Tag: Wheat Thins

Choc’ Full and Wheat Thin

Chocolate aficionado that I am, the recent headline of the possible buyout of The Hershey Company instantly grabbed my attention. Hershey has been around for well over a hundred years; the American brand most associated with chocolate (no matter what you think of their products). But one detail caught my attention even more than the chocolate. Mondelez, the purported buyer of Hershey, also makes Wheat Thins snack crackers. Suddenly this announcement is downright riveting.

If you don’t have a box of them in your pantry right now, you’re at least familiar with Wheat Thins.  The flat, square, unashamedly crunchy crackers have been around forever (that is, if 1947 is the same as forever).  Wheat Thins are packaged in the bright yellow box with the distinctive red Nabisco logo in the upper corner.  The box top encourages you to “Open for 100% Awesome” and boy do I ever.  I sometimes wonder whether Nabisco has baked more Wheat Thins or Oreos over the course of their respective existences.  As a kid I would’ve hoped that winner would be Oreos.  These days I nosh more like an adult and prefer the ultimate snack cracker.

Imposter crackers

Here’s where you come at me with your own “ultimates”.  Maybe your pantry is stocked with Cheez-it crackers instead of Wheat Thins.  Maybe “everything sits on a Ritz” in your house.  Or you like Premium saltines because they’re, well, saltier.  Are you’re one of those inexplicables who actually prefer table water crackers?  You must’ve really liked communion wafers as a kid.  Nothing says “Styrofoam” like the taste of a table water cracker.

Frequent companion

Wheat Thins was (were?) introduced to my palate at a very young age.  My dad was obsessed with them.  I can’t think of a time I entered our pantry where the big yellow box wasn’t present.  My dad would eat them right out of the box instead of bothering to pair with cheese or dip.  My dad was never one to talk with food in his mouth, but I swear I can still hear him holding conversations with my mother while simultaneously crunching a mouthful of Wheat Thins.  Apparently obsessions are hereditary.

Wheat Thins are described as “100% Whole Grain”, which is a sly way to throw you off the canola oil, sugar, cornstarch, and other garbage you’ll find on the ingredients list.  Admittedly there were several years where I strayed from Wheat Thins.  At the time our pantry morphed into a collection of decidedly more healthy options, and many, many boxes of Wheat Thins gathered dust on grocery store shelves.  We indulged in almond, baked, and organic wheat crackers instead, as if any of them held a candle to Wheat Thins.

King of snack crackers

I can’t say exactly when they made their comeback, but suddenly Wheat Thins is a pantry staple again.  Probably because I missed their “indescribably delicious taste”; a spot-on advertisement because I can’t describe what makes a Wheat Thin so delicious.  Whatever the attraction, the recommended serving size of “16 pieces” is laughable.  Heck, I grab that many in one handful.  On that note, I’m eternally grateful to Nabisco for creating a “Party Size” box of Wheat Thins (and I’m perfectly content to be the only one at the party).

Wrong, wrong, wrong!

To be clear, we’re only talking about the “original” here.  I was horrified to learn there are over twenty spins on the taste of Wheat Thins, including “lime”, “chipotle”, and (gag) “dill pickle”.  Then Nabisco went completely off the rails and created sweet versions of Wheat Thins, including “honey” and “lightly cinnamon”.  Those last two have been discontinued because, c’mon, did they really think the king of sweet crackers – the graham – could be dethroned?

Like a lot of food products I was raised with, Wheat Thins are not as “original” as they claim to be today.  They just aren’t.  I can’t say how many of them I’ve eaten in my life but let’s go with a billion, shall we?  That makes me an unquestionable Wheat Thins expert.  And I’m here to tell you the taste may be the same but the consistency is suspect.  Wheat Thins are a little crunchier these days than they used to be.  If they’d just let me into their factories I bet I could figure out exactly which ingredient they swapped out (in the interest of profit margin, of course).

If I were you (wait… reverse that; if you were me), keep an eye on Mondelez.  You know them by their former name: Kraft Foods.  Mondelez is quietly consuming the entire snack aisle.  Chips Ahoy, Triscuit, Sour Patch, Toblerone, Dentyne, even Tate’s Bake Shop (another “thin” delight) all belong to this foody conglomerate.  Hershey Kisses (and Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups!) may soon join the list.  But if someday we all wake up and finally realize these products are terrible for us, I hope the one cracker Mondelez is still making on the day it closes its doors is Wheat Thins.  I’m not sure I can live without them.

Some content sourced from the CNN Business article, “Hershey’s stock explodes higher on report Mondelez offered to buy it”, and Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.

Sweeter Than Honey

We all have favorite name-brand products, and crackers are no exception. I grew up on Nabisco’s Wheat Thins. Years later I developed a taste for the more sophisticated shredded-wheat Triscuit. When I first met my wife, she introduced me to Kellogg’s buttery Club Crackers. Each of these products is a little different (and today we prefer healthier versions of all three). But I think most would agree, there’s nothing quite like the taste of a graham cracker.

As I put graham crackers under the spotlight today I wonder what comes to your mind first.  For me, it’s two things.  First, I’m taken back to childhood mornings at Sunday school, where the preferred snack was honey graham crackers and pineapple juice.  I can’t think of another time or place where I ever had that combination of foods.  Maybe the sugar overload was a strategy to keep us awake during the Bible stories?  Second, I endlessly debate whether a graham is a cracker or a cookie.  If you’re at all familiar with the ingredients, grahams lean towards “cookie”.  They’re called a cracker, they look like a cracker, but nine out of ten stores stock them in the cookie aisle.

Graham cracker or “graham cookie”?

It’s appropriate my first memory of graham crackers is at church.  They’re named after Sylvester Graham, a nineteenth-century preacher whose constant message was temperance.  In Graham’s time, temperance was a movement against the consumption of alcoholic beverages, but also encouraged what may have been the first vegetarian diet.  Wheat was its cornerstone, and wheat (flour) is the primary ingredient in graham crackers.  To be clear, Sylvester didn’t invent the graham cracker (we’re not sure who did) but his preaching inspired its name.

“Blackstrap” molasses

The sweet ingredient in graham crackers used to be molasses, one of my favorite items in the pantry.  Inevitably, molasses gave way to processed sugar.  But as I discovered recently, honey is a key ingredient in today’s best-tasting grahams.

For you, maybe graham crackers taste best in s’mores (which I wrote about in Toasty of the Town), or the crust of a cheesecake, or even Moon Pies for you baby boomers.  But for me, grahams taste best all by themselves.  They play like a “cheat” to the more sugary options out there, and I can pretend I’m just snacking on a “cracker”.

I keep a stash of grahams in my office drawer to satisfy my occasional sweet tooth.  I only need a couple of the 2″x 5″s and I’m back on track.  The other day however, I pulled open the drawer to nothing but crumbs.  Horrors!  Grahams have been my go-to since the beginning of Lent because I’ve given up chocolate and “sweets”.  So I quickly added them to my store list and vowed to shop later in the day.

But as so often has been the case during the pandemic, I immediately paused and thought, “Wait a minute. Why buy graham crackers?  Maybe I can make them from scratch?“

Here then, I present what is the best graham cracker recipe I’ve ever tried.  (Okay, it’s the only recipe I’ve ever tried but it doesn’t matter; I don’t need another one.)  Gemma’s Bigger Bolder Baking takes grahams to a way higher rung on the cookie ladder (including a helpful video if you’re baking-challenged like me).  I’ve eaten a million Honey-Maids yet it took me sixty years to realize grahams can be SO… MUCH… BETTER.  Why?  Because these contain a lot more of the good stuff and a lot less of the nasty chemical flavorings and preservatives.

You should expect these homemade grahams to taste better when you see the ingredients.  The ratio of flour to brown sugar is 2:1 (emphasis on the “1”).  Now add another 1/3 cup of honey.  That’s a lot of “sweet” for a cracker, er, cookie that looks like a thin cardboard rectangle.  But I’m talking delicious with a capital “D”.  Think chewy instead of crunchy, with a rich “graham” flavor lingering much longer than store brands.  They’re almost too good to be called a graham.

My grahams

Okay, let’s close the box on graham crackers with a quick review:

  1. They were invented as an alternative to unfavorable indulgences.
  2. They’re a cookie by definition but a cracker by name.
  3. They make you want to try Moon Pies (if you haven’t already).
  4. They satisfy a craving for sweets without being “a sweet” (disregard earlier comment about brown sugar and honey).
  5. They are unquestionably better made from scratch than store-bought.
Yum!

If I haven’t sold you on how much better the humble graham cracker can be, consider this.  They’re simple to make and you already have all of the ingredients you need.  So, what are you waiting for?  Go bake some crackers, Graham!

Some content sourced from Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.

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Lego Grand Piano – Update #10

(Read about how this project got started in Let’s Make Music!)

We worked entirely underneath the piano today, with the instrument flipped onto its back. Bag #10 – of 21 bags of pieces – contained an intimidating pile of tiny parts. I didn’t realize what I was even building until somewhat magically, pedals, legs, and castors appeared before my eyes.  That’s right folks, this baby-baby grand now rolls.

I also took a deep breath and tackled the “loose piece” I’ve mentioned with the last two builds.  Sparing you the heart-stopping details, let’s just admit I installed a tiny piece ninety degrees wrong.  Correcting meant removing all the piano strings and working in a deep, dark corner, with the assistance of an X-Acto knife, eyeglass screwdriver, and pliers.  Like I’ve said before, don’t get any part of this performance wrong.  It’ll cost you later. Dearly.

Elevated!

Running Build Time: 8.1 hours.  Musical accompaniment: Satie’s Gymnopidies 1, 2, and 3 (a deliberate choice to soothe me while I repositioned the loose piece). Leftover pieces: 3

Conductor’s Note: The tiny pedal to the right is called the “damper”. It’s used to sustain the notes you play after you take your hands off the keys.  Remarkably, the Lego Grand Piano has the same mechanical action you’d find with this pedal in a real piano.  Sit down at a keyboard some time, press the right pedal with your foot, and (with the piano lid raised) you’ll see just how many moving parts it takes to sustain notes.  You’ll find those same moving parts in the Lego Grand Piano.