Here’s what I did:

1) Rinse and completely dry 1 pint of fresh, raw cranberries.
2) Melt 1 bag of milk chocolate chips in the microwave. (You’ll need about 1 bag of chocolate chips per pint of cranberries.)
3) Coat each cranberry with chocolate and set on wax paper. (I had trouble with my chocolate seizing so I melted chocolate, spread the chocolate on wax paper, and coated each cranberry in chocolate that way. I then separated the cranberries and set them individually on wax paper.)
4) Refrigerate to set the chocolate.

I love these chocolate-covered cranberries. Some of the cranberries are solid and firm, but some of the cranberries break as you bite so you get a surprise burst of tart cranberry juice with chocolate… I think it’s delicious!

How well did it go over at Christmas? Not well. I made 4 pints of cranberries and I estimate less than 1 pint of them got eaten over two days. This was one of those lucky situations where I made something I loved to eat so at least when I got stuck with leftovers, they were leftovers I loved to eat. I did learn an important lesson: Making food that no one eats, no matter how much I love it, is a waste of money.

The fresh cranberries cost $3.99 a pint. Hershey Toll House Milk Chocolate chocolate chips were on sale for $2.50. Here is what you get nutritionally from one batch (1 pint of raw cranberries + one bag of Hershey Milk Chocolate chocolate chips) for about $7:

1632 calories
222 g Carbohydrates
99 g Fat
22 g Protein

Enjoy! Let me know if you have any suggestions!

I modified the recipe quite a bit. I don’t cook often, and I am of Scandinavian and Irish heritage, so I had NO spices in my kitchen – sea salt, black pepper, and paprika – that’s it. (My mom doesn’t eat marinara sauce because it’s “too spicy” if that tells you anything…)

I’m cheap and lazy so I didn’t want to pick up all nine spices that the original recipe calls for, so I bought “Less Sodium” Lawry’s Seasoned Salt for $1.66. One can of garbanzo beans was $.66. I had olive oil on hand.

Here’s what I did:

1) Preheat oven to 350°.
2) Drain, rinse, and dry one can of chickpeas (also ceci bean, garbanzo bean, chana, sanagalu Indian pea, Bengal gram).
3) Toss chickpeas, 1 Tbsp of olive oil, and 1 Tbsp of Lawry’s Seasoned Salt.
4) Spread chickpeas in a single layer on a baking sheet.
5) Roast at 350° for 50 minutes or until brown.

They are pretty tasty! They remind me of a cross between soy nuts and roasted pumpkin seeds. Eddie suggested roasting for closer to an hour and I agree because I like the crunchy chickpeas the best. My version is pretty salty – if you’re using Lawry’s, you might want to use less than 1 Tbsp.

These seasoned roasted chickpeas are tasty, but be careful not to eat the whole batch: There are more calories here than you might think. Nutritionally, here’s what you get per batch, all for about $1.00:

497 Calories
70 g Carbohydrates
7 g Fat
21 g Protein

Enjoy, let me know if you have any suggestions!

My local grocery store sells a Crunch Pak Apple Snacker for $2.99 (4.75 oz. package), which is not a terrible price, but I wondered how much it would cost if I assembled a similar snack myself at home. I substituted Wheat Thins Honey Wheat Stix because I like them better than pretzels.

Pack a Pak  Mixed Apple Slices
14 oz. bag/about 3 servings per bag
$2.99/3 servings = $1 per serving
(You could make this even less if you slice an apple yourself and don’t mind if your apple slices turn brown. Or if you could just eat an apple whole.

Sharp Cheddar Cheese (1 lb)
16-1 oz. servings per pound
$3.99/16 1 oz. servings = $0.25 per 1 oz. serving

Wheat Thins Honey Wheat Stix
8 oz. box/8 servings per box
$3.50/8 servings = $0.44 per 14 stix serving

Total = $1.79 (6 oz.)

So what does my $1.79 version of the snack get you nutritionally?
My snack (vs. Crunch Pak snack)
6 oz. (4.75 oz.)
Calories 320 (240)
Carbs 44g (29g)
Fat 13g (10g)
Protein 9g (8g)

I think I’ll stick to making my own apple, cheese, Wheat Thins Stix snack, unless I’m in a pinch. I’m always looking for easy, inexpensive, healthy vegetarian snacks. If you have one, please share!

Vegetarian Eggs
Chickens need protein. Chickens in a pasture eat bugs, like wood ticks. Commercial chicken feed may contain animal protein sources like meat or bone meal, dried whey, and fish meal. Vegetarian eggs are eggs fed feed with only vegetarian ingredients, like soybean.

Cage-free Eggs
In a perfect world, all God’s creatures could co-exist and share the land. Unfortunately, even “cage-free” chickens may not have a pleasant existence, but they are free to roam in an open area like a barn and have unlimited access to food and water.

I will spare you the details of the caged-life of a commercial layer hen. Please, if you can, buy cage-free eggs.

Brown Eggs
There is no difference between brown eggs and white eggs other than the fact that brown eggs come from “brown” or “red” hens and white eggs come from white hens.

While white to brown is common in commercial eggs, eggs can come in a wide variety of colors. There is even a non-commercial chicken breed called the Araucana, an ornery, white chicken that lays blueish-green eggs.

According to the American Egg Board at IncredibleEgg.org:

Egg shell and yolk color may vary. Color has no relationship to egg quality, flavor, nutritive value, cooking characteristics or shell thickness.

Shell
Shell color comes from pigments in the outer layer of the shell and, in eggs from various commercial breeds, may range from white to deep brown. The breed of hen determines the color of the shell. Among commercial breeds, hens with white feathers and ear lobes lay white-shelled eggs; hens with red feathers and ear lobes lay brown eggs.

White eggs are most in demand among American buyers. In some parts of the country, however, particularly in New England, brown shells are preferred. Commercial brown-egg layers are hens derived from the Rhode Island Red, New Hampshire and Plymouth Rock breeds. Since brown-egg layers are slightly larger birds and require more food, brown eggs are usually more expensive than white.