One of the biggest challenges I’ve faced lately has been finding healthy snacks. This is especially true when my daily 3:00 chocolate craving hits and there I am, trying to focus on work with the only options nearby a candy machine and tube of Thin Mint Girl Scout Cookies I hid in the office freezer. And sadly, neither presents a healthy choice to squash the craving.

Enter trail mix. I used to make this nut, dried fruit and chocolate mixture all the time, then sadly let it fade from memory.

It’s back now with a new twist: dried cherries! I found them during a recent outing to Costco, otherwise known as my excursion of random purchases, and thought the sour cherries would make a great substitution for my standard dried cranberries and work just as well with the almonds, peanuts and semi-sweet chocolate chips.

The dried cherries are delightful. They’re a little sour, a little sweet, and much larger and chewier than the cranberries and hold up better next to the whole almonds.

My work station is going to be such a happier place this week.

Here’s the recipe/ratio for this healthy, go-to snack:

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Oven Roasted Beet Chips with Cumin Yogurt Dip

I bought the most amazing striped beets at the farmer’s market last week but had a horrible time trying to decide what to do with them. I wanted to be sure to preserve the beautiful pattern, so boiling or pureeing the beets was out of the question, but I also didn’t want to eat them raw in a salad. Eventually, I decided the best option would be to make them into a chip that I could serve with a simple dipping sauce.

Obviously, the best way to make a crispy chip from a vegetable is to fry it in oil, but I was looking for a healthier option so I oven-roasted the beets instead. But of course this lead to a debate over the best way to roast beet slices. I tried many methods including boiling the beets with the skin on before slicing, peeling and roasting raw, roasting at 350°F, and roasting at a very low 225°F. However, I found the best results were to roast the beets raw at a moderate 325°F.

It turned out that boiling the beets, then peeling, slicing and roasting them didn’t do anything to speed up the cooking time and the colors bled a bit more. As for cooking temperatures, 350°F was a bit too high and caused some of the beet edges to char while the centers were still soft, and roasting at 225°F for a long period resulted in a chewy, dried-fruit consistency. Roasting at 325°F made for a perfectly crispy and crunchy chip that was cooked evenly.

Then, to serve the chips I whipped up a simple cumin yogurt dipping sauce using fat-free Greek yogurt, dried cumin, honey, lemon juice and a sprinkle of powdered sumac. In the end, my little experiment turned into a healthy and refreshing snack.

Oven Roasted Beet Chips with Cumin Yogurt Dip

But did I mention that the beets brought a “friend” home with them? Uh, yeah. This little slug hid in the beets and somehow survived my refrigerator for more than a week. He was a hearty little bugger. Oh well, that’s the price you sometimes pay for buying local and organic, but produce of this quality is worth a little extra “protein” once in a while.

Here’s the recipe:

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