Poo Crackers

During the holidays, Jon came home with goodie baskets that vendors had brought to him as gifts. Among these was a local treat: a sleeve of Moravian cookies. These wafer thin, crispy cookies are wonderful with tea or just to munch. They almost look like crackers because they are so thin.

When I opened the package, Sinatra asked for a cracker. I gave him one and he skipped off to the playroom, happily munching. The others saw him with the cookie and came running. "Can we have some crackers too, Mom?" I handed them around. Shakespeare didn't care for the taste and spit his out with all the drama of a poisoned victim. "That thing tastes like poo!" he shrieked between gags. Everyone under the age of 10 erupted in laughter. I chuckled. From then on, Moravian cookies were called "poo crackers" in our house. Even Sinatra asks for them by name--"Poo cracker, Mommy?"

Soon after the dubbing of the poo cracker, a home school family from our local community announced a field trip opportunity to Mrs. Hanes' Moravian Cookie Factory. During the announcement, Shakespeare's eyes got big and he turned and caught my eye. "Poo cookies?" he mouthed.

So, this Wednesday we made our way to Mrs. Hanes' Moravian Cookie Factory. Mrs. Hanes' Cookie Factory's claim to fame is that they still roll, cut, and package all their cookies by hand. That's right, by hand. The only machines they have are a tape machine in the packing room and a dough mixer that mixes 700lbs. at a time. The factory is still owned and run by the Hanes family and they have such pride in their product.


That woman sits there all day packing wafer thin cookies. Fun. They said that she counts them by the feel, not by number, and that when she weighs them she has almost always gotten it right. "What kind of guy takes a job in a lighthouse?" Extra points to anyone who can name that movie.

We paid $2 per person for the tour. That covered the cost of the 6 cookies that each person got to sample at various points in the tour. At the first stop, Shakespeare thanked the woman for the cookie then looked back at me with wary eyes, as if to ask, "Mom, is this going to taste like poo?" He was delighted to find that lemon was safe.


Here is their 700lb. capacity dough mixer. All I could think about was how glad I was not to have one at my house. It looked like something one of my children would climb into to take a spin.

The next stop was chocolate--another good cookie. Butterscotch, sugar, not bad. Ginger, a bit spicy. Then the piece-de-resistance...Black Walnut. Ah ha! We found the poo cracker!

On our way out, we bought three packages: lemon for me, chocolate for the boys and ginger for the girl. We've been munching for days and no one has gagged yet.



Notice the rolling floor behind the kids. All those women stand there kneading and rolling all day. They all wear headphones and listen to books on tape and music. I would want one of those rubber mats to stand on. The day we visited, they were cutting out bunnies and chicks for Easter.

To get your very own poo crackers visit here.