Oh Snapz!

Children always seem to want to snack, don't they?  I suppose it's because they are such busy little bees, but my boys always seem to be re-fuelling.  So I am always interested to find out about new snacking options for them; ones that are good for them, or at least not bad for them, and which have a touch more kid-appeal than the usual 'healthy' options seem to.  I received a parcel from Healthy Supplies this morning, containing a selection of the interesting and nutritious goodies stocked on their website.  First on our taste-testing schedule were some Snapz fruit and vegetable crisps... 

Baked, rather than fried, they are still crisp and really rather delicious.  We first tried the beetroot crisps and the carrot & paprika crisps.  It's fairly obvious which is which, huh?  The children were torn as to which they preferred but ultimately Chris liked the beetroot crisps best (as did I); sweet and crunchy as they were, while James preferred the carrot & paprika version.  I found these tasted very strongly of carrot, which would be a big plus for most people (and especially my carrot-addicted children), but I've never been a huge fan of cooked carrots , vastly preferring them raw, so I couldn't eat more than a few.  However, the two types were hugely complimentary when mixed together which was an interesting option, and the paprika added a pleasant piquancy to the earthy-tasting carrots.  We often eat root vegetable crisps as a pre-dinner nibble, but these weren't salty or greasy like some we've tried and tasted so clearly of the vegetables rather than the seasonings alone, that it was a completely new experience

Next,  I suppose, we moved on to 'pudding', and tried some of the apple fruit crisps.  One the left in the picture are the regular Crunchy Apple variety, the Apple & Cinnamon crisps on the right are strongly flavoured with cinnamon.  Rather too much cinnamon for my taste, but the children adored them and were pretty close to licking the dusty scraps out of the bowl after they'd polished the actual apple-slice-crisps off.  The cinnamon-flavoured apple crisps were noticeably thicker, and chewier, than the au naturel version, which were delicious and, somehow tasted even more of apples than do actual untouched apples.  Go figure!  The children rated the selection as follows.

Chris

• #1 Beetroot
• #2 Apple & Cinnamon
• #3 Carrot & Paprika
• #4 Apple

James

• #1 Carrot & Paprika
• #2 Apple & Cinnamon
• #3 Apple
• #4 Beetroot

As for me?  I preferred the beetroot and the carrot & paprika crisps when they were mixed together as a savoury option.  I wouldn't choose to eat the apple & cinnamon crisps again, but I might nibble on the odd pack of the plain apple crisps in the future.  I can see these finding a home in lunchboxes for school trips and the like in the future.

Cath xx