Fruit and nut fleur de sel crackers

I have a recipe to share with you today. It is delicious. No, don't argue with me. It is delicious. My husband doesn't like anything with dried fruit in it and he loves this. Not only is is tasty, but it's fast. Less than half an hour fast, even if you grind your own almonds. 

Which I do. So you'll need about 2 cups of almond flour (I have some cashews in mine too, I just really like cashews. You can just do almond). About a half pound gives you two cups. I blend this until it's pretty powdery, but it's nice to leave a few chunks in there. You get good texture that way.

About a cup of fruit is all you really need, but I flub this a little and add more. I like fruit. I'm using dried cherries and apricots here, but I also like blueberries and strawberries, cranberries and orange zest; the possibilities are endless. 

Ground almonds and about a 1/2 to 3/4 teaspoon of fleur de sel (if you don't know what fleur de sel is, it's "flower of salt". It's a little moist, light, crunchy. It's very delicious as a finishing salt. It's basically the very top of a crystallized mound of salt and it's a little expensive. Go easy on it.)

Add the fruit. Mix well. Don't worry if the fruit bits stick together. 

Add 1 tablespoon of whatever oil you're using. I'm using olive here, but almond is really good here. Then add 1 teaspoon of some sort of acid. Lemon juice, apple cider vinegar, etc. I used sherry vinegar. I love sherry vin. Add a tablespoon or so of water, just till it comes together.

Mix until the whole thing comes together. It'll look crumbly, but that's fine. It's a cracker, and a crispy one. 

Place on your sheet tray. You can use parchment paper, but I find a silpat (or other silicone baking mat) works the best for this. They are awesome, totally worth how expensive they are. But again, parchment works just fine. Or even oiling your pan, that works too.

Pat it out with your hands a bit and...

Cover with plastic wrap. Grab a rolling pin and start to gently roll the dough to the edges of your pan. Whatever thickness you like is fine. I want crispy, so I'm going to about a 1/4" or less.

My rolling pin won't fit on the tray, so I'm using a bottle to roll the dough out.

If your dough starts to crack at the edges, just pull the plastic back and smoosh it back into place.

This is the exact thickness I like the crackers to be. These will be crunchy and crisp. If you go thicker, you'll have a little bit more chew to them. It's all about what you like best here.

Pop it into the oven at 350 F for about 10 to 15 minutes, depending on your thickness. Watch the edges, when they start to brown you'll want to pull them. The crackers will keep cooking afterwards. You should be able to smell the nuts toasting too. Use all your senses in a kitchen, they'll help you more than you'd ever believe.

Golden and delicious.

Now you can take the whole thing and crackle it into bits. You can also take a cookie cutter and make pretty shapes when you're rolling these, but in my house they go so fast there's not point in prettying them. 

Why we are here

This wasn't planned. The blog, I mean. I didn't anticipate doing this, and I spent a good part of the day debating whether I even should. There are dozens if not hundreds of blogs saying exactly the same thing that I am. They may even say it better, with better pictures and recipes. But I have something to say. And I have a place to say it. So because I can, this new change in my life is going to be documented, photographed, and maybe even read by someone. If you're here, I want to thank you for taking the time to stop here. The story starts a a few months ago.

My husband's health is not ideal. He has a bit of high blood pressure that we've been controlling (or trying somewhat unsuccessfully) with medication. He has been to dozens of doctor visits in the last few months just trying to figure out where the high blood pressure comes from. Then his weight shot up. For no reason. And restricting calories pretty severely hasn't done anything for us. We've had tests done. One doctor thought he was celiac. He wasn't. One put him on the DASH diet. Didn't do a bit of good. One put him on the Mediterranean diet. Kinda helped. Nothing really did anything significant. So we resigned ourselves to him being on medicine forever and probably developing other issues later on. 

I'm a bit of documentary nut. I love them. Seriously, it's an addiction. So anytime something comes up about food, my professional interest is piqued. I've been a professional cook for the last four years or so, and mostly French/Italian food (there was a stint as a sushi chef in there too). When a couple new food documentaries looked interesting, we watched them. Figuring they'd at least be interesting. Well yes, they were. But also horrifying. I can't recall all of the names anymore, but the first one made me want to eat a lot less meat. I kept thinking about how little we could get away with. From the scientific information provided, it's pretty clear that a lot of health problems come from meat and animal products. I went out and bought T. Colin Cambell's book The China Study so I could get more information about the health end. But I still wasn't going to give up things like eggs at that point. 

And then I watched Vegucated. And became fairly horrified with how animals are treated in the current system. I don't have a problem with animals being killed for food. I honestly don't. But I think if you are going to kill an animal, you need to have a purpose. You need to respect that something died to keep you alive. And you need to do it humanely. And that is what is not being done. Animals are pretty much treated like machines. Not only is that cruel, it can't be healthy to you either. By the end of our documentary kick, my husband and I both had decided we were not eating animal products. Anymore. And so we explained it to our families (so they understand and don't feed them to our daughter either), and set a date to stop entirely. We set the date of April 29th, last Monday. Sunday, we got a little bit of meat for a last hurrah and ended up not really finishing our meal. Just didn't seem good. It probably didn't help that I started reading The China Study in the middle of it.

So far things seem okay. It's weird not eating meat and dairy when other people are. And I loved cheese. I'm figuring we won't be perfect at this yet. But it will get better as we go along. One day at a time, I suppose.