Late Summer Endings

The majority of my childhood summer memories were made in the swimming pool or on the campsite. Camping was the form family vacation took, more often than not, and one of the few activities that could be counted on to regularly bring us all together. It generally involved flying up to Victoria, British Columbia, a brief stopover at my grandparents’ house, and then us all piling in the mini-van to drive north on the island. I remember the small opening in the bushes, where we stumbled down into the cold, clear lake on Saltspring Island. The sandy stretch by the Strathcona Park Lodge where I roasted — and ate — marshmallow after marshmallow, back when the concept on healthy eating scarcely even crossed my mind, if at all. That one ill-fated weeklong trip, when it poured every day. My cousin’s dogs that accompanied us everywhere, and the journals that I filled every day with sketches of animals I had seen at the nearby wildlife center.

Nowadays, everyone has gotten a bit older, and campsites have sprung from $15/night to $50/night and available ones hard to come by, at that. Our camping trips have shrunk to overnight sagas, involving just me, my little brother, and my parents. Put up the tents, light a fire, make some quesadillas, spend an hour roasting two cobs of corn, roast a couple of marshmallows until they’re deep blistering brown, complain about the cold in the middle of a California summer, enjoy a few fitful hours of sleep, and then pile everything back into the car and drive back to the city, curl up in my own sheets, and really sleep. This time around, staying just outside of Point Reyes Station, our neighbor’s car alarm went off around 9 p.m., half a dozen 8-year-olds ran around the site on our other side, yelling about their missing water bottles and the poison ivy in the woods, where, supposedly a fox likes to search for black raspberries in the middle of the night.

Despite this, the hardest affront to my camping nostalgia came out of a box — a box of Honey Maid graham crackers to be specific. They were dry, dusty, nothing like the graham crackers I remember, from even just a year ago. Honey Maid, what happened? Awhile back, I made a batch of homemade graham crackers, that were a bit more butter cookie than I would have liked. We took the batch camping last summer and while the graham crackers were a solid base for s’mores, we found that they were better enjoyed as a breakfast biscuit the next morning, with coffee out of a plastic mug. I hadn’t thought about making graham crackers since. But now, I’d say it’s back to square one. Calling all graham cracker recipes.

Graham crackers

It’s hard to think about anything but the fact that I’m moving to Paris. I’m still trying to wrap my head around it: I’m moving to Paris. It is at once terrifying and terribly exciting. Every time I start to think, my mind drifts to what I imagine my life to be like there and then I have to catch myself before the daydreaming goes too far and I start planning out the future too much. But really, it’s hard to flip that switch in my brain for long enough to write about my last few days in San Francisco.

But they were definitely good ones. On Friday night, I headed up to the Sonoma Wine Valley with my family for a night of camping. The vineyards stretched out before us on the ride up in pretty green rows, red fruit hanging off the vines almost ready for picking. Everywhere we looked, wooden signs offered daily wine and olive oil tastings, and we stopped by a local bakery, which sells its crusty bread to several stores in San Francisco, for a cinnamon twist and a latté. We got to the campsite pretty late in the evening, in time to set up our tents as it got dark and roast marshmallows by the campfire. We only have one camping chair, so the roasting required a bit of coordination but in the end there were some toasty golden brown marshmallows with chocolate and my homemade graham crackers.

These graham crackers are rich and buttery, with a fairly strong taste of honey. Slightly thicker and more crunchy than your standard store-bought graham cracker, these are also great on their own as a snack. In fact, my family was of the opinion that they were better on their own than in s’mores. I made them with half wheat flour and half white.

Graham Cracker Recipe
Adapted from Nancy Silverton’s Pastries from the La Brea Bakery (Villard, 2000), via 101 Cookbooks

1 1/4 cups plus 2 tablespoons unbleached pastry flour or unbleached all-purpose flour
1 1/4 cups whole wheat four
1 cup dark brown sugar, lightly packed
1 teaspoon baking soda
3/4 teaspoon salt
7 tablespoons unsalted butter, cut into 1-inch cubes and frozen
1/3 cup mild-flavored honey, such as clover
5 tablespoons whole milk
2 tablespoons pure vanilla extract

Ina bowl, combine the flour, brown sugar, baking soda, and salt until the mixture is uniform and crumbly.

In a small bowl, whisk together the honey, milk, and vanilla extract. Add the wet mixture to the flour mixture and mix with your hands until the dough barely comes together. It will be very soft and sticky.

Lightly flour a work surface and shape the dough into a rectangle about 1 inch thick. Wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate for 2 hours or overnight.

After two hours has elapsed, remove the dough from the refrigerator. On a lightly floured surface, roll out the rectangle about 1/8 inch thick. Cut crackers into squares, using a square cookie cutter (or I found the edges of a tupperware container worked nicely). Place cut crackers on baking sheets lined with parchment paper and chill until firm, about 30 to 45 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Bake for 25 minutes, until browned and slightly firm to the touch.