We almost never have bread anymore, which I find tragic and senseless. Oh, and kind of reasonable, considering just how much space bread takes up in a backpack. We usually end up breaking baguettes in half to avoid gaping zipper syndrome.

So there's no bread in the house. Then there's the whole bit where we're too lazy to go out to the store just for some bread. Then there's the bulk flour in the freezer. We have yeast in there too, but yeast bread takes actual time. Soda bread and banana bread aren't really bread; they're cake. So: crackers.

Crackers are actually really easy. I first tried making them after I read redfox's post on them, ages ago. Everyone likes to whip out dough like a sheet! Of course, I scored my dough, so that made whipping it around a little more difficult.

Ok ok.

My nearly identical crackers:

I did Not put my cookie sheets in the oven ahead of time, due to aforementioned dough issues. So instead I just preheated the oven to high high serious heat. I didn't put any wheat gluten in the dough, and didn't make any attempt to measure the sesame seeds. Then I rolled out my pieces, pricked them with a fork, put them on cookie sheets, and scored them into diamonds with a sharp knife. It probably took about five minutes to bake each piece, complete with flipping dough and pan rotation.

Then we broke them into bits and ate them with lentil soup and yogurt cheese.

Lentil soup! It can sit on the stove bubbling while you do all the baking, and it will only get more and more delicious.

Lentil soup

green lentils
onion
a hot pepper
olive oil/butter
salt, pepper
a bay leaf
veg broth
maybe some marjoram?

I soaked a bunch of green lentils overnight, even though it's not really necessary. It'll just take longer for everything to boil if you don't soak them.

Ok. Chop up an onion and cook it down slowly in olive oil or butter. Mince a hot pepper and add that too. When the onion is good and soft, add a bunch of lentils, a cup or two of vegetable broth, and a bay leaf. Bring the whole business to a boil, lower to simmer, cover, and cook everything until the lentils are tender and your broth has evaporated as much as you want. Mine took about twenty minutes. Salt, pepper, and otherwise spice if you want.

At this point you have intact lentils and onion in broth. You can leave it like that, and it will be delicious. But if you want vast bowls of swampy goo, you can break out the immersion blender. Then you can eat it with lots of crackers or pita or big spoonfuls of plain yogurt or yogurt cheese in the middle.

Everyone likes goo.