5 healthy snack recipes for long work days

We’ve all had those days where your brain feels a bit fried and you are tired, and just want to go home. Yet you are stuck at the job (or you got to finish reading that long paper for class) and you got to keep going for two more hours. To make things better, you are also hungry. You are hungry and the only thing available is a vending machine with tons of sugary options (which are okay, every now and then). You go home that day and you keep telling yourself you will pack on snacks the following day. But no ideas come to your brain. So the cycle repeats itself over and over again. I, myself, have done this more times than I am willing to admit to I am finally putting an end to it with my 5 healthy snack recipes for long work days.

My top 5 healthy snack recipes

All the recipes I will show here take less than 10 minutes to prepare and they are all easy to pack. You can adapt these recipes to your routine, preferences and also availability of the products I used. I am trying to implement a snack policy because my body is usually hungry around 5pm when the day is far from being over and dinner isn’t close enough. So I always end up not eating, drinking more coffee or taking something sugary from the vending machine. Let’s say no more to that, and hell yes to healthy snacks.

#1 Fruit salad

Whenever I snack, I go for this option because I’m starving when I arrive home and fruits are the best choice when you want something quick & yummy. My usual salad is a banana or an apple because they are always on season, then one or two kiwis, or a pear. If it’s summer, I add some watermelon, melon or peaches.

Right now it’s winter-time so my salad was composed of 2 kiwis and one apple. I don’t add any sweetener to it.

What you will need: 2 to 3 pieces of fruit

#2 Dark chocolate and nuts

For those days where fruits don’t really appeal to me, and I am craving something more consistent. We always have these two in our kitchen, dark chocolate is such a heavenly pleasure (I always eat my chocolate minimum 80%) and nuts are just our brain’s bffs. So this snack is delicious, has chocolate, is super quick and simply the best. Plus, if you forgot to pack a snack, this is the easiest to find option at supermarkets.

What you will need: 2 to 3 squares of the chocolate of your choice and a handful of walnuts.

#3 Peanut butter and banana toast

Okay so, this is sometimes a breakfast option (I had this for breakfast today), but a snack it also is. Peanut butter is the best and such a great way to get some proteins in that body. Packing this as a snack is a sure way to know you won’t be hungry before 9pm. And it has fruits!

If you want to drop the bread, you can totally do it. Banana and peanut butter works in any way and you can enjoy it with or without bread. You can also change the bread for some whole-wheat tortilla and make some roll-ups.

What you will need (for 1 sandwich): 1 banana, smooth or crunchy natural peanut butter, 2 toasts of bread.

#4 Hard-boiled eggs & spinach salad

My go-to post-workout snack. I tend to do my workouts in the morning without eating breakfast, which means I take a shower and head to work without eating much. When I get to the job, I don’t want to be rolling out my full english breakfast and stink the office at 9am with some baked bean smell, so I had to explore other options. Hard-boiled eggs and a small spinach salad did the trick. You get tons of protein, it fills you up till lunch and it’s just really tasty. I add a bit of olive oil to it and voilà.

If you are vegan and don’t eat eggs, you can totally replace the eggs with some scrambled tofu or even some fresh tofu if you like it that way (I kinda am into fresh tofu, I’m a weirdo).

What you will need: 2 hard-boiled eggs, a handful of spinach salad and some olive oil & salt.

#5 Avocado toast

And the pièce de résistance goes to… the first ever avocado mention in tofucado’s history: the millennial…avocado…toast !! Ok yes, I’m being over-the-top here (wink to Jonathan Van Ness*), but honestly, avocado toasts are worth being over the top. The only thing that makes me sad about them is the amount of gold bars I have to pay for avocados every single time.

To make the ultimate avocado toast : Grab some good bakery traditional bread, toast it well. Smash an avocado with your fork on top of the bread, sprinkle some salt, pepper (if you like it) and some garlic powder. Some drops of olive oil and enjoy it.

What you will need (for 1 sandwich): 1 to 2 avocados (depending on size), 2 toasts of bread, some garlic powder, olive oil and salt.

Much more than 5 healthy snack recipes…

These 5 healthy snack recipes are great, but my future snack life won’t just be 5 snacks, on repeat, over and over again. While preparing for this post, I came up with many other ideas but because my tummy and fridge have certain capacity limits, I only prepared my top 5. The rest of healthy snack ideas can be found in the list below.

Mixed nuts
Greek yogurt with mixed nuts/fruits
Apple slices with peanut butter
Oatmeal
Raw veggies (carrots, celery, …)
Cheese and bread (who hasn’t snack on this before going for a night out ?)
Egg bites (here one recipe I tested)
Sweet potato muffins or just sweet potatoes
Smoothies (banana, spinach, peanut butter, oats and milk is my usual combo)
Homemade cereal bars (my favorite recipe so far, I usually add some chopped walnuts as a topping).

How to pack these 5 healthy snack recipes (& all the rest)?

All these ideas are great, and some of you might have the opportunity to eat them at home, but some of you might not. Worry not because all of them are easy-to-pack ideas. Most of them can be just stored in Tupperware, the others can be wrapped. To make sure you are not only being nice to you by preparing some of these snacks, but also nice to the environment, some eco-friendly ideas below:

Tuppers. Glass tuppers are more eco-friendly but I understand they are heavier than plastic ones. I have a couple of bento boxes that I use to pack my lunch & snack/dessert.
Reusable sandwich wraps
Reusable zip locks
My smoothie blender (It is one of those where the smoothie container is the same one both for mixing & drinking, which is great. You don’t have to go for the same brand I use, there are many other options out there. Nutribullet is just another example.)

Reminder: Eco-friendly stuff is starting to be everywhere. You go to any store and you will find some cool, bamboo-aesthetic looking bento box. This is good if you don’t have anything equivalent at home. One rule of being eco-friendly & zero-waste is to reuse. Don’t buy fancy Tupperware containers if the ones you have at home are good enough.