display.
Since we always have numerous nuts, seeds, and dried fruit on hand, I asked her if she would like to make her own at home as a special mommy-daughter afternoon activity (i.e. while your brother is sleeping). She was instantly excited about the idea and so we planned our trail mix ingredients.
When it was time to compile our ingredients, I put each one in a special bowl and lined them up so she could choose. She was as happy as a kid in a candy store! And, this is one kind of “candy” I don’t mind her eating. (Although you will see that she convinced me to let her get a small handful of Sunspire chocolate candies as a treat.)
Pictured ingredients include walnuts, pumpkin seeds, dried pineapple, dried cherries, chocolate candies, pecans and peanuts.
This is a perfect summer activity for the little ones (old enough to eat nuts and seeds, of course) – and a great snack to take on the road.
Later that night, my husband suggested we add this as an activity to our next birthday party, as well as decorating the jars the trail mix would go in.
You can see she had a great time choosing what order to drop the goodies in her jar and how many of each. Since this initial project, my girl has made two more batches! They don’t last long in our house.
If you’ve got a nut allergy in your family, why not try a fruit/seed mix? Seeds I would choose are sunflower, pumpkin and hemp. For a big nutritional punch add superfood Goji berries! I try to optimize nutrition so I don’t include pretzels in our trail mix, but you could if you are looking for big chunks of something.
Here’s the final product, along with all the empty bowls.
Have you made trail mix with your kids? What are your favorite ingredients?