Reviews Lifestyle The New Sober Boom Getting Hooked on Quitting Education Liberal Arts Cuts Are Dangerous Is College Necessary? Finance Dying Parents Costing Millennials Dear Gen Z Investing In Le Creuset Crypto Investing SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters ‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

Lifestyle The New Sober Boom Getting Hooked on Quitting

Getting Hooked on Quitting

Education Liberal Arts Cuts Are Dangerous Is College Necessary?

Liberal Arts Cuts Are Dangerous

Is College Necessary?

Finance Dying Parents Costing Millennials Dear Gen Z Investing In Le Creuset

Dying Parents Costing Millennials Dear

Gen Z Investing In Le Creuset

Crypto Investing SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters ‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

Investing SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters ‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters

‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

Reviews Lifestyle The New Sober Boom Getting Hooked on Quitting Education Liberal Arts Cuts Are Dangerous Is College Necessary? Finance Dying Parents Costing Millennials Dear Gen Z Investing In Le Creuset Crypto Investing SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters ‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

Lifestyle The New Sober Boom Getting Hooked on Quitting

Getting Hooked on Quitting

Education Liberal Arts Cuts Are Dangerous Is College Necessary?

Liberal Arts Cuts Are Dangerous

Is College Necessary?

Finance Dying Parents Costing Millennials Dear Gen Z Investing In Le Creuset

Dying Parents Costing Millennials Dear

Gen Z Investing In Le Creuset

Crypto Investing SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters ‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

Investing SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters ‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters

‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

Start the party with crackers

Spiced Saltines, savory Ritz granola and cacio e pepe oyster crackers make the case.

Published July 14, 2026 10:30AM (EDT)

A version of this recipe first appeared in The Bite, Salon's food newsletter. Sign up for early access to articles like this, plus recipes, food-related pop culture recommendations and conversations about what we're eating, how and why.

My preferred way to eat chicken noodle soup as a child was with so many Saltines crushed into the bowl that it ceased to resemble soup altogether. It became something closer to porridge, or gruel, which delighted me. On fall Sundays after church   — after being gently held to account for my sins via felt puppet shows, tiny plastic cups of Welch’s and the Lord’s own cracker, the communion wafer — my mom would have a pot of chicken noodle soup waiting to warm on the stove. I’d change into play clothes, take my bowl and begin the solemn work of crushing an obscene number of crackers into the carrot-flecked broth until the spoon could nearly stand upright. In my imagination, I was, naturally, a Dickensian orphan enjoying my one hot meal.

Crackers were never nondescript to me. They were the quiet architecture of certain meals, the thing that made........

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