Bread Boards (aka the dinner trick)

Have you ever seen *Triscuits* masquerade so successfully as dinner?  

I'm not offering you a recipe today. In fact, what I'm offering is a non-recipe. And it's this: make, or acquire, a stable of pretty little bread boards, and you will always have dinner. Or perhaps I should say "dinner," because the point here is to use the bread board the way fashion people might use a nice, big belt: to pull the disparate elements of your refrigerator together into a dinner-type outfit. 

Odds and ends of good cheese and bread, crackers, fresh or dried fruit, a sprig of some or other fresh herb, a dollop or marmalade or honey, pickles or mustard, a nice piece of salami for the meat-eaters, maybe a salad on the side. This is the way we eat a great deal of the time. Birdy especially, since this is what I make her instead whenever we're having something of the meat persuasion. 

bread, cheddar, brie, dates, apple-rosemary jelly

She is never not happy to have a bread board. In fact, nobody is. Nobody is never not happy. Are you following? WTF? I'm trying to say that everybody loves the bread boards. It's a little like our famous bean feasts, the principle being that dinner-eaters often like to assemble there own lovely little bites and arrangements of food, rather than being served a big plate of a thing. It also makes for great conversation, since everyone has to tell you about their favorite combination (cheddar + spicy mustard + grapefruit marmalade) or force you to try it (twist my arm). I should mention that we got this idea from a former favorite restaurant of ours (it has since burned down but is reincarnated here) that offered a bread board on the kids' menu: a $5 selection that included a couple slices of bread, some artfully rolled-up turkey and ham slices, a little of this or that cheese, and a tiny ramekin of mustard. It was a real pleaser.

cheeses, bread, marmalade, bad flash photography

Michael made our boards for Birdy's twelfth (sob!) birthday, and I can tell you how. He sawed a 1- by 8-inch pine board ($8.57 for a 6-foot board at Home Depot) into 12-inch lengths, then sanded them and rubbed them well with beeswax. He drilled the holes with a 1-inch bit; they are purely decorative, since we don't actually hang the boards, but I love how they look. (For what it's worth, Home Depot will cut the board for you for free! At least the first four cuts, I think. Then you have to blow somebody.)

But you could also buy nice little boards, like these 5-dollar ones at IKEA. Or these fancy bamboo ones from Amazon. Oh, and these little spreaders too.

Speaking of bread, I wrote a little bit about it at The Mid. And speaking of The Mid, I wrote a little bit about the 80s there too.

Take care, my lovelies. xo