My friends, it is now Spring here in Australia. This means it is time for Snoskred to break out the spring-y and summer-y snacks.
Over winter, for lunch I want something hot. I tend to get in a little food rut, eating one snack for two weeks at a time and then switching to another snack. This winter I rotated between bolognese sauce over potatoes, various kinds of soup with cheese and crackers, my little Red Curry friends, fresh mushroom soup, Vilis pasties with cheese and croissants with ham and cheese.
Dawn has been talking about finding new snacks over at it just Dawned on me… and I remembered some snacks I ate quite a lot last spring and summer. Then I thought maybe I should make a new – semi-regular – feature on my blog for spring – and maybe summer – where I share some of my favourites with you.
Lite N Easy taught me that bread and I are not especially great friends. I don’t mind the odd sandwich or grill from time to time but I had to find a non-bread option. I find crackers ok but generally dry *and* difficult to fit much onto. I also gave Cruskits another try but found them a bit too crunchy for me.
Someone at work suggested trying a rice cake and YAY I found my new snack friend. After a bit of experimentation, I prefer the thin rice cakes. Aldi makes one which I usually buy.
So if you saw the photo at the top, you might think that was just ham on top of a rice cake. The ham on top is my special secret signature move which I discovered as a surprise to myself. One day, I was making my rice cake snack and totally forgot to put the ham on.. but I still wanted the ham, so I put it over the top.
I discovered that doing this was a great way to keep the toppings on top of the rice cake rather than having parts escape. I have been layering a slice of something – ham – chicken – turkey – smoked salmon – over the top of my snacks ever since. Rice cakes are round, my sliced meatgoods are also round, it is a perfect fit.
Snoskred Snack – Egg & Ham
First up, make some hard boiled eggs. You can do this the day before if you like. If my girls are not laying enough eggs for me, I buy the Manning Valley free range eggs. You can watch the hens online here.
Peel the eggs, and slice them.
Spread cream cheese onto the rice cakes. This part is quite tricky as these rice cakes are very thin and you can crack or break them if you push down too hard. You can choose another kind of spread if you prefer – hommus would be my second choice.
Layer on your eggs. Add salt and pepper to taste – these will really bring out the flavour of the eggs. Above you see the Manning Valley eggs, here is what it looks like with the eggs from our girls –
Then lay your ham on top, and you have your snack all ready to go.
Dawn tried my snack and loved it. :)
Thanks for the mention! BTW I have a few new rice cake snacks I’ll be posting something this week or next. Getting creative with all those apples I have.
I was about to do an apple one, but then, the apples I bought were terribly tart, in fact so much so I could not eat them.. :/ I’m wondering about oranges too, because I think that could work really well.
I’ve tried rice cakes and don’t like them. My snacks are usually fruit. Bananas and apples all year round, grapes and stone fruits in summer. I have things like doughnuts for a while, but get sick of them and go back to fruit or no snack at all, just a drink, coffee or milo in winter, water in summer.
Without rice cakes I would be struggling at the moment to create lunches and seriously bread bloated.. so I am glad they exist. The Other Half does not like them, he prefers bread.
I’m hoping to try a “cronut” this weekend – I found out about a local place that makes them right before they went on holiday for a month so I have been craving these cronuts all that time.. :)
They look great, egg and ham are a match made in heaven!
SSG xxx
Absolutely – I’m discovering a lot of perfect egg matches with these spring snacks. :)