I refuse to count the days we've been doing this, it stresses me out
How are we all doing this week? It was a real up and down week for me, I'm not going to lie. I've been trying to stay busy and bake things and run errands for people who need help and go outside and organize things and blah blah but my god this is all so hard, and it doesn't look like it's going to get any less hard any time soon. I just got back from Target; for the second time this month I got up early so I could get to Target when it opened so I could buy toilet paper, and I managed to grab one of the last three bags of flour, so I'm feeling like one of the luckiest ones today.
The only kinds of books I can even semi-reliably concentrate on reading right now are children's books, and this week my friend Akilah recommended an excellent one to me: The Extremely Inconvenient Adventures of Bronte Mettlestone, by Jaclyn Moriarty. I told her I wanted a middle grade book about kids going around and having fun adventures, and she immediately told me to read this, and it was perfect -- fantasy, but the kind where the world building is gradual and not confusing and the adventures are all fun and some are a little dangerous but none are dangerous enough to stress you out, and the ending is perfect. If you (or your more age appropriate child) are also in the mood for a book like that, I highly recommend this one!
Also -- the link above goes to the newish book e-commerce site Bookshop.org; it's billing itself as an alternate to amazon for books, and the timing is good because amazon has deprioritized book sales right now. Bookshop sends a percentage of their profits to independent bookstores (here's a good article that explains it), and bookstores and other entities can set up affiliate programs with Bookshop to link to books and to get a small percentage from any purchases. Other entitles like me! I've made a few Bookshop lists to collect book recommendations I've made, and here's my (still in process) list of books I've recommended in this newsletter. It's not all of the books yet, because a) it turns out I've recommended a whole lot of books in this newsletter, so it's taking me a little while to put them all in, b) Bookshop doesn't quite have everything, especially older books, and c) Bookshop is great in many ways, but it's still new, and its search function is the worst of any website I've seen in a long time (for instance, yesterday I searched "There there" and it told me there were no results found; the book is on the site, I found it by searching for the author, come on!).
And here is my whole shop there, with other book lists and likely more to come (yes, all of my books are on all of my recommendation lists, I recommend them all!) (sidenote: Party of Two comes out in two months! It is a very weird time to have a book come out, and I would so appreciate a preorder from bookshop or anywhere else!). I get a small percentage of books sold through my affiliate links; anything I make from there I'll send to my local food bank. But also: if you can't afford to buy books from there, or your local independent bookstore (many of which are still shipping) or at all right now, I get it! Times are really hard, we're all doing what we can!
My recipe this week is for something very easy that I made a few days ago, and was inspired by my friend Jaya, who made them and put them on her Instagram story, and then I immediately went into the kitchen to make them: homemade crackers! Or, rather, homemade very flat flatbreads that you can break up into crackers, which I did. I've made other, more fiddly versions of crackers before (I adore making homemade cheese crackers but they involve a food processor and also resting and slicing etc), but these were so fast that I started preheating the oven at the beginning of the recipe, and they were ready to go into the oven before the oven was done heating. This was originally the Smitten Kitchen recipe for rosemary flatbreads, but while I love the smell of rosemary, I don't like the taste, so I took the rosemary out and added different other seasonings -- for me the recipe made 6 flatbreads, so for some of them I added a random herb salt I had to the top, for others I shook on some of that Everything But the Bagel seasoning, for others I tossed on other seasoning mixes I like along with flaky salt, etc. The world is your oyster! They were so good that I used one of my precious cans of beans the next day to make hummus to dip them in.
Crisp flatbread crackers
1 3/4 cups (230 grams) all purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt*
1/2 cup (120 ml) water
1/3 cup (80 ml) olive oil, plus more for brushing on top and on the pan
Seasonings: flaky sea salt, pepper, herbs, herb blends, etc.
*the original recipe called for 3/4 teaspoon salt, but I like a saltier cracker so I increased it
Heat your oven to 450F. Drizzle olive oil on a large baking sheet. In a large bowl, stir together flour, baking powder, and salt. Make a well in the center, and then add the water and oil, and gradually stir until a dough forms. Knead the dough inside the bowl a few times until it comes together in a mostly smooth ball.
Divide the dough into six pieces, and roll out one piece at a time on a lightly floured board, as thin as you can get them (she says 7 inch rounds, I just rolled them as flat as I could and hoped for the best). Put the flatbread on the baking sheet -- they'll have thinner spots when you put them on the baking sheet from stretching, that's okay, those will be the crispier parts! Repeat with the remaining dough; I did this in two batches; three flatbreads fit just about right on my large baking sheet. When they're all on the baking sheet, brush with more olive oil, ad then sprinkle on your topping(s) of choice liberally, and sprinkle with salt, if your toppings don't already include it. Bake until golden and browned in spots, 8-10 minutes. Let cool and then break into pieces.
Eat with a dip or cheese or just shovel them in your face.
Sending love to all of you this weekend!
Jasmine
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Buy The Wedding Date, The Proposal, The Wedding Party and Royal Holiday.
And preorder Party of Two!