Copycat Sargento Balanced Breaks

IMG SOURCE: http://4thofjulypictures.org/
IMG SOURCE: http://4thofjulypictures.org/

Happy Labor Day, My Dear Measured Readers!

In honor of this day of national (bi-National? I hear Canada’s Labour Day is today as well) laziness, I have brought you a super lazy snack! I made this snack in about 2 minutes. No joke.

I love healthy, uncomplicated, savory snacks. There are so many highly processed sweet snacks out there (I know, we just purchased 4 boxes of Quaker granola bars for The Hubs because we got them for less than 75 cents a box) but I really love a good salty snack. Enter Sargento Balanced Breaks. These little packs of nutrition are relatively new to the market, and early on I could get them for a song or even free. At that price, I bought as many as I could. But now the hype has died down a bit and they’re almost $4 for a pack of 3. I hesitate to spend more than $1 a serving on snacks, especially when it’s something I could totally make at home!

So what ARE Sargento Balanced Breaks?

IMG SOURCE: http://printablecouponsanddeals.com/
IMG SOURCE: http://printablecouponsanddeals.com/

Simple: cubes of cheese, nuts, and dried fruit in a single serve, sub-200 calorie portion.

I am NOT too lazy to make these at home, it doesn’t even require any cooking! Sargento’s snacks come in four varieties:

  • Sharp Cheddar w/ Cashews and Cranberries
  • Pepper Jack w/ Peanuts and Raisins
  • White Cheddar w/ Almonds and Cranberries
  • White Cheddar w/ Cashews and Raisins

I was not a huge fan of the Pepper Jack variety, because I’m not a huge fan of pepper jack, but the other three are all delicious!

These are the EASIEST snacks in the world to make. The only real work you have to do is cut the cheese.

http://cf.chucklesnetwork.com/items/5/6/6/9/2/original/one-does-not-simply-cut-the-cheese.jpgUhm, actually Sean Bean, you’re wrong, you DO simply cut the cheese. Into tiny cubes!

Here’s the rule of thumb for keeping this no-fail snack under 200 calories:

Shhhh! Nobody tell Sargento I'm using Cabot cheese.
Shhhh! Nobody tell Sargento I’m using Cabot cheese.

Copycat Balanced Breaks

  • 14g or 1/2 oz. of nuts
  • 14g or 1/2 oz. of cheese
  • 14g or 1/2 oz. of dried fruit (I used reduced sugar Craisins so I used 20g of those)
The waxed paper keeps the cheese from soggin' up your dried fruit.
The waxed paper keeps the cheese from soggin’ up your dried fruit.

Tell me even the laziest cook couldn’t make these at home. I use my food scale for just about everything so all I had to do was weigh out the nuts and dried fruit, cut the cheese into tiny cubes and weigh that, and then layer the items into my tiny plastic containers. Fits in the palm of your hand! (Okay, that’s MY hand. Maybe you have tiny hands, I don’t know. Lay off, okay?!)

IMG_20150907_075413509
Hmm, maybe I have giant hands. Who knows?

Now I didn’t go to all the trouble to figure out how much these cost per serving because I’ve had the Craisins for a while and I can’t remember what I paid for the cashews or the almonds. BUT I never pay more than 1.99 for an 8 oz. block of cheese, so I do know the cheese cost a mere 12 cents per serving. I’m guessing I paid like, $1.39 for the bag of Craisins, because again, I’m cheap (okay, frugal) so maybe 14 cents for those? So I would approximate these at about 50 cents per serving. That’s less than half of regular price for the Sargento ones, unless you were lucky like me and stocked up when you could get a 3-pack for free or a dollar. Those were the good old days!

So anyway, enjoy this practically labor free snacks for your Labor Day weekend!

Tchau!

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19 thoughts on “Copycat Sargento Balanced Breaks”

  3. Surprisingly expensive compared to how much they are at Costco. A 12 pack is only $9, so the packaged variety is only $.25 more and totally convenient.

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  5. I bought these sevral times for 3.17 ran out went to my local food lion price went up .62 cents per pack bought one anyway got home open one only 4 pieces of black cashews rest dried fruit and cheese not only did the quaitly and quantly go down and price go up wow really will make my own form now own

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  7. My daughter and I were JUST talking about the Balanced Breaks. I said we need to figure out how to make these. Then I googled it and there was your page! Thank you! We will be making these this weekend. It’s perfect for me to take to work. (Iwork in a grocery store and it’s WAY too easy to grab chips or candy, and I’m TRYING not to!) Cant wait to spend some time on your site reading all your recipes, and other tips. Thank You, again!

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  13. Where can I find the yogurt thingys that are in the one pack?? I have all the other items but those and they are quite tasty.

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