To save money and avoid cooking stuff that requires heat in the summer I make my own trail mix every now and then. I buy nuts and dried fruit in bulk, usually the plainest (cheapest, and I hope healthiest) form: raw, unsalted, etc. I get about a quarter pound of each, break up the larger nuts and chop the fruits, and just mix them together in a lidded container of about a gallon size. The whole process takes maybe a quarter of an hour, and I’ll often read or watch a video or listen to a podcast while my hands do the work.

My most recent combination makes me really happy. It even got a thumbs-up from my wife, who’s not so much of a fan of nuts and dried fruits. In order to both save my recipe for future reference and share it with those who might be interested, I’m posting it here. If you try it, or a variant, let me know what you think!

• Pumpkin seeds
• Soy nuts
• Cashews
• Walnuts
• “Golden” raisins
• Dried mango, chopped
• Dried dates, chopped
• Candied ginger, diced

You can probably tell the ingredients just by looking, really.

I like the variety of textures, especially from the soy nuts, and the ginger adds sweetness and zing to an otherwise relatively subdued blend of flavors. The pumpkin seeds also add some color, but if you’re looking for something sweeter and more colorful you might try adding dried cranberries or cherries.

The kid, by the way, doesn’t have enough teeth to really partake yet. He can chew the dates, but he tends to suck the flavor from the raisins and then spit them out again. We don’t give him the harder things, since his molars haven’t come in yet.