Tuesday, August 18, 2015

The case of the mysterious "graham" crackers


These are my favorite brand of gluten free "graham" crackers.  They are tasty, not the exact same taste like Nabisco graham crackers.  But that's ok, I have a cookie that tastes great and dips well into a cold glass of rice milk.  No, they don't come with marshmallows and chocolate, absolutely the weirdest packet photo ever!

Well, my favorite snacking one became hard to find and one day, while scouring the gluten free aisle at Whole Foods, I found this brand.
They met all the requirements, no egg or dairy and not a laundry list of non-food ingredients, and into the cart they went.  The next day wanting a little something, I ripped open the box, unwrapped one and took a bite.  Sigh, they were WEIRD!  Odd texture, and weirdly enough, little flavor.  Now one thing you might not know about gluten free products, but they are usually pricey, and I trend towards cheap.  But I just couldn't bring myself to eat these, nor could I bring myself to toss em into the trash.

A few weeks later, I had come across a spread made my the same folks that makes the brand of vegan butter I eat, so into the cart it goes. 

With this product as soon as I got home I opened it up to taste it.  Oh my golly gee gosh!  This stuff is AMAZING.  Lightly sweet, with a delicate coconut flavor.  I toasted up a slice of bread, sha-zam!  That was great!  If my life was a movie, this would be a montage of me putting this spread on various items.  In my quest to try this on ever more items, I pulled out the evil hated box of "graham" crackers and spread on quite a bit...and about fell to my knees in bliss!



I'm sure all of you love these cookies.  They seem to only appear in Alaska around the winter holidays and then are gone, but they are hands down my favorite store bought cookie.  Those weird assed crackers, with the spread from heaven, somehow, in some way transformed that dull lifeless cracker into tasting like these cookies! 

Now TH was skeptical to say the least, and he considers himself a cookie aficionado extraordinaire.  But bring the super sweet man he is, he gamely took a plain one, took a bite and needless to say, was not impressed.  Then I spread my magic spread on the remaining piece and handed it back.  Heaving a giant "poor me" sigh, he took a bite, amazement and delight shone from him.

"How did that icky cracker turn into butter cookies?"
"Beats me to hell and back.  But aren't they good this way?"

I later sprinkled the top with some coarse sugar and that took the cookie/cracker to nearly twin status. 

Between looking for new things to put the magic spread on, FYI  potatoes are NOT a great vehicle for it.  I was looking for other things to put on those weird crackers.  After trying a few things, jelly-meh, orange marmalade- better than jelly, but still meh.  Next up was smooth peanut butter.  Again some weird magic occurred and they tasted like these cookies, at least to my best ability to recall fading food flavors from over 2 years ago.
After the success of the magic spread + cracker, TH was much more willing to try this combo, and after one bite, opened and ate about 10 crackers with PB on them!

The hunt continues for other combinations to magically turn these dull tedious crackers into something amazingly tasty and delicious.  But even if these are the only two substances that turn a meh cracker, into a face shoving food, its all good!



5 comments:

  1. Crackers of any kind, without anything on them, are quite dull. I never knew there was such a thing as coconut spread!

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  2. I wish I could stand coconut after this post! I don't know why, but I can't get it near my nose. I can smell the minutest amounts in food, and believe me, a lot of food has coconut in it! I'm not allergic, I just can't stand it.

    My go-to spread is Brommel & Brown, a British yogurt based "margarine". It is natural, you can use it in cooking, and it tastes great!

    And yes, plain crackers are dull.

    Peace <3
    Jay

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  3. Wow, Cool! I'm glad you found this delightful stuff, but potatoes?

    Love coconut. What do you think about Nutella?

    Roger

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  4. That dose sound yummy I love coconut! But I'm pretty sure it not on my "healthy eating" plan that I have managed to settle into. (Down 40lbs!) But when we get our Whole Foods (opening across the street from work) I will have to try that as an occasional treat.

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  5. That dose sound yummy I love coconut! But I'm pretty sure it not on my "healthy eating" plan that I have managed to settle into. (Down 40lbs!) But when we get our Whole Foods (opening across the street from work) I will have to try that as an occasional treat.

    ReplyDelete