Every summer, it gets so freaking hot outside that even when we're hungry, food doesn't seem very appetizing. The heat makes us feel lethargic and lazy and even zaps our enthusiasm about eating, which as most of you know by now is a pretty big accomplishment. When it's 100 degrees outside and 125 in our non-air-conditioned apartments, even pizza and chocolate cake don't sound good. Of course, pints of Tasti D Lite and ice cream cones will always go down easy, but we need some variety (and more nutrients) in order to feel our best all summer long. So how do we keep our energy up and our stomachs satisfied when it's too hot to even think about food? Here are our three new favorite ways to satisfy our appetites without suffocating in the sun.
1. Fruit Salad Sensation
There is no better time of year than summer to eat fruit every single day. Snacking on fruit is a no-brainer. It has the highest number of nutrients per calorie of any food on the planet, and it's sweet and delicious and will keep your skin glowing and your waistline from expanding. Before global warming depletes our precious earth of all its amazing natural fruits, pick your favorites and indulge this summer. Our summer favorites are peaches and nectarines. We chop them up with papaya and banana and pineapple, squeeze a tiny bit of lime juice in the bowl, and eat this satisfying and delicious fruit salad for breakfast and snack on it for the rest of the day. Add a handful of almonds or a slice of brie cheese if you want to make your fruit salad feel even more special.
2. Fruity Cocktail Concoction
We know that not everyone feels this way, but we consider cocktails to be snacks, especially when we combine them with our number one favorite summer snack - fruit. A great way to create a healthy alcoholic snack is to take whatever's left from your summer fruit salad and puree it in a blender. Then add one and a half shots of rum and one shot of triple sec to the sweet, fruity nectar and blend all of that deliciousness with a bunch of ice. Pour it into a fun glass and you've got a wholesome happy hour right at home. Because this drink is full of nutrients, you can think of it as a guilt-free pre-dinner snack - an appetizer, if you will. Grill up some fish, toss a giant spinach salad, and we're pretty sure this summer snacking situation will leave you feeling sexy.
3. Saucy Summer Snack
We just discovered this new fruity product and we are completely in love with it - Mott's Plus Apple Sauce. We know that many of you don't always have time to shop for and chop up fresh fruit salads or have happy hour every night, and so this is the perfect alternative. The Mott's Plus is easy as can be but so much better for us than other packaged products like those sugary tubs of yogurt, Jell-O, or pudding. It has no added sugars, fake sugars, or weird dyes, is very low in sodium, and only has fifty calories per tub! We're not usually fans of things that have a long "shelf-life," but this stuff has changed our minds. It's delicious right out of your desk drawer, you can throw it in your purse and eat it on your commute to work, or you can pop it in the freezer and later enjoy a refreshing, slushy fruit snack. Mott's Plus comes in three flavors, and each is fortified for women with a different nutrient: Pomegranate has added antioxidants, Cran-Raspberry has as much fiber as a whole apple, and the Harvest Apple is full of calcium. These will all keep us ladies feeling and looking sexy as we bake in this summer heat. We didn't used to find ourselves in the apple sauce aisle very often, but we're glad we found this stuff! Thanks to the people at Mott's for making apple sauce cool while helping us survive the heat.