Raw Juice Pulp Crackers

I have been eating raw vegan foods a couple of times a week now. I absolutely love the flavors and I am very surprised about the creativeness that goes into preparing some of these foods.

As tasty as this diet can be I don't think - at least not yet - that I'll ever fully convert because I don't necessarily agree with the all claims in health benefits and feel adequate research and proof is lacking. But I hope to maintain being 15-20% raw. Primarily because raw vegan foods feel light, refreshing and healthy plus I do agree with some of the health claims :-) and because I love the challenge of learning new techniques and coming up with or trying out new recipes.

I have been juicing for about two years now. I was instantly inspired from this movie which you can watch free on netflix and on hulu. I immediately got a juicer from Amazon the very next day. This particular Breville juicer is very compact, powerful, affordable and therefore suits me very well. I have a small kitchen, a ton of cooking related stuff and a looong wish list of stuff that I want. Anyway back to the juicer, its awesome! I LOVE all the juices I can make and am very much in love with it. On the flip side I am very unhappy about the pulp that I have to throw away. I don't have a need to compost so I make patties or add the pulp into soups but mostly it goes down the garbage disposal.

So basically the concept behind these crackers is something that I borrowed from the net while searching for ways to utilize leftover juice pulp. These seem good because you can store them for a long time.

I am making these raw and the guidelines tell me to "cook" them under 118 degrees to preserve all the nutrients. You will need a dehydrator for that. However, if you don't care about the whole raw deal then you can bake them in your oven at the lowest setting (170 or 180 for most people) until they feel crispy.

I am very pleased to share with you my very first raw recipe :-)
You can find hundreds of very creative recipes out on the net :-)
I hope to get better at these and will gladly share my experiments with you. These were pretty good with or without dip. I added no salt or extra spices but surely the addition of those will make for even tastier crackers.

Method

Pulp from:
2 small granny smith apples
1 whole bunch of celery

I added to this pulp:
1 Tbs of flax seed (I didn't soak them)
1/4 cup thinly sliced red onions
2 green chilies thinly sliced

I pretty much mixed every thing up, spread the dough very thin on a tray and dried them on my Nesco 700 Watt dehydrator set at 115 degrees. After about 8 hours they were still a little soft (perfect texture for breads and wraps!) I flipped them and continued to dry them for another 6 hours to make them perfectly crunchy.
Total of 14 hours :-)