Chronicles of a Late Bloomer

A “cold snap”¹ this week made us hanker for comfort food and I had been craving homemade tomato soup for a while. Craving satisfied. See above.

Nights like last night make me wish I were independently wealthy. Maybe I wouldn’t hire a personal chef after all, since I got so much satisfaction out of making the hearty soup (recipe from Diet Pr0n). I paired it with a delicious salad of homemade dressing (balsamic/orange juice/herbs), orange segments, and strawberries. The pieces de resistance, however, were the homemade crackers. Yup. Homemade.

I nicked the recipe from the latest Cooking Light Magazine in its celebration of St. Patrick’s Day food. Well, I dunno about that, but I’ve always heard that you could make your own crackers, and this recipe did not disappoint. On the contrary. They were totally delicious and added a lot to the homemade food fest.

Click over to the magazine’s website for the Farmhouse Crackers recipe, at 139 calories² per serving.³ I found that I needed to add a little more water than was called for, and be sure not to over-mix the dough or they get a tiny little bit tough. You want to go for crisp and flaky, like pie crust.

I’ve already tried variations with cracked pepper and poppies, sesame seeds, and rosemary with parmesan⁴ and crushed salt. HELLO GOODNESS.

1. I put it in quotes because what I mean is “cold snap LA style” — dipping into the 40’s and 50’s with little mists of rain. [↩]
2. 4g fat, 2.3 grams fiber = 4 points, but I used half-and-half instead of whole cream and it reduced to 2.5 points [↩]
3. One serving is 2 generously-sized crackers, as seen above. My crackers ended up being about 3.5″ x 2.5″ but, of course, your mileage may vary depending on how heavy- handed you are with a rolling pin and what pan you use. [↩]
4. I thought the parm made the dough crunchy instead of crispy and took forever to cook, which led to a feeling of over-cooked-ed-ness, but… if you’re into that sort of thing… [↩]