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By Root 642 0

and ice bucket are props and they are every bit as important as the food. So is your own relatively calm presence. It ruins the show if you’re in the kitchen in a pair of sweatpants and a jog bra, swearing over some misguided cioppino. Fifteen years into my marriage, I used the ice bucket for the first time. I put it on a tray (another wedding gift) with all the other cocktail fixings, lit candles, brought out the wedding china. My sister said, “Look at your little bar setup! Look at this table!” It put everyone in a festive mood, and I didn’t know why I spent all those years resisting. And then I put out store-bought crackers with a tuna dip for an appetizer, and since I can’t do Costco lasagna, I brought out one of my three time-tested alternatives. But more about them in a minute. First, about the crackers.

CRACKERS

My mother believed in crackers. Crackers were her little black dress. You could serve crackers with store-bought pâté, or peel off the foil on some Philadelphia cream cheese and pour over it a jar of chutney the color of lentil soup that some dear, dear friend gave you for Christmas in 1967. (“Oh, stop looking at me like that, Jennifer. Chutney gets better with age.”) The perfect accompaniment: crackers, naturally. The leftover crackers you could spread with peanut butter for dinner—a week later, a month, a year!—with a glass of chardonnay while watching Masterpiece Theatre. After all, peanut butter is full of protein. You could make an easy but fabulous dessert with crackers—angel pie—and there was nothing better than crackers when you fell sick. My mother collected crackers, and when my sister and I cleaned out her drawers after her death we found gluten-free rice crackers and RyKrisp and Ritz and table water crackers and Bremner wafers, crackers for every occasion, all neatly rubber-banded in the sleeves and arranged in the drawer. I think she chose the crackers to serve or eat on a given day based on the geometry of that drawer.

I’ve tried making crackers, and some of them have been great, like the Thomas Keller crackers you run through the pasta machine and which take several hours and two people to produce. But they never have quite the crunch or longevity of store-bought, and the whole point of crackers is that you don’t have to hunch at a pasta machine for an hour. The point of crackers is to make your life easier. There are two crackers I actually like to make.

MELBA TOAST

I know. Why bother? Why eat melba toast at all? It’s dry and bland, but good with a strong cheese—and it’s inexpensive. It also has a certain 1950s glamour—I imagine melba toast and Champagne are what Bette Davis ate on a diet.

Make it or buy it? Make it.

Hassle: Zero

Cost comparison: You can buy a 5-ounce box for under $3.00. Making it from sandwich bread that’s about to go stale: free.

Sandwich bread, store-bought or homemade

1. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F.

2. Lightly toast the bread—it should be firm on the outside, still tender and bready in the middle.

3. Lay out the bread on a work surface. Cut off the crusts. Place the flat of your hand on a slice and cut the bread horizontally into two thinner slices. Now cut these thinner slices into thirds.

4. Put these in the oven on an ungreased cookie sheet and bake for 15 to 20 minutes until completely dry. Store in a cookie tin at room temperature.

CHEEZ-ITS

In her magnificent cookbook Around My French Table, Dorie Greenspan includes a recipe for “Cheez-It-Ish” crackers made with Gruyère and cut into circles. It gave me an idea to make actual Cheez-It clones. I took her recipe, substituted orange cheddar, and added some Worcestershire sauce. Then I cut the dough into postage-stamp squares, poked holes in the middle, and baked them. Owen came home from school and tasted them, and his face lit up. He said, “Will you make these for my snack all the time?” And I thought, When there are twenty-five hours in a day! But I lied, “Of course!” These crackers are a natural with tomato soup—use them as soup crackers. And if you put out a bowl