Monday mornings at Honeysuckle Hill

  Last night, at the very last minute...I decided to make some healthy crackers to go with our Sunday night supper salads. I've been perusing recipes on the web, found a lovely site called Maria's Country Kitchen,. written by one of the famous Rodale family women. I found a lot of recipes for homemade crackers and decided that I wanted the easiest one I saw, lol.  There are whole grain crackers, no grain crackers, cooked cracker, raw crackers...vegan crackers...you name it, someone has tried to make it. It's a lot of time consuming fun looking at new recipes. lol


  This picture is the mixed up cracker dough all patted out in the pan.   The basic ingredients are simple enough :


2 cups whole wheat pastry flour (I use Bob's Red Mill)
1 tsp. salt
2/3 cup warm water
1/3 cup olive oil




  Then I got a little wild, and added a few raw sunflower seeds, some flax seed and some black sesame seeds. Then I thought--rosemary would be good!  And garlic granules. 


   Just in case I was getting a little over the top, I thought I'd better stop.


   You mix it up with a fork or spoon and mix it just until the ingredients are combined.  I put a sheet of parchment paper on the baking sheet, but you can just oil up your pan, then oil up your hands, and put the dough onto your sheet and start patting it out to the edges of the baking sheet.  I have a really large sheet from my restaurant days that I use--if you use smaller ones you'll probably need 2.  Try to pat it out as uniformly as possible, but don't make yourself too crazy with it.  It's not rocket science folks--just munchies! lol  I ground cracked black pepper onto the tops and ground some sea salt too, just because I could.


  Then I baked it at 375 degrees.  Now--her original recipe said to bake them for 15 minutes. Mine took longer than that. Ovens vary, sloppy cooks like me mess up baking times because I put in a little too much water or oil...you know--usual stuff.  I think next time I'm going to try baking it at 400 degrees and see what happens.


  Here's what was left halfway through our salads:

 (As one of my friends says: click to biggify)


    Here are the salads:

 Needless to say, the crackers were a big hit with Mr Man and I just had a few more for lunch with my soup.
 I'll definitely be making them from now on. That's the problem with some of this stuff, you start making it from scratch and you can never go back to store bought junk again. I think they could have been a little thinner and crisper if I'd rolled them out with a rolling pin and that would be good too. But these were yum.




  Okay--Monday chores calling my name.  It's been a rainy morning and I slept in...so cozy and calming, falling rain.  The critters are all pretty serene too,lol.




   Bon Apetit!