Funky Monkey Dried Fruit Snacks

Imagine a crunchy snack that satisfies your sweet tooth, is totally organic and sugar free and provides the equivalent of three servings of fruit in each snack sized bag.  Now imagine you could pick it up at Whole Foods, Wild Oats, or Amazon…for around $2 a bag.

So I guess this must be a dream come true, right?

I liked this stuff.  I really felt kinda sad when I gave the bags to the kids after I did my initial tasting for the review.  I mean I love my kids and all, but…

I really did not expect to like these a whole lot.  I think dried fruit is o.k. but the whole chewy leathery thing can put me off unless I am backpacking.  Since I don’t normally back pack in the house I leave the dried fruit for the kids.

The difference with this is that it is freeze dried.  So instead of leathery you get crisp and crunchy and the flavors are bright and natural.  According to the information I got with the packages the freeze drying process preserves more of the nutrients than just plain old drying.  And check it out, the apple still has a peel on it!

My kids scarfed them down.  Seriously, you could not have gotten those packages away from them with a handful of M&Ms to lure them…and M&Ms are the lure of choice around here.  In fact, since each one of my children were three weeks (yes, three weeks) late (except Erin, she was on time due to an impatient mom, a concerned doctor, and an armful of pitocin) Marc and I often joked about holding a bag of M&Ms on my lap to see if it would get labor to kick in…

But I digress, terribly.  The truth is these snacks are really good, and they are really different.  Great lunch box items.

Funky Monkey comes in four flavors:

Purple Funk- Crunchy banana and acai flavored snack sweet with a tangy aftertaste.  I liked this but not as much as some of the others.  It may be because I think that acai is the Paris Hilton of the fruit world.  A little too over promoted for what it delivers.  My kids didn’t care for these at all.

Carnaval Mix-Banana, pineapple, apple, papaya, and raisins  Nice mix, sweet and crunchy with the occasional texture variation of the chewy raisins.  This was delicious, but predictable.

JiveALime- Pineapple and lime.  Very sweet ripe pineapple with tangy lime.  Sort of like that candy that you have to suck the sour off to get to the sweet part.  My kids love that stuff! If you have an Airhead addict at your house this may tempt them away.  These were my kids favorites.

Bananamon- My favorite.  Sweet banana and cinnamon.  I could eat the entire bag.  When I was a kid I used to eat corn flakes with bananas in it and cinnamon toast on the side.  This is sorta like that.  Only not.  If I was really going to treat myself I would add about 1/4 cup pecans to the mix.

Anyway, great stuff.  Highly recommended.

images:marye audet