Cool Down

Manly Man and I went out for an early lunch at the Cotton Gin before noon this morning. The Cotton Gin is a restaurant inside an actual old cotton gin. The food is home cooking with things like chicken fried steak, squash, mashed potatoes, red beans and rice, and an awesome breakfast.

Outside, it was still hot with blazing sunshine. This made me pine away for fall even more. The mosquitoes are loving this weather and eating on me. When we came out of the restaurant, it was still blazing and burning and making me sad.

We had been home about fifteen minutes and I wandered out into the garden to check on my fall tomatoes. Things felt very different. There was some cloud cover and the wind was blowing nice and cool. I pulled the thermometer out of the compost pile (the one that works, thank you) and it dropped down to 79. Yipee, cool weather outside at noon. We may even get a little rain.

So on a totally different topic, last night I made hardtack. Why would I make hardtack? I made hardtack because Middle Monkey gets extra credit in social studies if we do the occasional odd thing like making hardtack. So I tasted the hardtack and it tastes just like a cracker. I have tried to make crackers before with icky results. Apparently, I was over thinking it.

Hardtack
1 cup flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup water

Mix dry ingredients together. Slowly add water to the dry ingredients until it makes a soft but firm dough. Roll the dough out to 1/2 inch and use a fork to prick holes in it. Cut dough into 2' squares and bake at 450 degrees for 20 minutes. Turn them over halfway through baking.

So I figure if I add a little shortening and say rosemary then roll it out to a quarter of an inch then brush it with olive oil and sprinkle on some salt I might come out with some good crackers. Stay tuned, I am going to try it tonight.