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.

Thursday Morning Snack

Although I don't eat sweet stuff very often, every now and then I get a hankering for some sort of deliciousness. Today was one of those days. I spent the morning in the woods taking pictures of the beautiful fall colours. It was nice to come home and warm up with a hot cup of tea and a relatively healthy treat.

Beautiful Ontario on a cool fall morning.

I've made this muffin recipe a few times now and it's pretty much disaster-proof. You can use the base of the recipe, omit the carrots, add whatever else you may like (lemon and poppyseed is yummy) and voila! It's a grain-free, refined sugar-free, lower carb treat that still manages to be delicious, moist, and nutritionally dense.

What I ate:

• Grain-free carrot muffin
• Organic, real Earl Grey tea with raw, organic cream and a teensy bit of raw, organic honey

Why it's good:

• The muffins are made without grains, just a very small amount of coconut flour.
• The muffins also have all sorts of healthy fats from the organic, extra virgin coconut oil, the ghee, the soaked and dehydrated, organic walnuts (the soaking removes anti-nutrients that interfere with digestion of the raw nut), and the pastured eggs.
• The 'cream cheese' topping is made with homemade yoghurt which is high in beneficial, probiotic bacteria.
• The organic Earl Grey tea is high in antioxidants and studies have shown that it's actually good for the our lub-dub hearts, but more importantly, it tastes divine. The raw cream is just my way of saying "I love you". Make sure to check your Earl Grey tea for real Bergamot oil. Cheaper teas offer 'flavouring' instead of the real deal.
• A cup of tea and a little muffin after a fall walk in the woods fills my soul with gratitude for the abundance in my life.

Carrot Ginger Muffin Goodness

(adapted from Elana's Pantry)

• 1/2 cup coconut flour
• 1/2 teaspoon sea salt
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 2 heaping teaspoons cinnamon
• 3/4 teaspoon nutmeg
• 1/2 teaspoon dry or 1 teaspoon fresh ginger
• 6 large eggs
• 1/4 cup extra virgin coconut oil
• 1/4 cup ghee (or softened butter)
• 2 tablespoons vanilla
• 1/4-1/2 cup maple syrup
• 2 cups grated carrots
• 1/2 -3/4 cup soaked and dehydrated walnuts
• 1/2 cup raisins or dates

1. Sift the coconut flour into a large bowl. Stir in all of the other dry ingredients.
2. Blend the eggs, oil, ghee, maple syrup, and vanilla in a blender until well mixed.
3. Pour the wet ingredients into the dry, stir until mixed.
4. Stir in carrots, nuts, and dried fruit.
5. I prefer to use unbleached, parchment paper type muffin papers, but if you are placing your muffins directly in the muffin tin, grease first with ghee or coconut oil.
6. Bake at 350 for 10-12 minutes, depending on the size of your tin. Makes 2 dozen muffins.
7. You can easily split this recipe in half if you would like to make less. These muffins freeze very well in case, like me, you relish the ability to just grab a few out of the freezer whenever company may show up (or you just decide you deserve one).

For the 'cream cheese' style topping, simply drain plain yoghurt for a few hours in cheese cloth. Directions can be found here. To the drained yoghurt, blend in some butter, a spot of honey, and some lemon rind. Spread the topping on the muffins once they're good and cool. That's all there is to it!

Getting Oil from a Vegetable

GlugGlug

I was taken aback, the other day, when I had a friend ask what vegetable oil is best to cook with. I mean, it's not that ludicrous of a question if one's source of information is radio sound bites, but this was one of my posse! This girl has endured my rants for years. I must have forgotten to give her the vegetable oil rant (or maybe she's just mastered the art of zoning me out). It got me thinking that there's probably a lot of people out there still confused about vegetable oils and whether or not they're healthy.

Vegetable oils are a highly processed food product. The raw oil, very delicate and unstable, and thus prone to oxidation, is extracted using chemical solvents. The lengthy process of taking this Omega 6 fat (something most of us don't need extra of, thank you very much) and turning it into that giant, plastic tub of oil on your supermarket shelf is nothing short of chemical mischief.

Upon arrival at the factory, the vegetable slurry, wannabe oil, is extracted with the petroleum derivative, Hexane. It is deodorized, bleached, dewaxed, treated with high heat and extreme pressure, and if it's lucky enough to be hydrogenated, it's processed with toxic Nickel catalysts.

By the time they're done with the delicate oils, there is absolutely no nutritional value left in that jug. On the contrary, what you have is a rancid, chemical-laden, nutritionally void bottle of refined oil that actually burdens your body. Add to that the fact that an extremely high percentage of vegetable oil crops are GMO. And there it sits, the toxic oil on the shelf, soaking up the estrogenic plastics from the jug it's in. Just waiting for someone to plop it into their basket and give it a nice, warm, home in their damaged arteries or maybe their fatty liver.

Suppose you buy organic, unrefined, cold-pressed oil from a health food store. These oils are extracted the old fashioned way, with a large press that squeezes the oil from the plant without the use of heat or chemical solvents. Oil of this type should also be stored in dark glass bottles to avoid oxidation. This type of oil is far superior to the commercial variety, but it is still a vegetable oil and, thus, should not be cooked with. It is also high in Omega 6 fatty acids so it should be used sparingly in the diet, more as a trickle for flavor here and there. Stick with extra-virgin, organic olive oil if you're looking for something to make your salad dressing with. Don't even bother with corn, soy, canola, or any of the other vegetable oils.

For cooking, saturated fats, stable under heat, are your best bet. Choose fat sources from healthy, pasture raised animals. Some good choices include tallow, ghee, lard, suet, extra-virgin raw coconut oil, grass-fed raw butter, and rendered fat from any grass fed animal including ducks, chickens, ruminants, and wild game.

Further reading:

• "Unhealthy Vegetable Oils? Does the Food Industry Ignore Science Regarding Polyunsaturated Oils? Implications for Cancer, Heart Disease" by CJ Puotinen
• Vegetable margarines claiming they're hydrogenation-free have a new little trick up their sleeve. Allow Frank Cooper to introduce you to "Interesterification - The Dangerous Replacement for Trans Fats"
• The brilliant Gary Taubes writer for "Science" and independent investigative journalist on "The Soft Science of Dietary Fats"
• The equally brilliant, Mr. Stephan Guyenet, neurobiologist and all-around genius blogger with a Butter vs. Margarine Showdown
• Dr. Kurt Harris weighs in on "Fats and Oils"
• What's wrong with polyunsaturated fats? Let me count the ways..