Blue Cheese Party Crisps

New here? Hi! You’re just in time.

Hello to My Immaculate Inoculates,

On this blessed Tuesday, as voters head to the polls and we all, as a nation, collectively grapple with sunset in the 4 o’clock hour, we must turn our attention to Thanksgiving. I don’t necessarily want to, but we are brave chickens, and so we will.

Let’s start at the beginning—right after the doorbell rings. Your guests enter. They smell all the smells. They’d better have an armful of gifts for you, which you liberate before summoning a small child to dispatch with their coats.

Then what? You probably want to go back to the kitchen and return to whatever it was you were in the middle of doing (if it were me, I’d be going back into the shower to finish rinsing the conditioner out of my hair, because I am never ready at call time). Before you can go, though, you have to give them something. This is called being the host.

Easy. You will tell them to help themselves to a Blue Cheese Party Crisp, which you’ve strategically placed on a plate in another room. These salty and peppery little crackers, which my mother, Carole Lalli, has been giving to her third-Thursday-in-November callers since before I can remember, are delicious, adorable, and savory. They are also stupidly easy to make, and equally enticing whether you bake them day of, or on November 3, which is when I made the batch that are in these photos. Same ones I’ll be serving 23 days from now.

The recipe Carole’s been using all this time is from The California-America Cookbook, a book she edited, which is a very convenient way to get turned onto new recipes. The title is out of print, but I wrangled up a few used copies for you on Etsy, Thriftbooks, eBay, and Etsy, again.

Some might say you should tackle the “big stuff” on your prep list, such as—note to self—placing a rental order for extra chairs, before taking care of smaller concerns, like crackers. On the other end of the (literal) spectrum, there are those of us who are elated by crossing one thing, any thing, off the list.

When you stop and think about it, this is no small matter. We all know that snacks are huge, and with that, and Carole’s blessings, it’s settled.

xoxCarla