Unlike all the recipes you find out on the net for balanced bars, these are not sweet. Sometimes the flavor of sweet will set me off on an eating binge when I am not hungry but rather bored or anxious or stressed. These tasted really good with the Watkins Vanilla Green Tea with an extra drop of vanilla flavoring added to it.

Oatmeal Tea Crackers

by Karen Krooskos

Yield: 20 complete food block crackers (that is, unless you cut them up into little tiny crackers!) These are very substantial crackers (hard). If your teeth don't like hard stuff, roll them VERY thin.

Ingredients:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Place all ingredients in a bowl and stir until blended. This is easier than it sounds, because you want a dough that is real stiff, so it is going to require a great deal of mixing. I used a rubber spatula to cut all ingredients together. I found that using the Old Fashioned Reduced Fat Peanut Butter was better, because it was more liquid, which helped in the mixing. Crunchy-style would be okay as well.

After the dough is formed--(you can add a bit more water if it will help you work it better, but not more than 1 more Tablespoon-- grease a cookie sheet and transfer the dough ball onto it. Begin by pressing the dough flat with your greased hands. Then use a rolling pin to roll it out to about 1/8 inch thick. Use your spatula to make the edges straight and perpendicular to one another.

Using a very sharp knife or a pizza cutter (my preference), cut the dough into 20 equal pieces. I found that the pieces were a bit large (2"x2"), so I also cut them diagonally so that each triangular piece was half a food block.

If you are feeding them to kids or folks who still like a touch of sweet, a light dusting of fructose or sugar is okay, but these are crackers, not cookies, so don't expect them to be sweet! They have a delicate, nutty flavor to them. (Note: Nico prefered the sugared ones, and since we all know how picky THAT 5 year old is, gauge your own recipe accordingly.)

Bake on 350 degrees for 12-15 minutes, until starting to turn golden around the edges. Store in an airtight container after they have cooled. Oats have a natural preservative in them, but peanuts don't, so store in the fridge.

Nibble with a nice cup of herb tea!

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