Curios, Crackers, and Coiffures

The other day, I made a few adjustments to Astreja's recipe for cheese crackers, which is really more like cheese shortbread. My version, as I recall:

1 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 cup butter
1 cup grated cheese of choice (mine was half gouda, half old cheddar)
A bit of dried rosemary and caraway
1 clove garlic, minced very fine
A smidge of extra butter

Toss the first three ingredients into a large bowl.

Grind up the dried herbs in a mortar and toast them in a dry skillet over medium heat until they've turned a darker shade and become quite fragrant. Toss them in on the flour. Melt the bit of extra butter in the skillet and fry the garlic until it's all browned and crisp, then grind it into paste in the mortar and add it to the bowl.

Mix everything together with your hands. It's going to take a fair bit of kneading to mix it and get it to hold together.

Form the dough into a few balls and roll them out into 1.5" logs, flattening the ends. I tend to do this on sheets of waxed paper, which I then use to wrap the logs. Refrigerate for at least an hour to facilitate easy cutting (though you can certainly leave them in longer, as I did--think icebox cookies).

Pre-heat the oven to 425F. It should be ready by the time you're done slicing the crackers.

Slice them about 1/4" thick and place on a baking sheet covered in parchment paper. Do give them a bit of breathing room; they will expand a bit. Bake for about ten minutes, or until they've browned a bit on the bottom.

And now for something completely inedible:

More of the glass beads I used in Elke's necklace. This one is also quite long.

Messing about with wire.

You have no idea how hard it is to refrain from adding stone beads to this, even though I know it's done.

In the space of roughly an hour, I turned a hideous belt from the thrift shop into this, which I am quite fond of.

And lastly, I decided to spend some quality time with two boxes of hair dye again.