Crackers

Just a quick reminder about snack foods!

If you really want to stretch your shekels, don't buy snack foods.

I know, you still need to feed the kids snacks, and fruits and veggies are not the only thing they want to eat.
And you don't want to serve cookies or muffins every day. Too much sugar.

So what do you do?

Go ahead! Make your own crackers! It sounds hard, it seems intimidating, but really it is simple.

Give it a try and let me know how it goes!
Click here for the recipe 

 

Whole Wheat (or other grain) and Flaxseed Crackers (vegan)

I haven't been buying crackers. My cracker standards are high, meaning I expect a good cracker to be all natural, made of whole grains, and free of trans-fats. I can't find any affordable crackers that meet these requirements. I had been bending the requirements for a while, but lately I decided it just wasn't a good decision. Expensive AND unhealthy.

So I stopped buying crackers.

And the complaints haven't stopped. I didn't realize just how often my boys were eating crackers dipped in or shmeared with something.

I had to fix the problem, just because I was sick of hearing, "there's nothing to snack on!"
I don't want to hear it anymore...

So we tried making homemade pretzels. Delicious! But a lot of work. Too much for me, in fact.

The cracker requests haven't stopped, but I was intimidated by all the cracker recipes I found. It seemed they had to be unhealthy and a lot of work in order to taste good. And then, I discovered this recipe, that made it sound like healthy crackers could be easy!

So of course I changed the recipe a bit, as I can't get whole wheat pastry flour here. And it seemed like it was missing something. And I wanted to cut back on the oil... In other words, I totally changed the recipe!

Here's what we did:

2 cups stoneground whole wheat flour
1/2 cup ground flaxseed
1 tsp salt
2/3 cup water
somewhere between 1/4 and 1/3 cup olive oil

Mix well, but not for a long time. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Roll dough out thinly to cover (I made 2 pans with this recipe) baking sheet and cut into squares/whatever shape you want with a knife. Bake at 190 C for about 12-15 min.
My oven baked them slightly unevenly. Oops

But they were delicious. We'll be making more!
Tip: You can use other kinds of flour, they work really well with spelt flour, or with a mix of various grain flours together! Find your favorite and let me know what you do!

Shared with the Hearth and Soul Blog Hop on June 5, 2012