Mary’s Crackers: Crunchy, healthy goodness

Mary's Crackers

Mary’s Organic Crackers have become one of my staple foods lately. And since I use my blog/soapbox to write about things that I love and recommend, I felt that Mary deserved a shout-out.

Mary Waldner (interviews with her can be found here and here) was a psychotherapist for most of her career. A health-conscious mom and active baker, she was diagnosed with Celiac disease in 1994. Her son was also afflicted. Like many Celiacs (or those of us who find wheat gluten hard to digest), Mary soon discovered that it’s not easy to eat well because our society bases so many foods on wheat (wheat truly is in everything). When you also have a desire to eat healthily and avoid certain other foods (like GMO corn, trans fats, etc.), your options become so thin as to almost be non-existent.

Mary’s is a typical entrepreneurial success story: she developed her crackers at home, for her own use, and started to take them along to parties where should would eat them in lieu of chips or wheat crackers. relatives, friends and complete strangers started to like them, too. She made more and more crackers and started to give them away. In 2004, Mary’s Gone Crackers was founded and began producing the crackers more industrially (in the US, they’re sold as Mary’s Gone Crackers, and I can’t for the life of me work out why they would choose to change that in Canada). They now have US and Canadian distribution and are typically available in health food stores or healthy sections of regular grocery stores. At between $4 and $6 per box, they’re not cheap, but they’re totally delicious.

Mary’s Crackers are made from brown rice, quinoa, flax seeds, sesame seeds and (wheat-free) tamari. They have a hard bite and a satisfying nutty flavour and can be eaten by themselves, but they’re better with some hummus or another healthy dip/slather. Or you could serve them with cheese.

Best of all, Mary’s Crackers feel like they’re a sinfully delicious crunchy snack but are actually healthy food. When I have Mary’s Crackers around, I don’t feel any need to have chips (or other salty snacks).

Because every ingredient is organic and the crackers contain flax seeds, I’ve discovered that they’re best stored in the fridge. I do buy rather a lot of boxes when I go grocery shopping, and I’ve had the odd one go slightly rancid on me when I used to store them in my pantry, so now they’re in the fridge.

Breakfast these days is frequently: a bowl of oatmeal with organic maple syrup, a handful of cashews or almonds, a cut-up apple, and some Mary’s Crackers with hummus. Low nutritional stress, high satisfaction and good health. What more could you want?

(in the US, they’re sold as Mary’s Gone Crackers, and I can’t for the life of me work out why they would choose to change that in Canada),

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