Wheat Crackuh!

Wheat Crackers

Prep time: 10 minutes

Ready in: 30 minutes

Cook Time: 20 minutes

Servings: ~40

This thin wheat cracker is simple and thrifty to make. It will taste great with any dip or spread. Experiment with adding different things like herbs or sugar. (I'm eating mine with my soup and pepperjack cheese today and they're DELISH! These taste a lot like wheat thins if you do them the way I recommend at the bottom)

Ingredients:
1 3/4 cups whole wheat flour
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 tsp salt
1/3 cup vegetable oil (I used melted butter)
1 cup water
2 Tbs sugar or molasses (I used honey)

Directions:
In medium bowl stir together flours and salt. Pour in oil, sugar and water and mix until just blended. 
On a lightly floured surface, roll out dough as thin as possible- no thicker than 1/8 inch. You can also roll out onto the cookie sheet and tear off extra dough. 
Place dough on an ungreased baking sheet, and mark squares out with a knife but dont cut all the way through. Prick each cracker with a fork a few times and sprinkle with salt.
Bake for 15-20 minutes in a 350 degree oven or until light brown and crisp.  Baking times will be different depending on how thin your crackers are.  When cool, remove from baking sheet and seperate into individual crackers.

Ok, I changed a few things on this recipe that I think helped with technique and flavor.
I used melted butter instead of oil and honey instead of sugar or molasses. 
I tried rolling the dough out on the pan, but you need a rolling pin without handles if there are edges on your tray. darn. so I just rolled it out on floured wax paper and it worked great and was easy to transfer to the pan cause I just flipped it over onto it and removed the wp from the top.
I wanted to make sure that the salt i sprinkled on top of the crackers stayed on them so I  did a quick spray with pam and then sprinkled and waa laa. it stuck. 
After I removed the crackers, I broke/cut them apart and removed the ones that were crispy enough and jumbled up the remaining crackers and placed them back in the oven for 5-10 more minutes to crispy them up. 
Word to the wise: These are really tasty, but there are two things you need to do to ensure that they turn out in a desirable fashion:
1. when the recipe says to roll them out as thinly as possible, it's not lying. it really means THIN. 1/8 inch is way too thick.  You will have thick chewy cracker bricks of you ignore this advice.
2. If you put an oven safe bowl with water in the corner of the oven it will help crispy these up (as it will with any bread crust you bake, just so you know)

Whew! Now that I've got THAT out of the way... I don't really have that much to say that I didn't say in the last recipe post. 
OH except that I'm finally registered for school now. I'm taking Honors English, Spanish, Exercise Physiology, and Rock History. :) fun fun!
Also, The boot camp I teach is going great in the mornings at 5am!  You all should come! Clarissa has started coming- you rock, girlfriend! (I'm totally channeling you, Lori) 
School starts for the kids two weeks from yesterday. any ideas what I should be sure to do with them before I lose them (and myself) to the impending attendance in the education system?
I also have taken a "break" from facebook. I still comment periodically but it's rare and nothing compared to what I did before. Now I've replaced it with blogging. oh brother. oh well, I look at it as journaling, but I'm going to have to curb even the blogging so I can pay closer attention to real life!  I mean, I have to have something to blog about, right ?? lol. 
Y'all need to post some recipes on here! Get on that, ladies!

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Peanut Butter Cookies (gluten free)

I'm in a cookie frenzy lately. Last week my sister gave me some flourless peanut butter cookies that were oh so yummy! She based them off of Paula Dean's "Magical Peanut Butter Cookie" recipe, and made some changes.

Then after buying my first coconut sugar -HURRAY- I rushed home and made oatmeal heart cookies from Ali and Tom's AMAZING food blog "The Whole Life Nutrition Kitchen" at www.nourishingmeals.com. (Seriously, I've finally found my food blog!!!) They were AMAZING!! I ate too many and got a bit sick :( But they were AMAZING!!

Today I was hankerin' for cookies again (I tell you once the ball gets rolling...) I checked out Paula Dean's recipe and it seemed really simple :-) I don't use regular sugar and I'm not a believer in chemical artificial sweeteners, and as usual I couldn't help but make a few changes of my own.

This is the first recipe I've posted using *coconut sugar* It is a new discovery I've made in the sugar alternative world. After learning that while Blue Agave is low-glycemic, it is very high in fructose, supposedly increasing insulin resistance, is highly processed and is not sustainably harvested, I needed to find another low-glycemic substitute. Not to mention the fact that it doesn't bake well at all. All because of the amazing www... I learned about coconut sugar, it being low glycemic - at 35 on the GI, very sustainable (the sugar is tapped off the flower and regenerates quickly - without killing the plant as is the case with agave) and a high nutrition profile. It seemed to be the perfect answer.

As far as baking goes, it is SO much better than agave, and tastes beautiful. It comes in granulated form, and tastes a little bit like brown sugar or caramel. Unfortunately, it is still sugar and SO yummy it's hard for me to limit myself to just one or two cookies, and it kicks off the cravings in my brain... So too much still makes me sick, but a little bit is alright. It is also expensive, but that is actually good thing because then I will save it for true special occasions.

1 cup natural peanut butter*

1 egg

2 T honey

2 T - 1/3 c coconut sugar (or brown sugar)

1/2 tsp vanilla or imitation vanilla

1/4 c unsweetened shredded coconut (opt)

pinch of salt

Mix all ingredients with a hand mixer, roll into small balls - the size of a walnut shell. Press down with a fork. No need to grease a cookie sheet. Bake at 350 degrees F for 15-18 minutes, cool on wire rack.

My boys are my toughest critics. Cory hasn't tried them yet but Ethan gobbled them up :-) That made me smile.

*I learned a trick for stirring my natural peanut butter.... I poured the whole jar into a bowl and mixed it with a hand mixer -duh I don't know why that took me 28 years to figure out- Saved me about 10 minutes of careful stirring. I used the bowl and beaters to mix up this cookie batter, so no extra dishes :) Next time I'll let the kids scrape out the peanut butter with apple slices or something.

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My No-Fail Fall-Back: Chicken and Potatoes

Heya ladies!
I'm loving this blog!  you ladies rock!
I was trying to think of a recipe to post on here and I thought, "hey, I'll just post what I make when I can't decide what to make!"  So here 'tis!

Chicken and Potatoes

2 cans of some kind of cream soup (I usually like to do 1 crm of chicken and 1 crm of mushroom)

1 can water (soup can)

4 sliced russet potatoes (optional)

6 chicken breasts, frozen (if not frozen cut cooking time to 45 min +15 min b.crumb time=1 hr)

6 slices cheese (I usually like to use swiss [even for those who dont like swiss, this is delicious], but I've done cheddar)

1 cup seasoned bread crumbs sold in a paper canister at the store

1/4 c butter, melted

Assemble:
-line bottom of 9x13 with potatoes
-place chicken in dish
-put a slice of cheese on each chicken breast
-mix 1 can water and soups in seperate bowl and then pour over chicken dish
-cover with tinfoil
-place in 375 oven for 1 hour 45 minutes
-meanwhile, mix bread crumbs and butter until b is evenly dispersed.
-at end of time remove tinfoil and sprinkle bread crumb mixture over chicken
-put back in oven, uncovered for 15 minutes until the crumbs are golden

Enjoy!  Serves 6. (but easily halfable) Use sauce on veggies and anything else on your plate!  You can also omit the potatoes from the recipe and serve this with rice, quinoa, baked or mashed potatoes. oober delish.

Family Update:
k, first I have to say that, Clarissa, I'm going to be saying DONG for a while now- I laughed so hard when I read that. 
Since so many awesome benefits are being offered with the change in housing management, I will be starting school in the fall to pursue my texile design and business degree so we can stay and enjoy the perks.  Since Matthew starts kindergarten in August, I'll be an empty nester.. at least for half a day, and it's the perfect situation to get a bit of education in :)  Really, Aaron just hasn't gotten in to professional school yet and until we know what's happening with that we dont want to jump the gun and move.  So many people have moved out and back in and we just want to avoid the stress and finiancial burden that accompanies such an anti-exodus. Dont worry, we wont be here a decade, I promise. Megan is at broadway kids camp right now and tonight will be her performance at chandler center for the arts. She has speaking lines and a solo. I'm excited! She's such a ham.

Yesterday Brittney Walker accompanied me to my "managers" recording room (that sounds so pretencious. manager) and I laid down a couple vocal tracks. It was super neat and I can't wait until he sends me some mp3s!  I've been messing around with my recording software and you can hear some of the files on my myband tab on facebook, but I dont have good recording equipment- it was amazing to hear what a difference the equipment made. sooo fun!

I've been instructing a bootcamp happening every weekday morning at 5:30am at the basketball/volleyball courts in the center of campus by the dorms. it's off of Avery and Williams Campus Loop South/Unity. Come and shed some inches for summer!  Oh yeah, and it's FREE, peeps.  Can't beat free!

Last but not least, CRAFT night is happening every week and for those of you who are still here, we want you here! -And if you've moved but are close enough to come still, get your booty in gear and craft with us!  We had 8 ladies there last night and it was fun. you can see the headband and zipper flower I made last night on my facebook pictures album called design portfolio.  Come every Thursday at 8pm at the Rowan Community House, yo.  Get your craft on!  Shumway, out.

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