Cooking with Toddlers: Sage Crackers

We recently moved into a new place with a massive front and backyard. The previous owners had the teeniest tiniest patch of garden and I never understood why until we started expanding it. The amount of crap we’ve unearthed is truly astounding ( see picture below for a sampling of the loot).

My first thought when we commenced Project Garden Expansion and quickly started exhuming a multitude of thingy-ma jigs was “What if we find buried treasure!” quickly followed by the morose thought of ” What if we find a coffin?”. This second scenario is much more likely  given the trajectory of our findings ( i.e. glasses , cuff links and a hammer).

Anyway, we’ve also realized that the previous folks remedy to every garden conundrum was to “put some hay on it!”. Have you seen that Portlandia skit where they put a bird on everything? This hay situation is pretty much the exact the same thing. HAY ON EVERYTHING. My husband and I joke that they probably didn’t even clean the house, they just threw some hay on it!

However, after some deep meditative thought I realized I am in no place to judge our hay-loving friends given I do the exact same thing with sage.

I solve any and all recipe problems with sage.  In fact, my first thought when thinking of what to cook for dinner typically starts with ” I wonder what I could do with all that sage in the fridge. There is usually no less than several bushels of Sage in our fridge. Yes I said bushels.

So yet again, Fig and I found our way into the kitchen after a long day out in the garden hauling hay and busted out the sage for some good old fashioned crackers. Really, can you ever have enough sage?

Sage Crackers:

Ingredients:

• 1 cup of whole wheat flour
• 1/2 cup of heavy cream
• 1/2 teaspoons of cold butter
• 1 bunch of chopped sage
• 1 tablespoon of salt
• Olive oil for brushing

Directions

• Preheat oven to 375
• Add the salt and flour to a large mixing bowl
• With your hands work in the butter until it resembles bread crumbs ( this can take upwards of 5 solid minutes).
• Chop sage finely and add it to the flour.
• Pour in heavy cream and stir well. Let dough sit for 10 minutes at room temperature.
• With your hands  knead the dough well and then divide it into two pieces. With a rolling pin, roll out each dough ball very thin ( as thin as you want the crackers to be).
• Brush with olive oil and sprinkle salt before placing in the oven.
• Bake for 10-12 minutes or until slightly golden.
• Cool and then slice into little squares and eat!

Toddler Friendly Parts of this Recipe: 

• Mixing the salt and flour
• Working in the butter
• Chopping with sage ( with a kid-friendly knife and supervised)
• Kneading Bread
• Rolling out the dough ( I always give my little guy some “scrap” dough that he can play with)
• Brushing the olive oil on the rolled out dough.