Healthy Homemade Vegetable Chips, and Baked Potatoes 烘蔬菜脆片加烤土豆（健康小吃）

What snack do you usually offer to your little ones? While I try to offer the healthy options to my little ones as much as possible, some of the folks back home like to offer them potato chips, muruku etc, all the snacks that are packed with salt, oil, fat, sugar, I refer to these as junks and I would really avoid them as much as possible.

However, I do agree that life should have a little enjoyment. So as a healthy substitute, I experienced making my own vegetable chips and they turned out pretty alright on the second try.

Here are what I've baked..

#1 Baked Pumpkin Cubes

#2 Baked Crispy Carrot Chips

With all the natural flavoring, they taste good and you can be assured there is no nonsense added. Perfect as handy snack for the TV time or when riding in a car. Hopefully they will except this as substitute for the commercial potato chips. *fingers crossed*



Ingredients:
1 medium carrot, peeled and cut into thin circular slices
1 cup of chopped pumpkin cubes, 1cm x 1cm each

Note: You can cut the root veggies into long slices too. But since my girl is only 18 months old, I prefer to cut them into bite size to avoid risk of chocking.

Preparation Time: 5 minutes
Baking Time: 15 to 40 minutes

Preparation for Crispy Vegetable Chips:

1. Preheat oven to 150c / 300f. Place a aluminium foil over your baking tray, this will prevent the vegetables from sticking onto the tray hence easier for cleaning.
2. Peel the root vegetables. Cut the pumpkin into cubes of 1cm x 1cm each, and the carrots into thin long strips or round slices; as thin as you can - the thinner it is, the crispier and the shorter cooking time.
3. Coat the vegetables with a table spoon of olive oil, sprinkle some salt and cinnamon powder (optional). Mix well using your hands, and lay each piece onto the tray, make sure they do not overlap.
4. Bake in the middle tray, where carrots need about 15-20 minutes (watch it closely as they get burnt fast) and pumpkin cubes for 40-45 minutes.

Let them cool in the tray for a short while and store them into airtight container.

You can re-use the aluminium foil to wrap the baked chips and keep it in the fridge. Simple and green! ;)

#3 Cheesy Baked Potato



If you have some extra space in the oven, why not throw in an extra  potato for a hot baked potato? It's a good tummy warming food and can be really rich and creamy if you load it with lots of cheese, which is a good source of calcium and protein.


Ingredients:
1 large potato, thoroughly washed
1 teaspoon of olive oil
1 tablespoon of unsalted butter
1/2 cup of shredded cheddar cheese (adjust as you like)

Preparation Time: 1 minute
Baking Time: 90 minutes

Preparation for Baked Potatoes:

1. Wash 1 potato thorough to remove the dirt, pat dry with a clean kitchen towel and make a few spikes using a knife of fork. Rub olive oil all over it.
2. Bake the whole potato for 90 minutes (do this together with step #4 above).
3. While it's still hot, slice the potato into half, scope all the potatoes, mash it up softly using a fork (or potato masher if you have one). Mix the mashed potatoes with a teaspoon or more of unsalted butter and generous amount of shredded cheddar cheese. Simply lovely for a cool night.

The mashed baked potatoes.. my duo loved it!


Mommy's favorite is the potato skin, top with some shredded cheese....

Alright, that's all folks. Just some simple, healthy, down-to-earth snack that we can churn from comfort of home..

Till later, happy weekend!