You’re starving, but dinner won’t be ready for another hour.
Instead of becoming hangry, you grab a handful of trail mix because if you don’t, you’ll grab chips or candy. And trail mix is great, but if all you use it for is snacking, you’re really missing out.
Aside from being healthy, wild and seeds are full of flavor, and they can turn a boring, ordinary meal into something tasty and interesting.
And you don’t have to reinvent the wheel; they go great with the recipes you’ve already mastered.
Recipes for Adding Nuts and Seeds into Everyday Meals
Here’s how to start using seeds and nuts more often.
And if you’re wondering the question “is trail mix healthy?” and if it is, does that mean it tastes like cardboard? Or perhaps you’re wondering whether it’s just a refined sugary-infused fake.
The good news is, it’s just as healthy as it is tasty.
Here are a few foods that can boost these to the next level:
Salads
Nobody really wants to eat plain greens. Yes, they’re good for you, so that’s a plus, but why not make them tasty if you can?
Sprinkle sunflower seeds over spinach for a toasty crunch. If you like walnuts, pair them with a beet and goat cheese salad. They’ll give it that wonderful earthy depth that will balance the sweetness that comes from the beets.
This way, you’ll make your salads even healthier because you’ll add protein and omega-3 fatty acids you can’t get from eating just greens.
If you want even more flavor, toast your seeds or walnuts before tossing them into the salad.
Homemade Bread & Muffins
If you bake at home, you probably have a routine and you repeat the same recipes over and over.
Nothing wrong with that, but you have to admit that it can get boring. Adding seeds and nuts is the perfect way to refresh the recipes you already love. A whole-grain loaf, for example, will feel hearty and rustic if you add pumpkin seeds to it. Banana muffins with chopped almonds taste nutty and crunchy, and plain banana muffins can’t compete with that.
But taste isn’t the biggest perk. Trail mix will slow down how quickly the carbohydrates hit your system because of all the extra fiber and fat.
That means that you’ll feel full longer, which is especially good for breakfast.
Stir-Fries
A stir-fry is everyone’s favorite because it’s so easy and quick to make.
If you want to take your stir-fry to the next level, add cashews and peanuts. If you really want to be out there, sesame and pumpkin seeds will bring new flavors to the table. Literally.
These ingredients work so well alongside crisp vegetables and lean proteins like chicken or tofu. They add crunch and healthy fats, but keep in mind that it’s all about the timing with stir-fries.
You want to sprinkle trail mix at the very end so they’re crunchy. If you add them in too soon, they’ll get too soggy.
Yogurt & Smoothies
A bowl of yogurt or some chia pudding is a great (AND healthy!) breakfast option, but they’ll taste even better with nuts and seeds sprinkled over the top. If you dislike the taste of yogurt, then go for Greek yogurt – it’s a bit sweeter (just don’t go for Greek-style yogurt, make sure you get the real thing, ‘cause they aren’t the same thing).
Anyway, the same goes for smoothies. They’ll balance out the sweetness of the fruit, and thanks to protein and healthy fats, your energy will stay steady.
Keep an eye on the serving size, though. A small handful is all you need; otherwise, you’ll go too far with the calories.
Soups & Stews
You don’t always have to keep nuts and seeds whole.
You can ground them or blend them, and they’ll add body and richness to soups and stews. If you’re making a Mediterranean tomato soup, for instance, you can blend almonds and add them into it to get a beautiful velvety texture. And if there are pumpkin seeds on hand, you can make a traditional base for mole sauce, a staple in Latin American cooking.
When you use nuts and seeds this way, your dishes get thicker and creamier, and you get more protein. Plus, you don’t need to use dairy products at all. Make sure to grind them first so they blend smoothly.
You want the texture to be silky, not gritty.
Conclusion
All the skill you really need is to know how to toast and blend. It’s that simple. The rest is your creativity and the ingredients you manage to get (not all ingredients are available everywhere in the world).
But, yeah, think about all the ingredients out there. Now think about all the possible combinations you could create using them.
Suppose you take only 50 different ingredients. Only 50 (not five million; just fifty). You could name 50 ingredients right now from the top of your head. From those 50, you can make 1,125,899,906,842,573 different combinations of dishes. 1,125,899,906,842,573! That’s about 140,000 times larger than the entire human population. That’s about 3,000 times larger than all the stars in our galaxy. And if you want to go real crazy, that’s about 33 times bigger than the combined U.S. national debt in dollars, which is approximately $34 trillion.
When you realize how much potential only 50 ingredients have, it opens up a whole world of new possibilities – literally.
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