Bad Crackers

Well, I wanted the kids to eat less crackers.  Some days it felt like the only thing my middle son consumed was crackers.  And on his steady diet of Goldfish and graham crackers, you'd think he might be wasting away by now.  But fortunately the occasional fruit and vegetable must be doing their job because he isn't languishing.
Way back when, at a time where I was on the healthy eating bandwagon, before I fell off and got back on again, I was very successful at shopping the perimeter of the store.  Getting my produce, meat, and dairy, only venturing down the aisles for a few items.  And during that time I remember thinking that if I could just make my own graham crackers I would feel perfectly happy about the other aisle items I was buying.

Now that the number of cracker eating children has increased and the variety of crackers they have come to subsist on has also increased, the desire for making my own has returned.

I know that the crackers I could make would not necessarily be a health food, but they would be more healthy than their store-bought counterparts, even if only for the lack of unpronounceable ingredients.

So I set off on my cracker making adventure. 

I found many recipes for graham crackers.  There were lots of variations so I picked a couple that had some positive feedback and looked like they might be the kind I was after.


                                          
My first and only attempt thus far is, meh.  2 out of the 3 kids will eat them.  Only the baby really liked them.  They were too thick and soft for my liking.  The next recipe I want to try requires a food processor larger than the one I have.  Though why it is entering my mind only this instant that I could possibly half the recipe is beyond me.  I'll have to work on that.

Next up was cheese crackers.  In all of my searching, I found the recipes were nearly the same.  The only variations seemed to be an added spice here, or a different cooking temperature there.

                                   

   
                                                 

These crackers were alright.  Not even close to what I was shooting for, but edible.  The taste was good but the texture not really. I'll be trying some different tricks for those in the future. 

 My 5 year old daughter is now so skeptical of anything I make, she looks at me like the poison apple witch in Snow White every time I hand her something I've made and tell her to try it. 

Needless to say, I have been successful in getting my kids to eat less crackers, just not in the ways I had been aiming for. I'm not buying crackers much anymore and the ones I make are not very good, therefore their consumption in general has declined.

I've got to step up my game or these kids are going to be the ones who try to eat all the Twinkies they can handle when they go to their friends house.


On a positive note, I have been participating in a produce co-op these past two weeks.  The first week I just got  a regular basket and this week I went with the organic. You get a lot for your money and it's a fun surprise to see what you'll get.  This week I got 5 mangoes.  I'm thinking it's mango salsa time!