The Observer., June 30, 2020, Page 7, Image 7

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Tuesday, June 30, 2020
The Observer & Baker City Herald
Homemade Crackers
BETWEEN
THE ROWS
WENDY SCHMIDT
Tomato tips
and a ‘secret’
soup recipe
There are all kinds of books on the
best way to grow tomatoes. Everyone
has his or her own secret way. There’s
probably no secret to it at all. I’ve had
good luck and bad luck with tomato
crops. Luck some years has a lot to do
with weather.
If it’s too hot or too cold, the tomato
won’t set as much fruit. And that may
have to do with how effective pollina-
tion is. On the indeterminate (they
just keep growing) vines, it increases
fruit production if the spurs, suckers,
or whatever you want to call them, are
pinched out on a regular basis. They
take strength away from the fruiting
branches.
Loose soil is important so that the
roots get oxygen as well as water.
Mulching is important to prevent loss
of moisture. Calcium is important
to prevent blossom-end rot. I have a
friend who puts a handful of milk pow-
der in each hole as she fi rst plants the
tomatoes in her garden. Regular, even
watering prevents fruit deformity.
When you fi nally have buckets of
wonderful tomatoes, you need to save
them to brighten your winter meals.
Can tomatoes for winter use to make
soups, sauces and salsa.
Meantime, use fresh tomatoes in sal-
ads. You can also stuff them by remov-
ing the core and pulp and draining for
a few minutes upside down on a plate
after (optionally) lightly salting the
cavity. Save the top for a lid for your
little salad and then fi ll the cavity with
turkey, tuna, chicken or egg salad.
I got the soup recipe below from a
restaurant after enjoying a bowl of it. I
couldn’t believe they would share their
“secret” recipe.
CREAM OF TOMATO SOUP
From 4B’s restaurant,
Grants, New Mexico
32 ounces of canned, diced tomatoes
2 tablespoons butter
2 tablespoons sugar
9 ounces chicken broth, undiluted
1 tablespoon chopped onion
2 cups cream
Pinch of soda
Mix tomatoes, chicken broth, butter,
sugar, onions and soda. Simmer for 1
hour. Heat cream in a double boiler. Add
hot cream to hot tomato mixture. Ready
to serve and enjoy. Makes 2 quarts of
delicious soup.
If you have garden questions or com-
ments please write to greengardencol-
umn@yahoo.com. Thanks for reading!
Hillary Levin/St. Louis Post-Dispatch-TNS
Homemade English oat crackers.
G ET C RACKING
By Daniel Neman
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
What makes people happier than crack-
ers? What brings more joy? Especially when
they are accompanied by a nice piece of
cheese?
Crackers are one of the four most impor-
tant food groups, along with ice cream, pie
and peanut butter. They help build strong
bodies 12 ways and are part of a healthy diet,
especially when eaten in moderation.
I am reliably informed that crackers can,
in fact, be eaten in moderation, though I have
never found this to be true in my personal
experience.
And crackers are so easy to serve: You go
to the store, buy a box of crackers, and empty
them out onto a platter when you get home.
Your guests look at the platter and think,
“Oh, how nice. She went to the trouble of
buying a box of crackers.”
But what if you made the crackers your-
self? What if you wowed your guests with
crackers that are better, far better, than any
they have ever had from a box?
Except Triscuits, of course. Nothing beats
a Triscuit.
I decided to make six different kinds of
crackers (I like crackers. Perhaps I have not
been suffi ciently clear about this). It was a
bit of work, especially when you’re making
six kinds, but the results were well worth
it — especially if you are having company. If
you’re cooking for yourself, I’d just go buy a
box of Triscuits.
The fi rst cracker, from a recipe by Ina
Garten, is one I’ve made several times before,
English Oat Crackers. These are terrifi c;
immensely fl avorful and tremendously rich.
Frankly, if you added a couple of chocolate
chips, they would practically be a cookie.
With three times as much oats in it as
fl our, these crackers have a great fl avor and a
hefty chew. They also have brown sugar and
two sticks of butter for less than 30 crackers,
so yeah, as I said: cookies.
But they are wonderful. They don’t even
need cheese. Serve them with slices of apple
or a handful of grapes, and pretend to be
surprised at all the compliments.
The next batch I made are (very nearly)
just as good, with far fewer calories. The
semi-iconic Napa Valley restaurant Mus-
tards Grill, which created this recipe for
Crispy Sesame Crackers, serves it as a base
for seared Ahi tuna. I serve it by itself, or
perhaps with a bite of cheese.
The dough for these sesame crackers is
made with yeast, which is a bit of a mystery
because they turn out so thin and crisp.
The simple dough rises, but you roll it out.
That’s what gives it such a delightful cracker
texture.
The classic cracker fl avor comes from the
simplicity of the ingredients (yeast, sugar,
water, fl our, butter, salt) and of course from
the sesame seeds added to the top.
The other cracker I made that uses yeast
comes from another nearly iconic restau-
rant, White Dog Cafe in Philadelphia. These
crackers, too, were very thin and very crisp.
They were also particularly fl avorful, as
you might expect from the name: Curried
Poppy Seed Crackers. With these, curry pow-
der is mixed into the dough before it rises
and is rolled and stretched as thin as it can
possibly be.
The thinness is what makes them crisp,
and the crispiness is what makes them deli-
cious. That and the curry powder, of course.
The easiest and most basic crackers I
made, Cream Crackers, come from the fertile
but notoriously inexact mind of Mark Bitt-
man. I had to make three corrections to the
very short recipe — and I had to make the
crackers twice because I didn’t catch that
third mistake until I had tried to bake them.
But they were great. They are so simple,
so pure, that they possess an elegance. They
are also the perfect foil for any kind of top-
ping; though they are excellent on their own,
they also enhance the fl avor of whatever you
serve with them.
And with only four ingredients (fl our,
salt, butter and milk or cream), they take
less than a half-hour to make, from start to
fi nish.
My last two types of crackers came from
“Bernard Clayton’s New Complete Book of
Breads,” which is so good with bread that I
thought I would see how its crackers com-
pare.
I was not disappointed. Both were full-
fl avored, complex and satisfying.
The Cheddar Cheese Crackers were just
as addictive as you might expect. They are
crackers with the cheese already in them. In
a way, they are sort of like Goldfi sh crackers,
only more subtle.
See Crackers/Page 2B
The long history of 110 Depot St. includes ghost signs
By Ginny Mammen
The address 110 Depot St. in La
Grande has had an interesting his-
tory. Its fi rst structure was built in
1888 as a two-story wooden building
which, during its short life, housed a
hardware and grocery store with a
one story tin shop at the rear. It was
destroyed by fi re on July 4,1891.
In the early days of La Grande,
fi re was an ever-present lurking
enemy of wooden buildings. Accord-
ing to Bernal Hug Sr. in “History of
Union County,” the fi re started on
the southwest corner of Washing-
ton and Depot and “soon spread to
adjacent buildings and then crossed
the street. It burned four city blocks
in less than an hour.”
The present building was con-
structed in 1892. This new building
was known as being located in the
Bryan and Dumphy Block (National
Register of Historic Places) and was
occupied early on by a hardware
store with offi ces on the second fl oor.
preneur who diversifi ed into other
businesses, real estate soon became
his newest interest. According to his
biography he “became the owner
of much property in La Grande, in-
cluding valuable business property
and tenement houses and had one
of the fi nest residences in the city.”
Richard and his wife Addie moved
to Portland where he became one of
the “men of infl uence of Portland.”
Mr. Bryan died in 1915.
Dumphy (sometimes spelled
Dunphy or Dumphrey) was likely
Charles S. Dunphrey, who was listed
in the 1900 Eastern Oregon Direc-
tory for La Grande as operating a
Submitted photo bowling alley in the Bryan Block,
A ghost sign for J.C. Penney Co. at 110 Depot St.
even though the 1900 Census listed
him as an unemployed miner. The
Who were Bryan and Dumphy?
In La Grande he engaged in the
1903 City Directory listed Dun-
Bryan was Richard E. Bryan, born hardware business until 1890.
phrey, C. S. & Co. — Drugs, Paint &
in Indiana in 1841, who came to
It’s most likely that he was the
Oils — Depot Street corner Wash-
La Grande in 1880 at age 39 from
one who constructed the current
ington Avenue.
Bates County, Missouri , where he
building. He built up a thriving
This was located in the same
had been in the mercantile business. hardware business, but as an entre- block as Bryan’s building. Charles
was born in New York in 1848, mar-
ried Ida Gayetty in Illinois in 1884
and kept moving west until he and
Ida arrived in La Grande. Like his
fellow entrepreneur Bryan, Dun-
phrey kept on moving and creating
businesses. He died in San Diego in
1911.
In 1898 the La Grande Observer
had an advertisement for “Causey-
Pierce Real-state Co. Offi ce Rooms
3 and 4 of the Bryan Block.” The
names of other stores and business-
es have been lost in history but the
store that moved into 110 Depot St.
on April 6, 1914, remains not only
on the building as a ghost sign but
as a part of La Grande’s history for
over 100 years.
The name of the store’s founder
was James Cash Penney, born in
Missouri in 1875 as the seventh
of 12 children of James and Mary
Penney.
See Depot St./Page 3B