Snacking satisfied!

In the quest to maintain our family on the “oil-free” path to coincide with the Lenten promise I made and the teachings in the Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease book we are reading with our office, we started to bake our own “snacks”.

I resorted to time-honored PA treat of the soft pretzel, as I had easily all the ingredients in our home already. It takes a lot of time however, and each batch takes about 2 hours to create 12 medium-sized pretzels. Between the kids and friends/family that we are sharing with I have spent a lot of time rolling dough in just the first few days of this season of Lent.

However, I miss my crackers that I used to get at Trader Joe’s (Flatbread ones covered in seeds that I had NO IDEA would contain oil). At start of the week I was looking at our local store for an oil-free cracker to buy, triumphantly returning from the store with a box of Almond flour crackers, only to have our daughter point out a tiny print on the label indicating oil. Maybe my mask got in the way of my vision when reading the label? Maybe I subconsciously “did not see” the oil on the ingredient list? In any event these would now not do!

Next day I went scouring the stores online for other types of crackers, and thinking myself triumphant once again, I ordered an oat flour based cracker that, upon examining the label online was no-oil…only to receive a case of them in the mail and have my heart sink as an ingredient check in real-life showed oil! This is proving tricky, ultimately I settled on Matzo crackers for processed ones, but I’m thinking I better get started BAKING my own crackers!

We’re awaiting a shipment of no-oil Sunflower seeds to complete the cracker recipe in the “Be a PlantBased Woman Warrior” cookbook, but I have all the other ingredients at the ready, including black sesame seeds! One thing is for sure, you recognize the TIME it takes to make food at home when doing this for each item. I also appreciate my daughter’s saying that she puts “Strength & Love” into each thing she makes, as it is true.

As soon as we have a viable cracker to show-off we will post…

Donna Mueller