Tuesday, November 2, 2010

Trail Mix Ideas

Combine dried friut, nuts and grains to make a delicious and customized trail mix.


Trail mix is a simple snack that combines different grains, nuts and dried fruit. The snack packs away easily, making it a perfect food to take with you on a hike, a car ride or to a movie theater. Instead of buying trail mix from a grocery store, you can make your own using different types of ingredients than are found in the supermarket brands.


Raw Grains








Most commercial trail mixes contain a healthful grain ingredient. If you are making your own homemade trail mix, you can use a grain that can be eaten in its raw state, which is healthier than baked or cooked grains. One healthy raw grain is oats, which are rolled flat so they can be eaten easily in trail mix. A small amount of honey can be added to the oats to help them stick together more easily.


Dried Exotic Fruits


Instead of using common trail mix fruits in your trail mix, such as raisins, you can add in exotic dried fruits less common to traditional trail mix. A few of these exotic fruits include dried coconut shavings, dried mango, dried pineapple, dried cranberries and dried banana slices. Not only will this make your trail mix more interesting to eat, but it will make it more healthful as many of these fruits contain vitamins and minerals that are not found in raisins.


Exotic Nuts


Peanuts and cashews are the most common nuts in commercial trail mix. You can make your trail mix more unusual with exotic nuts. For example, you can add in Brazil nuts, hazel nuts, macadamia nuts or sliced almonds. Using raw nuts will make the trail mix more nutritious because nuts lose a lot of their nutritional value when they are roasted.


A Chocolate Touch


You can toss small chocolate morsels into your trail mix that will add a bit of sweetness to the batch. Use any small, bite-sized chocolate bits, such as chocolate chips, candy-coated chocolates or crumbled pieces of a chocolate bar. You can even melt chocolate to coat portions of the trail mix, such as the nuts. Avoid using chocolate that may taint the taste of the trail mix, such as mint chocolate.

Tags: your trail, make your, trail more, trail such, commercial trail