Delicious, Grain-Free Crackers

I love these crackers, they make my life a whole lot easier. I know, it's a cracker. What in the world has happened to my life that a cracker can make it easier?! Motherhood.

You can put anything on these babies: nut butter, cheese, meat, homemade cream cheese style spreads, or even just a pat of raw butter or ghee. They're cheap and simple to make and great to have around as snacks for the kids (or the big people). They're loaded with all sorts of nutritional goodness and easy to load up with any sorts of spices or veggies you like which easily adds tasty variety. You don't need a dehydrator, your oven on its lowest setting will work, but a dehydrator keeps the temperature lower, which, in turn, keeps those wonderful enzymes intact.

A wee pat of raw butter and a sprinkle of sea salt is divine on these powerful little crackers.

The basic recipe is modeled, loosely, on what I do, but by all means, experiment with flavours you like. The recipe is pretty much foolproof. As long as you have the flax seeds in there to 'gel' it all together, you really can't go wrong.

Ingredients (organic and local is always best, if possible):

• 3 cups raw, whole flaxseed
• 1 cup raw sunflower seeds
• 1 cup raw pumpkin seeds
• 1/2 cup chia seeds
• 1/2 cup black sesame seeds
• 1 cup raw parsley or cilantro, chopped fine
• 1 cup random shredded vegetables (I will sometimes use grated carrot, sliced green onion, grated beets, grated ginger and garlic etc... whatever you like)
• 2 Tablespoons kelp powder
• Sea Salt to taste
• Eden Wasabi powder to taste (optional)

Directions:

• Put the seeds in a large bowl with 1 tsp of sea salt, and cover with water, Soak for 6 to 8 hours. You will notice that the flax will continuously soak up the water. Just stir in more to keep the seeds submerged (about 1/2 an inch of water above the level of the seeds). By the end of the soaking time, your seeds will be plump and have a gelled consistency.
• Add all of the other ingredients to the seeds and stir well. Clean hands do the best work here.
• Spread the mixture out on parchment lined cookie sheets if using your oven. You want to spread the future-crackers out thinly. They should resemble the thickness that you want your crackers to be. If you're using a dehydrator, the same directions apply, only, of course, you are using the appropriate trays.
• Put your oven on the lowest possible temperature (110 degrees is ideal, but if your oven doesn't go below 150 degrees or so, that's o.k.).
• Dry for 3 or 4 hours, remove the trays and score into the size of crackers you would like. Return tray to oven or dehydrator to continue drying. It may take up to 8 - 10 hours to dry the crackers. Near the end, you can speed things up by breaking them along the scored lines and flipping them over to completely dry out the bottoms.
• The crackers will be completely dry and crispy when done. There should be no moisture of 'chewiness'. Allow to cool before sealing in glass containers. These will keep for at least a month or two, although even when I make double batches around here, they're gone in a couple of weeks.

Avoiding the Post Halloween Sugar Coma

Our youngest daughter had a Halloween party at school today. That meant plates of cupcakes, fresh from the box, topped with blobs of hydrogenated icing, candy galore, and weird balls of pink taffy stuff. Blech.. The thing is, from a kid's perspective, this stuff looks pretty good.

I always try to give my kid's an alternative to what their class is eating in celebration of whatever event may be going. More importantly, however, I educate my kids on why I'm not giving them those foods, what those foods do inside our bodies, and what the foods they are eating are doing to contribute to their sharp minds, healthy bodies, and stable emotions. All of our kids probably have more knowledge on nutrition than 90% of the adults I speak with. It's important, to us, that they really understand 'why' so they can be empowered to go out there and consume foods that make them strong and vital.

Shelly, over at This Primal Life, has a great, simple (5 ingredients!), primal recipe for Almond Butter Pumpkin Brownies. They're good, I promise (I tried them last night). We don't eat roasted almond butter so I substituted that with ghee and homemade soaked walnut butter. Yumma Yumma in my Tumma.