Peppermint Protein Bites: The Little Treat I Gift Every Holiday Season

How many of you receive candy and treats as gifts during the holidays? While the intention is great, let's mix it up and give our friends and loved ones some healthy treats that still taste delicious!

One of my favorite recipes to gift is this Peppermint Protein Bites recipe. Chocolate, peppermint, crushed candy cane, and a dusting of powdered sugar that looks like it just snowed.

Peppermint Protein Bites

Ingredients:

• 1/4 cup cocoa powder
• 3 scoops Life Shake
• 1/4 tsp sea salt
• 1/2 cup coconut butter, melted
• 1/4 cup almond butter, warmed
• 3 Tbsp maple syrup
• 1/4 tsp peppermint extract, plus a few drops more if you want a stronger peppermint flavor

For decorating:

• 3 mini candy canes, crushed (in a zip bag, using a can or jar), or unsweetened dried coconut
• Optional: a little powdered sugar for dusting
• As needed: extra water if the mix is dry, or extra protein powder if the mix is wet

Directions:

1. Mix all the dry ingredients together. Mix all the wet ingredients together. Then mix the wet and dry together.
2. Try rolling one ball. If it holds together and does not stick to your hands, the consistency is right. Add water if it does not hold together, and add a teaspoon of protein powder at a time if it is too sticky. Roll out all the balls.
3. On a plate, sprinkle the crushed candy canes. Gently roll each ball in the candy canes so they stick to the outside.
4. Cover and refrigerate until ready to serve.
5. Optional: right before serving, lightly dust with powdered sugar and it will look like it just snowed.

To gift, simply fill a jar of your choice with the bites, tie it with a ribbon, and you are done. We just use our Mason canning jars from our local grocery store.

These bites are part of the Healthy Holidays collection inside my Be Better group on Facebook, where we are spending this season on small habits, good recipes, and feeling good walking into January. Come sit with us: https://www.facebook.com/groups/376283566440134

Cindy McAsey, Shaklee Independent Ambassador

Farm Life Is a Luxury Now. Mine's Just Life.

 

Something funny has happened lately.

Slow mornings have become fashionable. Quiet has become a luxury. Folks are paying good money, real money, for a few days of what gets described as the simple life: early light, fresh air, animals, a garden, room to breathe.

I read things like that standing in my own kitchen, tea in hand, looking out at a frosty gate.

Nobody staged this morning. The frost did what frost does. The goats were already at the brush line doing what goats do, browsing the leaves and twiggy stuff, in no hurry at all. My day was going to be chores and messages and a list of real-life things, same as always.

And I thought: they're not wrong to want it. They're just describing my Tuesday.

Here's the part I keep coming back to, though. The staged version lasts a weekend. Then everybody flies home to the noise and the schedule and the phone that never stops, and the "simple life" goes back in the brochure.

The real version isn't a getaway. It's a rhythm. It's the same few small things, done most days, without anybody photographing them: stepping into the natural morning light before the day takes off. Walking real ground... uneven ground. Breathing all the way down. Eating like it matters. Letting your bare feet touch the earth when the weather allows.

That's not luxury to me. That's just how I keep going... and honestly, it's how I've kept going for a long time now, through a whole lot of different chapters of work and life. The farm didn't teach me these things all at once. It just gives me a place where they happen naturally, every single day, whether I plan them or not.

This weekend the clocks changed, and I got a little more of that early light handed back to me. The goats didn't notice. Breakfast is at first light, whatever the clock says... some things run on a better schedule than ours.

If slow mornings are calling your name lately, you don't need a plane ticket or a staged weekend to start. You need the rhythm... and the rhythm fits in an ordinary morning, wherever you live.

I put the five simple habits I lean on into a little free guide, the same five things I do here most days.

You're welcome to it:

My free guide: 5 Simple Habits to Boost Your Energy

Come wander with us. The luxury out here isn't the quiet, really. It's that the quiet stays.

Cindy