You’re just five ingredients away from enjoying the crisp and crunch of this gluten-free and vegan rosemary crackers recipe.

It’s easy to feel reckless with your diet when you’re a snacker. But if you reach for unprocessed snacks instead of processed, high-sodium ones, there’s no room for shame in your snacking game. This gluten-free and vegan rosemary crackers recipe is a five-ingredient concoction that has as much snap and flavor as it does wholesome nutrition.

What’s in Them

I’ll keep this section as short as the ingredients list: gluten-free flour mix, flax meal, rosemary leaves, coconut oil, and water. We’re talking high-fiber, high-protein crackers with the high-heat resistant fat coconut oil and the earthy fragrance of rosemary.

Why Homemade

Not many people make their own crackers, especially when there are so many varieties on the market, including gluten-free and vegan ones. But even when something seems perfect – say, a brand that checks off all of your dietary preference boxes – there is that silenced understanding that any company will still try to cut corners in ways the home cook (that’s you!) wouldn’t dare.

The idea of homemade crackers also feels intimidating – it seems like it would involve special mass-production machinery to achieve that iconic cracker crisp, thinness, and uniformity. But crackers are actually very easy to make. In fact, they’re nearly foolproof. So, why not spice up your cracker game with a little homemade flair? There’s nothing more delicious than the fruits of home kitchen labor, so roll up your sleeves for a whopping 30 minutes, make this five-ingredient gluten-free and vegan crackers recipe, and thank me later.

How to Serve

You can serve the crackers on a cheese plate, filled with a variety of raw goat and sheep cheeses (easier to digest than regular cow’s milk cheese), or give delectable vegan cheeses a go. You can nosh on the crackers without any topping, too — they’re that good! There are hundreds of ways to enjoy crackers, so don’t hold back!

Gluten-Free Rosemary Crackers Recipe

Serves two to four

Ingredients

• 2 cups gluten-free flour mix (I use Bob’s Red Mill’s flour)
• 5 tablespoons flax meal
• 2 tablespoons fresh rosemary leaves
• 1/2 teaspoon sea salt
• 5 tablespoons coconut oil, melted
• 1/2 cup water

Directions

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit.

In a food processor, pulse together the flour, flax meal, rosemary, and sea salt. Slowly add in the coconut oil and water. Continue to pulse the mixture until it begins to form a ball. If it is too wet, add more flour. If it is too dry, add more water. You should be able to work with the dough, forming a ball, without it sticking to your hands.

Remove the dough from the food processor and form a tight ball. Place it between two sheets of parchment paper and use a rolling pin to roll the dough thin. Remove the top parchment paper and use a pizza cutter to slice the rolled-out dough into cracker shaped sizes. You can keep the dough as it is – sliced without separating the individual crackers.

Transfer the parchment paper to a baking sheet and bake the crackers for 10 minutes, or until the dough is lightly browned and crisp. Let the crackers cool and then carefully snap them apart from one another. Serve and enjoy!

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As a shift worker, my eating habits leave a lot to be desired. Mealtimes are scheduled around a continually-changing work roster and I often end up snacking at the oddest of times, including 3 o’clock in the morning. And while I’d like to say it’s all healthy food, unfortunately it’s not. For some reason, an apple doesn’t seem as appealing as ice cream in the middle of the night just before I head for bed.

Habits like mine are not unusual for shift workers, or for that matter, a large percentage of the population. Recognizing this, researchers are starting to examine more closely how at our eating habits can affect weight gain. In particular, they are focusing on the relationship between the body’s natural circadian rhythm and related rest cycles (i.e. body clock), eating habits and weight gain.

Researchers at Northwestern University, interested what happens when eating habits conflict with natural body rhythms, set up a study to examine off-schedule eating. They divided lab mice into two groups, allowing one group to have unlimited access to high-fat foods during their normal rest periods and the other group unlimited access to the same foods during their normal activity periods. The results – those who snacked during rest periods increased in weight by 48%, over double that of those who snacked during normal activity periods.

This study, published in the journal Obesity, suggests that those who snack in the midnight hour and at other times of inactivity are at much higher risk of weight gain.

That being the case, could the answer to the current obesity epidemic be as simple as avoiding midnight snacking?

Image: Greencolander

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