Graham Crackers and Milk

As a child, we would often eat graham crackers and milk. Eating graham crackers and milk is one of my core childhood memories.

You might ask, "How does one eat graham crackers and milk?" Let me tell you how it's done. 

First, you have to have a package of graham crackers. You open the package and carefully break the crackers along the perforated lines into fourths. 

one package of graham crackers
broken into fourths for eating

It is important to buy quality graham crackers to ensure that the crackers are not randomly broken when you open the package and to have crackers that actually break on the perforated lines! It is also important to make sure that you have enough crackers so everyone involved in the eating can have their own package of graham crackers. This is one meal that I do not like to share! 

Next, you pour yourself a cup of cold milk. 

cup of cold milk

Graham crackers taste so much better when you have cold milk. I like to stack six graham cracker quarters together. Then, I hold them between my thumb and index finger for dunking in my cup of milk. 

the art of dunking

This next instruction is the most difficult of the entire recipe. You have to dunk the crackers for just the right amount of time. If you dunk too short, the crackers are too crunchy for maximum enjoyment. On the other hand, if you dunk too long, the crackers are oversaturated and fall apart in the cup or fall off on the counter when you move them toward your mouth. 

BUT ... I do not have an exact science to tell you how long is just right. So, you will just have to experiment, and therein lies the beauty of the recipe. The best thing about this time quandary is you have to eat a lot of graham crackers soaked in milk to learn the proper estimation technique. 

Back to the recipe ... I usually soak my six crackers as shown in the image for the right amount of time. As you can see, I have about half of the cracker in the milk and the other half out of the milk. When the time is right, I bite off the half of the cracker stack that is soaked with milk.

Then, I dunk the other half of the cracker stack in the milk and repeat. 

dunking the second half

This step is fun because you can watch the air bubbles while the milk infiltrates the crackers. 

Just keep dunking and eating until you have eaten the whole package of crackers. After years of experience, I learned that one cup of milk provides just enough milk for all the crackers. 

The last step is to drink any remaining milk from the cup. If you oversoaked some of your crackers, you will get to drink the broken crackers pieces from the bottom of the cup. 

While we mostly ate graham crackers and milk as a snack, I remember a few times when graham crackers and milk was our meal. Mostly this happened when Dad kept us working on some project until after dark. Then we would eat crackers and milk for supper before we went to bed. 

The first year we went to the pulling matches at Rupert, Idaho, Dad, Cade, and I stayed with my cousins Roanne (Ro Rich) and Gerry Gillette who lived in Paul, Idaho. We did not get to Ro's house until late-thirty. Ro's kids were already in bed. When Ro asked Dad if we wanted supper, Dad asked if she had any graham crackers and milk. 

The Rupert pulling matches must have started in 1980, 1981, or 1982. Cade and I were 12 to 15 years old. We ate a lot of graham crackers. Eating graham crackers and milk at Ro's house is one of my favorite pulling memories.