Low carb recipe: nut crackers

I wanted to do a smoked salmon mousse type thing for a starter for Christmas dinner, but what to have for crunch instead of toast?  We could just have the mousse, wrapped in slices of salmon and leave it at that, but I really wanted some crunch in there.

There's a low-carb group on Facebook and on there, DJFoodie posts recipes every now and then.  And, lo and behold, DJFoodie to the rescue with a crunchy cracker recipe that uses parmesan cheese and nut flour.

I only have almond flour available, and all of the other ingredients already in the house, so I went with a pure almond flour version (if I'd had hazelnuts, I might have ground them in the blender and used them too, but I didn't have any).  I suspect the better crunch finish from the hazelnuts is due to the higher proportion of fat in those nuts.

Anyhoo... here's how they went:-

1. Preheat oven to 135C.
2. Combine ingredients in a mini-chopper or food processor, and mix until a ball of dough has formed or, until it's all smeared up the sides of the chopper bowl but well mixed.

3. Place the dough on a greased sheet of parchment paper or foil.

4. Place another sheet above it, and roll out the dough so that it forms a single thin sheet of dough.

5. Remove the top sheet. Where it's not rectangular, cut bits off the dough and stick bits on so it's roughly rectangular and smooth with a spatula or palette knife. It's pretty soft and squidgy, so you can just push any lumps or cracks together.

4. Use a pizza cutter (or just a chopping knife) cut through the dough to form 48 little rectangles. If you want precision, measure it first and mark along the edges where to cut.

5. Place the parchment or foil on a thin baking tray.
 

6. Bake for roughly 45 minutes, but start checking at 30 minutes. It will probably crisp around the edges first. You want the cheese to melt in the mixture and then you want any moisture to burn off. The cracker will darken and firm up. When the sheet is the same even slightly darker color, across the enter sheet (the edges and the center are all the same color), remove the sheet from the oven.

7. Let the sheet cool completely, then pick up the crackers and break where you made the cuts.

8. Serve with dip, cheese, pate etc.

Now, I think the ones I made are too thick and they're more biscuits than crackers, but they are beautifully crispy.  DJFoodie cuts the mix into 48 servings, compared with my 24.  So, perhaps using 2x baking sheets and rolling it a lot thinner would be better.  And maybe gruyere rather than parmesan, so they're a bit less strongly flavoured.

And biscuit (well, OK... bar)

We ran out of fruit, nut and seed bar quite a while back so with a triathlon tomorrow I had to get on with making some more today.  And I thought, as well as making it thicker so it cooks up softer, I'll do what I've wanted to do for a while and that was use some really fruity Dorset Cereals muesli as the main bulk of the bar.  I reckon it's worked really really well.  They've come out thick, well stuck together and slightly soft.  Lower fat, higher protein and higher carbs than recent batches:-

Serves 16:-

Calories (kcal)	207.1
Carbohydrate (g)	26.6
Protein (g)	5.6
Fat (g)	8.7
Fibre (g)	2.9
Alcohol (g)	0.0
Fruit & Veg	0.1

Ingredients

• 160g Honey, Pure, Clear, Average
• 125g Peanut Butter, Crunchy, No Added Sugar, Organic, Whole Earth
• 50g Breakfast Cereal, Puffed Rice, Wholegrain, Brown, Original, Organic, Kallo
• 450g Breakfast Cereal, Muesli, Fantastically Fruity, Roasted & Toasted, Dorset Cereals

Method

1. Pre-heat oven to 140-150C and line a square or rectangular baking tin with greaseproof paper.
2. Weigh cereals into a bowl and break up any big bits of nut and fruit
3. Weigh peanut butter and honey into a separate bowl. Microwave for 30s, stir and microwave for a further 15s.
4. Mix all of it together thoroughly and dollop into the baking tin. Press down firmly (use the back of a spoon or a bit of greaseproof paper and your hands which I find easier).
5. Bake for 30-40 minutes or until golden. Leave to cool until hard. Then turn out and chop with a sharp knife into portions.

Yep, more rest

Brekkie in bed, brought by Mr TOTKat after he'd got back from his morning run :o)  So that was nice.  I've done loads of domestic bits and bobs today; 3x washing loads, stripped the bed, made nut and seed bars...

So.  I made fruit and nut bars before twice now and they worked really well.  I decided to try to replicate 9 Bars myself but instead of oil and sugar to bind the bars, I decided to use just honey.  Oops.  As I was pressing the mix down into the grease-proof paper lined oven dish I could see that the mix was sticking really badly to the paper.  When it was cooked and pretty much cooled, I turned over the slab and... ohyes the paper was totally stuck, the honey had sunk to the bottom and was still very very sticky.

It's all chopped up into bits now and I've stuck it in the fridge to try to firm it up a bit.  I suspect it will have to stay in there until the second before it's eaten.  You can see here that it's all shiny from the honey (it's bottom-side up here in the photo).  It's pretty clear that the peanut butter mixed with the honey in the fruit and nut bars I made before helps to emulsify the honey as bit and keep it drier.  Eh, you live and learn.  These are going to be really tasty little bars, but a total nightmare to handle, plus some of them still have bits of greaseproof paper stuck pretty hard to them.

I also made up a chilli batch today and I think it's a good one.  The only annoying thing was that we actually didn't have any fresh chillies left.  I did put a lot of cayenne into the chilli sauce, but the whole point is that there are chilli peppers in there.  So I decided to bite the bullet and harvest some of my chillies to add in.  The biggest, plumpest three on the plant were selected and plucked but they looks so small on the chopping board and despite being really crisp and juicy, I don't think they were anywhere near ready to be picked despite having been on the plant for a month now.

It does taste really good so far so after a good old freeze and re-heat I'm pretty confident this is going to be pretty tasty in the end.  Plus, I'm definitely going to have a few lunches out of this batch as well as dinners.  Chilli for lunch really does rock!  You can see most of the apple rising to the top as the chilli matures here.  We usually put apple, pear and raisins in the chilli which gives it a certain sweetness and richness but pears are not good at the moment and I actually forgot the raisins this time!

B - toasted Food Doctor wholemeal, seeded bagel with a poached egg and Marmite
L - ciabatta with Philadelphia Light, sweet peppers and mustard
S - Dr Karg crisp bread and cottage cheese
D - rose veal rib-eye steak with sweet potato wedges and peas

Calories (kcal) [kcals to maintain weight (inc. exercise]	1661 1788]
Protein (g)	107.5 (26.7%)
Carbohydrate (g)	178.2 (41.5%)
Fat (g)	56.9 (31.8%)
Fibre (g)	20.4
Fruit & Veg	5.2

Drat

OK, so the protein powder is officially Good. But, of course, I didn't order any more until the day before yesterday so I've now not got any for tomorrow. Drat. Still, there's chocolate milk to keep me going until it arrives. Really really hope it comes tomorrow at some point so I can get back to it on Friday morning.

Natural, strained Greek Yogurt for breakfast, with protein powder, fruit compote and a sprinkling of nuts is pretty nice. The protein powder is more than sweet enough to make the natural yogurt really quite decadent tasting, so I'll be doing that for a while I think.

Exercise - 50 minutes weights (HRmax - 184, HR avg - 158)

B - Greek yogurt with 1 scoop whey, Summer Fruits compote and a sprinkle of walnuts
S - banana
*gym*
S - chocolate milk
L - salad - spinach, tomato, red pepper, capers, spring onion, prawns and lemon juice
S - carrot and caramelised onion houmous
S - clementines
S - fruit & nut mix
D - venison steak with mashed potato, sweet potato and carrot and broccoli

Calories (kcal) [Kcals to maintain weight (inc. exercise)

1658 2194]

Protein (g)	113.5 (27.6%)
Carbohydrate (g)	192.7 (43.9)
Fat (g)	52.0 (28.5%)
Fruit & Veg	12.6

Eating crow now alright

Having been so pleased with my lack of weight/fat gain over Christmas, I've just managed to weigh in 2.5kg heavier than 3 weeks ago. Way to go! AND I've done 3 really hard weights sessions this week where I've increased the weights quite significantly (for me - e.g. bicep curls which are new in this routine, I've upped from 5kg dumbbells to 7kg dumbbells in 3 sessions - 40% increase!) on some exercises and increased a bit on most. I ache like a bugger and my belly is wobbling; nice contrast there! I don't fit into shirts I fitted into nicely 3 weeks ago. It's all down to bad eating and too much drinking. I know that. I had a huge pile of bread yesterday for the first time in a very very long time and my stomach was phenomenally uncomfortable afterwards - I'm just not used to eating bread much any more.

So. Never has it been a better time to get a grip on food and drink and get back to doing things properly, and in fact take things up a notch:-

• I will complete 3 weights sessions per week (not a feeble 2; but work commitments may torpedo this sometimes) of 40+ minutes.
• I will complete 1-3 cardio sessions a week of 30+ minutes hard effort.
• I will take part in at least 2 of the 4 Thames Turbo sprint triathlon series.
• I will increase my protein intake overall as a proportion of my daily nutrition - by using protein supplements where/if necessary.
  
• I will significantly decrease my intake of simple carbohydrates; bread (eat that maybe once a week anyway), potatoes, pasta (almost never eat that anyway)
• I will not cut out couscous (I like it a lot and it's a great complex carbohydrate)
• I will have no more than 1/2 bottle of wine per week (or 2x cans of lower alcohol beer) and it will count as a cheat/free meal in itself.
• I will post my food and exercise plan/results every day (90% of the time averaged over a month)
  

And the lesser ones:-

• I will try yogurt with fruit in/on and maybe some nuts for breakfast at least 4 times before giving up if I don't like it.
• I will make lunches up in bulk a couple of days in advance to make things easier.
• I will try to fear nuts less as a snack - yes they're very calorific for their weight/bulk but they -are- good for me in small amounts.
• I will eat bananas as a snack before exercise only (or within 2 hours either side of it, but at no other times)

Wish me luck; it's going to take a bit more discipline than I've been maintaining the last few months.

I've got a skiing holiday in March which may mess things up a bit due to "Sno Camp" being on a Thursday for six weeks which means no weights on Wednesday or Friday as it looks like there will be at least some strength training in those sessions. Not quite worked out how to work around that and keep up the cardio and have 2 rest days in the week, so we're thinking maybe that it'd be better not to do "Sno Camp" at all; it's bound to be targetted at people who have done bugger all exercise all year anyway - and... have you -seen- my thighs?