Whole Wheat Cheese Crackers

After Thing 1 was born, I didn’t know how to cook. It wasn’t that I forgot, I just was physically incapable of bringing a meal together. The act of leaving the room would bring on screams of pain from my teeny baby, and given that there was maybe 45-50 minutes in between each painful nursing session, what was I going to make? A sandwich? I basically sustained myself with Cheezits during this early point in motherhood. I would just eat as many as I could while nursing. I was mostly careful not to drop the crumbs on his head though.

I have not purchased Cheezits since I started this blog. And while I am not super strict with food away from home (since it is limited anyway with all my packed lunches); I have also not met up with a Cheezit since I started the blog either. But I miss them. I still see the boxes in that aisle of the grocery store that I no longer shop in. My grocery store keeps organics in a different place, but for some reason the keep organic canned tomatoes with their conventional brethren. And this just happens to be the aisle where the Cheezits are. And seeing them is like running into an old boyfriend. You know there used to be something between you, but you just keep your head down as you walk past hoping that you get away without a conversation.

I also have issues with the fishy crackers. I used to buy them all the time; but between the food dyes and all the chemical preservatives and the ridiculous amount of salt, that is another food that has not been purchased by me since I began this blog. Though for sure, people have given them to my kids. Well meaning parents will share on the playground. And the school Thing 1 attends for a couple hours a day gives them as a snack. I am sure he stuffs his face, knowing he must take advantage while he can since his mean old mom won’t buy them.

Then last week a friend posted this link from the Smitten Kitchen on my Facebook wall. Thanks sooooo much for sharing! The entry was a recipe for homemade whole wheat goldfish crackers. I was too intrigued. And the recipe, adapted originally from The Lee Brothers Cookbook, was stupid easy. And I like stupid easy. The author asked if someone would make the recipe using only whole wheat flour as she did not. I figured that was pretty much an engraved invitation to copy her and write this whole post. So here it goes:

Whole Wheat Cheese Crackers
6 Ounces shredded cheddar cheese (She recommends orange cheese, I do not-it might be colored with food dyes, just skip the orange stuff and stick with white. And I do think that raw milk cheese is worth it. Also--grate it yourself, pre-grated cheeses are loaded with weird ingredients and anti-caking agents)
4 tablespoons of butter
¾ cup of whole wheat flour (I used whole wheat pastry flour because that’s what I had)
¼ teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon onion powder

In a food processor, combine all ingredients until the mix forms a ball. The dough should be pliable, but not too soft. Keep some extra flour on your surface for keeping the dough dry. Roll out dough to 1/8 of an inch thick. Cut out shapes and bake them with a little room in between each cracker. Bake at 350 degrees for 12-15 minutes. Makes about 2 dozen small cookie sized crackers. Like my super old antique cookie cutters? I have been carting these around from house to house ever since my mom passed. They had to be my grandmothers!

This recipe is PHENOMENAL. But don’t kid yourself. These are not really crackers. They are really like eating a buttery piece of cheese paradise. The flour simply acts in holding all the cheese and butter together. They taste waaaaaaay better than fishy crackers and they taste real, unlike Cheezits. So I would say these are improved Cheezits. But I warn you. You can eat the entire batch. You will not notice how quickly they will go. I plan on telling the baby sitter that there is a strict 3 cracker rule. Because the kids would gorge themselves on these!

This is maybe the best recipe I have made in 6 months. It is an instant staple. I will likely make this for every party I throw from now on. They are ridiculous. Sorry to the gluten free and lactose free crowd. I should have apologized in advance. But if someone wanted to try these out with rice flour would you let me know? Shoot me an email or tweet at me, or just link me up to a blog post about it? I bet The Smitten Kitchen would be interested in hearing about it too!

This post is part of Simple Lives Thursday from Sustainable Eats!

The To Do List: American Cheese

Have you ever started something, like search for the answer to a question, only to trip onto another adventure altogether, never really having found the answer to the original question you thought you'd find? Okay that does sound more complicated than it needs to be, but that is exactly what happened to me today.

I went online today to print out some articles on cheese, specifically processed or American Cheese. I wanted to find the answer to the question 'What is American Cheese made of?' And apparently others have asked the same question because as I typed it into Google, 'What is American cheese made of' popped right up into the entry line at google.com. More than one person is trying to find answers to what they are eating!

Well I read the usual Wikipedia entries, but they failed to yield anything nefarious, so I kept looking. There were some entries that discussed vaguely what met the 'legal definition of cheese', and that intrigued me. I googled 'what is the legal definition of cheese'. That brought me to answers.com.

They had some fascinating information about American cheese. They state that:

"Processed cheese is...subject to legal restrictions and standards. Processed American Cheese must contain at least 90 percent real cheese. Products labeled "cheese food" must be 51 percent cheese, and most are 65 percent. Products labeled "cheese spread" must also be 51 percent cheese, The difference is that such foods have more water and gums to make them more spreadable. "Cheese Product" usually refers to a diet cheese that has more water and less cheese than American cheese, cheese food or cheese spread, but the specific amount of cheese is not regulated."

Wikipedia also documents that:

"After an FDA warning letter protesting Kraft's use of MPC [milk protein concentrate, an ingredient which does not appear in the above FDA definition of cheese] in late 2002, some varieties of Kraft Singles formerly labeled "Pasteurized Prepared Cheese Food" became "Pasteurized Cheese Product", Velveeta went from "Pasteurized Process Cheese Spread" to "Pasteurized Prepared Cheese Product" and Easy Cheese went from "Pasteurized Process Cheese Spread" to "Pasteurized Cheese Snack" "

So as you can see, the company simply changed the name of the commodity after pressure from the FDA that their product did not meet the legal guidelines. They simply changed the name of their commodity to something that is not regulated. But to the American consumer, the regulated term "Cheese Food" does not have a clear definition. So how is that any different from the unregulated term "Cheese Product" or "Cheese snack"? It's not, we can't tell the difference without doing some Internet research.

Answers.com gave me the most reliable information about what American cheese actually was. Apparently one way of making American Processed Cheese was to take remnants of cheese like cheddar or colby, and grind them up into a powder. Then mix the powder with water and other gums and other fillers (no more than 10%!!) and pour the mix into a block to let it set. There, you have American Cheese. I couldn't find what the fillers or gums were specifically. Apparently everyone else is okay enough with this answer that they will eat it.

Anyway, I bought a mild cheddar cheese this weekend (not organic-because I wanted one made by a cheese maker, not a major corporation) and my hope is that Thing 1 won't notice the difference. I kind of don't care if he eats it or not. Cheese is a food that is really high in fat and often salt, and it is a treat in my mind, not something that is a food that you force a kid to eat if he doesn't want to. But I am ditching the processed cheese. Because one of these days I will be happy to say that my son loves really good cheese, not that gloopy slightly orangy stuff that comes individually wrapped in plastic.

But during my research, a light went off in my head. I have wanted to make my own cheese for a while, ever since I read Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle!. And the article in Answers.com got my mind a-racing. I am going to make my own cheese. This is going to be AWESOME!

Notes:

American Cheese. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. wikipedia.com 17 May, 2010.

Processed Cheese. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. wikipedia.com 17 May, 2010.

Cheese: Definition. Answers.com. 17 May, 2010.