When the ingredients list on the side of the box of any prepared food is longer than half an inch I don’t buy it. This pronouncement was the beginning of a grocery store game for my sons when they were too young to sound out words like disodium inosinate or monoglycerides. Rather than dealing with arbitrary decisions like “no” imposed by a tyrant (me), the length of the ingredients list was undeniable. My sons are grown now and my grandchildren play the half-inch game and I still check the length of ingredients lists.

The cracker aisle at the market is a special challenge. The ingredients list for simple, no frills saltine crackers is longer than an inch and includes partially hydrogenated cotton seed oil and high fructose corn syrup. Not what I want to serve with soup made with carrots, onions and dill from my garden and milk from a nearby dairy.

According to the Farmers’ Almanac, hardtack, the predecessor to crackers, originated in New England in the 18th century. It is a simple cracker made from flour and water. Baked hard and dry and stored properly, it lasts forever, or at least long enough to be a dietary mainstay on long sea voyages.

Legend has it that crackers were the creation of Massachusetts’ baker, Josiah Bent. He combined a common kitchen mishap, over-baking a batch of biscuits, with Yankee ingenuity. Inspired by the sound they made when chewed, he introduced the crisp biscuit as a cracker. More than two hundred years later, the G. H. Bent Company in Milton, Massachusetts is still baking hard tack with just two ingredients, wheat flour and water.

Alas, the cracker has changed radically since it simple beginnings. There are whole grain, gluten free, low fat, no fat, salt free, cheese, herb, poppy seed, sesame seed, naturally flavored, and artificially flavored crackers waiting in the cracker aisle hoping for a ride in your shopping cart.

You can turn away from the fancy boxes and follow my half-inch rule if you make crackers rather than buy crackers made by faraway food corporations. You can say no to crackers shipped hundreds of miles, in excessive packaging, supplemented with un-pronounceable ingredients and preservatives and sold at prices that rival designer chocolates. Homemade crackers are delicious, simple to make and won’t make a shocking dent in your food budget.

Crackers can be seasoned and shaped to suit the occasion. Served with local cheese they are an elegant snack. Homemade crackers spread with natural peanut butter will be welcomed with a smile. Rye cheese twigs and a glass of wine say welcome to friends. Here’s how I make them:

Rye Cheese Twigs

I combine half a cup of rye flour, one cup of whole-wheat flour, one teaspoon of kosher salt, a pinch of cayenne, and two tablespoons of sesame seeds in a bowl. I use the large holes on a box grater to shred one stick of cold unsalted butter into the flour mixture and then use my fingers to blend the flour and butter until the mixture looks like coarse sand.

I stir in three quarters of a cup of shredded cheddar cheese and slowly add enough ice water, about half a cup, to make stiff dough. The dough is divided into quarters, wrapped in foil and chilled in the freezer for half an hour.

I use a floured rolling pin to roll the well chilled dough on a floured board to make a quarter inch thick, six inch by twelve inch rectangle. I cut the rectangle into 24 six-inch long strips, put the strips onto a parchment lined baking sheet and stretch and roll them into twelve inch long twig shaped cylinders.

I bake them for ten minutes in a pre-heated 400-degree oven, turn them over and bake them for three more minutes. Cheese twigs are best eaten the day they are made. Crackers must be completely cooled before being stored in an airtight container.

Use whole-wheat flour, semolina, spelt or buckwheat flour, add seeds or spices to suit your fancy. Send me a note—share your success. Remember Josiah Bent!

Carol Egbert lives in Quechee, where she paints and cooks. Her food blog can be found at www.carolegbert.com.

When you do it every day, it becomes like second nature. I can walk into a room and see how to improve it, even with existing furnishings, just moving a couch or a rug,” says Eleanor Shepard, explaining her sure touch with interior design. “In one house the whole room felt small. The first thing I did was pick up the couch and move it back, and automatically had a bigger living room.” As her company, Shepard Interior Selections, celebrates its twentieth year, many local families have reason to be grateful for Shepard’s efforts.

Since she has often worked on 100 homes in one year, Shepard has had a lot of influence in the area. She’s worked mostly in Quechee—“I’d say 75 to 80 percent,” she estimates—with the rest scattered between Hanover and Woodstock. Most of her clients come to her by word of mouth; someone admires a friend’s home and discovers that Shepard was the interior designer. Now she gets calls from former clients for new projects, or the new owners of a property call her back. She is redoing one condo for the third time as it has changed hands.

Glossy magazines seem to suggest that an interior designer will work just on million dollar homes. Not so, says Shepard, though she has worked on a number of those. “I can work with tight budgets,” she says cheerfully. “In fact, I’m kind of ‘everybody’s decorator.’ Besides the total design of a big home, I also find a single drape or one chair for someone.” She also designs for commercial clients such as Valley Terrace, Alice Peck Day, and local banks and libraries.

All the decision-making in decorating can be overwhelming, but customers have learned to rely on Shepard’s experience and her ability and willingness to adjust to their taste. “I have my own taste, but I don’t force it on anyone,” Shepard explains. “I lead and guide and teach. I try to help people develop their own taste and avoid mistakes like buying a piece of furniture that’s too big for their space, or an unsuitable paint color.” Her involvement does not stop when the client leaves the showroom. “I’ll see this or that and think, ‘Oh, that would work for so-and-so.’” Part of her talent as a decorator stems from her ease at developing relationships with people. “You become friends, you’re involved in their lives. You know about their kids and their dogs,” she says. “It’s a very intimate connection.”

Shepard is also convinced that size matters. “I like big pieces, not little swatches,” she says, so the client really knows what a pattern will look like. Her showroom on Route 4 offers browsers the chance to see and feel thousands of different fabrics, to sit on many different chairs, to open and close dozens of blinds and shades. Customers know before they commit money that they like the look, feel, and workmanship of the pieces they buy. “People can test the quality—they sit on the cushions and try the drawers,” says Shepard. “That’s how it’s worked well for me: I expose people to a lot of choices and then help them choose.”

To help her clients visualize their new décor, Shepard has developed a clever method using full-size templates of the proposed furniture. “The bigger the picture, the better it is!” she exclaims, as she opens a closet to display rolls of paper “footprints” of various chairs, tables, and sofas.

A Hartland native, Shepard began her career with six years at what was then the Paint and Paper Barn in Lebanon, New Hampshire. She had long had an interest in art and architecture, and her work as a seamstress gave her practical experience. She took courses by mail and honed her eye and her connections at shows and seminars. Even now she continues to attend trade conferences to keep up with trends, so that she can function as a conduit into the area for new ideas. “I’m not trendy,” she says, “but I like to know what’s out there.”

In the past twenty years in Quechee, Shepard has not seen wild swings in taste. “The fabrics are simpler—they have less pattern—and there’s maybe more detailing in hardware. And there’s interest in green products—the dyes and so forth, and cotton.” She adds, “I’ve always been at least light green, with local suppliers.” The close connections she built with both suppliers and subcontractors are part of her success. She has winnowed manufacturers and developed a small list of local companies that can supply a range of styles of well-built furniture. Since she does a lot of business with them, the manufacturers give her good prices and attend carefully to her requests.

Shepard’s subcontractors are also long-term contacts. “I have great seamstresses, and that’s a huge plus,” she says with pride, and some relief. Knowing she can count on someone else’s perfectionism makes her job easier. Wallpaper hanging, upholstering, and carpetlaying are other areas where she singles out her connections.

In her own home, says Shepard, “I will work and work and work on something to get it exactly the way I want it, and then keep it for a long while.” Her living room has hunter green walls, “probably forever,” but in the dining room she’s now on her fourth wallpaper. “I think this time I’ve finally got it,” she says hopefully.

While she’s happy to engage in this sort of experiment in her own home, Shepard’s overriding goal is to get things right the first time for her clients. Delighted recommendations show that she succeeds though she aims high. As she says, “I don’t want people to say, ‘Oh, it will be fine.’ I want people to love it.”