Art and food, what a change

The statice you may remember from several weeks ago as the monthly fresh flowers has now graduated from water to a dry container and will become dried flowers. Along with honesty, it's a favorite for drying. 

And it's taken up its place on the mantelpiece, artfully dropping one flower, watercolor painting style.

And new ideas happened despite my having thought I had nothing to blog about today.

I woke up thinking about how that flour tortilla recipe is like the Swiss army knife of my food world.  We'll draw a veil over the benighted federal judge in California whose idea of a SAK leaves something to be desired. If the reference escapes you, count yourself blessed.

Anyway, this dough. I like it very much for pasties because it's crisp but strong enough to enclose a bunch of unruly ingredients. And it occurred to me with a rush, that those are the features you want in crackers. 

So since I had two clumps of dough left i made one into the planned pasty. Filling was broccolini, hot sausage, yellow potato, mixed mushrooms, scallions. And the other clump made a little batch of crackers.

Both in at 400°f, the crackers for 12 minutes, which I guessed, and the pasty 20 minutes, guessed way back, when I first tried them.

And, remember the chai  spice mix leftovers which I accidentally dried? I rolled some of them into the cracker dough, with seasalt, scored it with a pizza wheel, and it worked ok.

How it looks cooling

Then how nicely it broke along the fault lines I'd scored in it. Really pleasing.

Here's the pasty with a sprig of that peppermint I swiped, I mean imported, from my old planting at the condo. Chewed alternately with pasty, really worth trying. You can make a great mint sauce with malt vinegar, and a pinch of sugar, but you don't have to.

So when Handsome Son visits later today, bringing cheese, among other groceries, he'll get not only the purpose baked cornbread, but cheese and crackers to boot. 

And he'll take away my empty Misfits box for his decluttering, and help me hang the canvas summer door curtain and fold up the red felt winter one. All vital tasks.

Meanwhile I'm busy reading Austen Years before it expires. I can't renew because it's got a waitlist. 

Stretching, crackers and stretching crackers.

Today I'm reporting on my exercise progress. I have been faithfully doing a 20 or 30 minute program every other day. Not daily, because it involves weights, and it's better to give your muscles and joints at least a day to get the benefit.

 And today I think I need to make it every third day. Just need more recovery time. The reason I remember to do it is that I set an alert to go boingggg half an hour ahead.

So I'm redoing the boingggg thing. Very content with my level though, no aches and that, just tiredness that means more rest is rx.  The exercise is about maintaining strength, but the daily, when it doesn't rain, walking, is about stamina. We all need as much of both as we can handle right now. And mental stability is a side effect of movement.

Then during a distance convo yesterday with neighbors, one of whom is a great cook, about this and that,  while they were outside in the sunshine  painting doors on sawhorses (don't ask), the subject of crackers came up.

How you can make them at home. And know what's in them. No preservatives. So today I thought, hmm. I've made them with whole-wheat flour in the past. That was in the olden days when you could just go to the store and get whole-wheat flour. Any time!

Now I have my precious smaller supplies of flour I can grind, and ap. So I figured I'd try making them with ap flour. Brand I'd never used before, so it might need adjustments.

So here's the cast of characters

Olive oil, water flour, seeds, seasalt.

I adapted a recipe from Caroline Cooks, an online website.

I got about four dozen crackers out of one cup of flour, not bad. Made two batches, and found I needed to add water, a tsp at a time, to get a kneadable pastry. her recipe needs a food processor, so that might make a difference. And she used another flour.

I fancied adding seeds, another recipe, and made a mix of caraway, fennel, mustard and celery. If you're a person who can't navigate seeds because of dental architecture, skip the seeds. But I like them a lot.

 Before adding extra water

 After extra water.

You rest it after kneading. Or maybe it's the baker who needs to rest. Then divide in two and roll out separately.

Batch one done

Batch two ready to bake

And done.

The first batch I tried pressing the seeds in, following instructions, with limited success. So the second batch I rolled the seeds in as  I went. Much better. More in the dough, fewer on the floor and the baker.

Also I had to add a couple of minutes to the baking time, for batch one, then even another extra minute for batch two, to get crispness.

Crime scene. The pizza cutter is to cut out the crackers.

When you cook and blog, the cleanup also includes the phone screen.

It all came out happily. See soup and cracker lunch. Soup is tomato, pink bean, carrot and various spices.