The Fun of Cooking: A Story for Girls and Boys

"Well!" sighed Mildred, "then let me have another receipt right away, so I'll forget them. I do want to make them so much."

"Here is another receipt you will like just as well; part of it is for the picnic, and part of it is for a little bit of a party for you and Miss Betty and me, while the picnic is going on upstairs."

"A party for us? What kind of a party?"

"Lovely grown-up afternoon tea!" laughed her mother. "You can invite Miss Betty yourself won't that be nice?"

"Perfectly lovely! Do tell faster!"

"Well, first you make for the picnic some sweet sandwiches like those we planned for the school lunches; these are simply, to begin with:"

ORANGE MARMALADE SANDWICHES

Spread thin white bread and butter with orange marmalade; trim off the crusts and cut into even shapes; a round cooky cutter makes pretty sandwiches.

"I've made those for Jack, lots of times," said Mildred, as she wrote this down, "only I didn't cut them in round shapes, because boys don't care about that."

"No," said her mother, smiling, "boys don't, but girls do! So make part of these in rounds, and put them away, and send the square ones upstairs. And when it's time for our party, just toast ours quickly, and you will find them the most delicious things you ever ate, especially with tea; that's what we three will have."

"Those will be Miss Betty's surprise!" laughed Mildred, as she wrote down the word toasted after the title of the sandwiches. "Now what next?"

"Suppose you try some very easy cookies; those are just the thing for a picnic; you can make them Saturday morning, and then they will be fresh. Here is the rule:"

SPICY COOKIES

Sprinkle the baking board with flour and rub it smoothly over; do the same to the rolling-pin, and scatter a little flour evenly also over the bottom of some shallow tins. Have a panful of sifted flour ready on the table, as you may need to do this several times.

¾ cup of sugar.

3 tablespoonfuls of butter.

6 tablespoonfuls of milk.

1 egg.

1½ cups of flour.

¼ teaspoonful of soda.

¼ teaspoonful of salt.

1 tablespoonful of hot water.

¼ teaspoonful of cloves.

¼ teaspoonful of cinnamon.

Melt the butter, add the sugar, and rub together. Beat the egg without separating, and put in next. Mix the soda and hot water, put the milk with this; put the salt in the flour; add part of the flour to the sugar and other things, and then part of the milk, and so on; then put in the spices and stir all together. Put the dough on the board, roll it out thin, and with a cutter mark it all over; then lift out the pieces with a cake turner, very carefully, and arrange them in your pans, but do not let them touch. Bake fifteen minutes; take them out of the pans while warm, and spread out on a platter to cool.

"Dear me, that sounds pretty hard!" said Mildred, as she finished.

"Cookies are not quite as easy to make as some other things, but they are so good, so nice for luncheon and suppers and other times, that I think you will be glad to know how to make them. And Father is so fond of cookies!"

"So he is. Well, Mother, I'll try them. And now what comes next?"

"Some cunning, easy little cakes, so easy that next time Brownie can make them herself. They are called:"

MARGUERITES

20 round, thin crackers.

20 marshmallows.

2 tablespoonfuls of chopped nuts.

2 teaspoonfuls of butter.

Butter the crackers on one side, just a little; put a marshmallow on each, a tiny bit of butter on it, and a sprinkle of chopped nuts of any kind. Put them in a shallow pan, and bake till they are soft and brown; eat while fresh and warm.

"Oh, lovely! Mother, I must have some of the girls in and have those for myself!"

"So you shall, any day you want to. Now don't you think that is almost enough for the picnic?"

"I think we ought to have something to finish off with – to eat with the cookies and marguerites; don't you think so?"

"Yes, I do; something in the way of fruit. Suppose we give them this – it is much nicer than plain oranges or bananas; write it down, dear."

ORANGE BASKETS

6 large oranges.

2 bananas.

2 tablespoonfuls of powdered sugar.

Cut the oranges in halves; take out the pulp with a spoon, and put it in a bowl. Scrape out the inside, leaving nice, clean shells, and then scallop or point the edges with the scissors. Peel the bananas, cut them in long, narrow strips, and these into small bits, and mix lightly with the orange, and add the sugar; heap in the baskets and set away to grow cold.

"If we happened to have any pineapple or white grapes in the house, I should put some of those in too; but these will be delicious just as they are. Now anything more?"

"Something to drink with the lunch. I think pink lemonade would be nice."

"Perfectly lovely!" laughed Mother Blair. "We will get a can of raspberries out of the fruit closet, and make something for them that will be ever so good. This is the rule:"

PICNIC LEMONADE

8 lemons.

12 glasses of water.

3 cups of sugar.

1 cup of raspberry juice.

Roll the lemons till they are soft; cut them and squeeze the juice out. Put the sugar in a little pan with a glass of water, and boil it two minutes; add this to the lemon and raspberry juice, and strain it; add the rest of the water; serve with broken ice in a glass pitcher.

"Be sure and boil the sugar and water together, Mildred, whenever you make any kind of drink like lemonade; it is so much better than if you put in plain sugar. When it is all done, if it is not quite sweet enough, you can add a little powdered sugar without hurting it."

"Mother, we forgot the surprise! You remember, 'every luncheon must have a surprise,' you said; see, here it is in the book."

"Dear me, so I did! What shall it be, Mildred? I can't seem to think of another thing for that picnic."

"Neither can I."

"Stuffed dates!" exclaimed Mother Blair, presently. "I knew there must be something, and those will be exactly right."

STUFFED DATES

Wash the dates and wipe them dry. Open one side and take out the stone; in its place press in half a pecan or other nut; close the edges, and roll each date in powdered sugar.

"I do hope there will be some of those over for us," said Mildred, as she put her book away. "Those children are going to have a wonderful lunch!"

Brownie could not imagine what her birthday surprise was to be. She could not help guessing, but she never once was "warm." When Saturday came, and the boys and girls arrived in their every-day clothes and even kept on their wraps in the parlor, she did not know what to think; and there was actually no lunch for them in the dining-room! She began to look very sober.

But when everybody had come, Mother Blair said: "Won't you go upstairs?" and Mildred and Jack ushered them up to the attic.

It was such a lovely surprise! The big green carpets were spread down on the bare floor, and all around were set little green trees in pots. The canary was hung up out of sight, and he was singing as hard as he could. It was not a bit too cold, for the door had been kept open all day and the sun was shining in at the window.

And just then appeared Mother Blair, and Norah, and Jack, and Mildred, all carrying baskets, which they put down on the floor. Then the picnic began!

There was first the cloth to spread down on the grass, and paper plates and napkins to be passed around. The veal loaf was found, a platter of it tied up in a large napkin, and hot sandwiches between hot plates, tied up in another napkin, and marmalade sandwiches folded in paraffin paper by themselves. Last of all were the orange baskets, each one twisted up in a paper napkin with a funny little frill on top made of the ends of the napkin; and the dates were in little square paper boxes, one box for each child.

As they began to eat, Jack came up with a big, big pitcher of beautiful pink lemonade, and little glasses to drink it out of. Oh, such a picnic as it was! Such a perfectly lovely picnic! Out-of-door picnics were nothing to it And when they had eaten up every crumb and drank up every drop, they played games until the attic grew dark; and then they all went home, and the birthday was over.

CHAPTER V

SUNDAY NIGHT SUPPER

One Sunday afternoon just as the clock struck three, the Blairs' telephone rang; and after she had answered it, Mother Blair called Mildred, who sat reading by the window.

"My dear," she said, "do you remember hearing Father speak of his old friends the Wentworths, whom he used to know so well years ago? Well, they have come east, and are in town for a day or two, and they want to come out and see us this very afternoon. Now I should love to ask them to stay to supper, but if I do, I shall have to stay with them and visit and can't help you at all; and Norah is out. Do you suppose you three children could get the supper and serve it all by yourselves?"

"Why, of course, Mother Blair," said Mildred, reproachfully. "Of course we can! You don't know how many things your children can do when they try! Now what shall we have? It ought to be something very good, because they have never been here before."

"We were going to have canned salmon," said her mother, thoughtfully; "we might scallop that, and have potatoes with it, and perhaps muffins or biscuits."

"Oh, have muffins, Mother! I have seen Norah make them lots of times, and I'm sure I could, too, if you give me the receipt."

"Well, you may try," said her mother, "but I think you had better have some toast ready, too, in case they do not come out right. And what else can we have? Preserves, I suppose; but, Mildred, all the nice preserves are gone, because it is so late in the spring. But we might have little baked custards."

"Yes, in the cunning little brown baking dishes; those will be lovely! And I'll make some little cakes to eat with them; Norah said there were just cookies for supper."

"But do you really think you can do all that? Don't you think the cookies will do?"

"No, indeed," said Mildred, "not for extra nice company! But little cakes are no trouble to make. And isn't it fun to have company come when you don't expect it? It's so much nicer than to specially invite them!"

Mother Blair laughed. "I hope you will always think so," she said. And Mildred ran away to call Brownie to get her apron and come to the kitchen.

"We will lay the table first, even though it is so early," said their mother. "Brownie, bring me the pile of the best doilies in the sideboard drawer."

"The Wheelers always use a regular big cloth for supper," Brownie said, as she came over with them to the table.

"Many people do, but I think the table looks prettier at breakfast and luncheon and supper with the doilies. And then, too, if anybody happens to spill anything – "

"Jack spilled gravy yesterday, awfully," said Brownie, soberly.

"Well, you see Norah had to wash only one little doily because of that; if we had had on a table-cloth, all of it would have had to go into the wash. But if we had no doilies, I should use a lunch cloth that would just cover the top of the table, and that would be pretty, too. Put one doily for each person, Brownie, and a large one in the middle for the fern dish, and little ones for the tumblers. Now for the silver."

Mildred came with knives, forks, and spoons.

"No knives, because there is no meat," said her mother; "but if we were going to use them, which side would you put them on?"

"Left," said Brownie, guessing.

"Not unless you were left-handed," smiled her mother. "The rule is: put on the right side what you will use with the right hand, and on the left what you will use with the left hand. That is, if there are no knives, all the silver goes on the right, and the fork or spoon you are to use first goes the farthest away from the plate, the next one next to that, and so on; if you remember that, you will never be puzzled as to which fork to use. Now the teaspoons – put those on the right, too; and the dessert spoon or fork may go at the top, across the plate if you like, though I prefer it on the dessert plate itself. Put the napkin at the left, always; and the tumbler goes at the top to the right, and the bread-and-butter plate and knife at the top too, toward the left. There! Doesn't that look pretty?"

Mildred had been getting out the best cups and saucers and arranging a small round tray in front of her mother's place with cream and sugar and the tray bowl, and a place left for the tea-pot; the cups she put at the right, arranging them in twos – two cups on two saucers.

"Mildred, after you pass the salmon, you may put the dish right in front of Father; and the potatoes may go on the table too, as Norah isn't here, though I like best to have them passed from the sideboard. The muffins may stand at the side of the table, half-way down. Now let us carry out all the dishes and begin to cook."

So Mildred took a pile of plates to heat, and Brownie carried a dish for the potatoes, and Mother Blair brought the little custard cups; they arranged these on the kitchen table where they would not be in the way, and then Mother Blair told Mildred to see that the fire was all right. "Always remember to look at that first," she said. "It needs shaking down a little, and to have more coal on; and pull out the dampers so the oven will heat."

Mildred hunted for the dampers, but could not find any. "I don't believe there are any on this stove," she said, just as Jack came in to see what was going on.

"No dampers! Isn't that just like a girl!" he exclaimed. "See, here they are, tucked under the edge of the stove. You pull them out – so – and then you shut the draft at the top, opposite the coal, and open the one at the bottom, so the air will blow right up through the fire and make it go like everything. And you have to turn the dampers in the pipe, too, to let the heat go up the chimney."

"Good!" said his mother. "I didn't know you knew so much about stoves. Now suppose you shake the fire down and put the coal on – that's a man's work."

"All right," said Jack; "I don't mind things like that; but boys don't cook, you know."

His mother put both hands over her ears. "Jack, if I hear you say that once more, I shall believe you are turning into a parrot! And you are all wrong, too, and some day I am going to give you some special lessons myself. But to-day you may just tend the fire and bring us things from the refrigerator as we need them, to save time. Now, Mildred, we will begin with the custards, because they must be nice and cold. Brownie, you bring the spoons and bowls and such things, and, Jack, you get the milk and eggs."

BAKED CUSTARDS

1 quart of milk.

Yolks of four eggs.

4 teaspoonfuls of sugar.

½ teaspoonful of vanilla.

1 pinch of salt.

½ teaspoonful of grated nutmeg.

Put the sugar in the milk; beat the eggs light, and add those, with salt and vanilla. Pour into the cups, sprinkle with nutmeg, and arrange the cups in a shallow pan. Bake half an hour, or till, when you put the blade of a knife in one, it comes out clean.

It took just a few moments to make these, and then came the next rule:

CURRANT CAKES

½ cup of butter.

1 cup of sugar.

1 cup of milk.

1 egg.

2 cups of flour.

2 rounded teaspoonfuls of baking-powder.

½ cup of currants.

1 teaspoonful of vanilla.

Wash the currants and rub them dry in a towel. Put the flour in a bowl; take out a large tablespoonful and mix with the currants, and then mix the baking-powder with the rest of it. Rub the butter to a cream, add the sugar, then the milk, then the egg, beaten without separating, then the flour mixed with the baking-powder, then the flavoring, and, last, the currants. Grease some small tins, fill them half full, and bake in an oven not too hot.

"You must always mix some flour with raisins or currants to keep them from sinking to the bottom of the cake; but do not add any to the rule – just take a little out from what you are going to use in the cake. Now, Jack, please get me two cans of salmon from the pantry and open them; and we will need butter and milk from the refrigerator, too. It's fine to have a 'handy man' around to help us cook! Now, Mildred, double this rule, because there will be so many at supper."

SCALLOPED SALMON

1 good-sized can of salmon, or one pint of any cooked fish.

1 cup of white sauce.

1 cup of cracker crumbs.

Butter a baking dish, put in a layer of fish, then one of crumbs; sprinkle with a little salt and pepper, and dot the crumbs with butter; then put on a layer of white sauce. Repeat till the dish is full, with the crumbs on top; dot with butter and brown well in the oven; it will take about twenty minutes.

Brownie rolled the crackers for this, while Mildred made the white sauce by the rule she said was so easy it was exactly like learning a bc.

"That is so queer," laughed her mother, "because cooks call it just that – the a b c of cooking! It is the rule you use more often than any other."

WHITE SAUCE

1 rounded tablespoonful of butter.

1 rounded tablespoonful of flour.

1 cup of milk.

½ teaspoonful of salt.

2 shakes of pepper.

Melt the butter; when it bubbles, put in the flour, stirring it well; when this is smooth, slowly add the milk, salt, and pepper; stir and cook till very smooth; you can make it like thin cream by cooking only one minute, or like thick cream by cooking it two minutes.

"Sometimes you want it thicker than others," said her mother, "so I just put that in to explain. To-day make it like thin cream. Now, Mildred, you can put it all together while Jack brings in the cold boiled potatoes and Brownie cuts them up."

CREAMED POTATOES

Cut eight large boiled potatoes into bits the size of the end of your thumb. Put them in a saucepan and cover them with milk; stand them on the back of the stove where they will cook slowly; watch them so they will not burn. In another saucepan make white sauce as before. When the potatoes have drunk up all the milk and are rather dry, drop them in the sauce; do not stir them; sprinkle with pepper.

"Now for the muffins, for it is after five o'clock. Brownie, you find the muffin pans and make them very hot. Do you know how to grease them?"

"Yes, indeed!" said Brownie, proudly. "This is the way." She got a clean bit of paper, warmed the pans, and dropped a bit of butter in each, and then with the paper rubbed it all around.

MUFFINS

2 cups of flour.

1 cup of milk.

1 rounded tablespoonful of butter.

2 eggs, beaten separately.

1 teaspoonful of baking-powder.

½ teaspoonful of salt.

1 teaspoonful of sugar.

Beat the egg yolks first; then add the milk; melt the butter and put that in, then the flour, well mixed with the baking-powder, then the salt and sugar. Last, add the stiff whites of the eggs. Fill the pans half full.

"Some things, like cake, cannot bear to have the oven door opened while they are baking," said Mother Blair; "but salmon does not mind if you open quickly; so, Mildred, put these in as fast as you can; they will take about twenty minutes to bake. I do believe that is all we have to make except the tea, and that takes only a moment when everything else is ready. I will give you the receipt for it now, and after everybody is here and you have said 'How do you do?' to them, you can slip out and make this, and while it stands you can put the other things on the table. But perhaps you had better make some coffee too; the men may like it."

TEA

Fill the kettle with fresh, cold water and let it boil up hard. Scald out an earthen tea-kettle, and put in two rounded teaspoonfuls of tea for six people, or more, if you want it quite strong. Pour on six cups of boiling water and let the pot stand where it is warm for just two minutes. Scald out the pot you are going to send to the table, and strain the tea into that. Have a jug of hot water ready to send in with it.

COFFEE

1 rounded tablespoonful of ground coffee for each person; and

1 extra tablespoonful.

½ cup of cold water.

1 egg shell, washed and broken, with a little bit of the white.

Mix these in a bowl. Then put in a very clean pot and add

1 cup of boiling water for each person and

1 cup more.

Let it boil up hard just once; stir it, pour in 1 tablespoonful of cold water; let it stand three minutes, strain and put in a hot pot.

Just before the door-bell rang, Mildred went to the refrigerator to look at her custards and found them nice and cold. Then she looked carefully in the oven through a tiny crack, and found the muffins were done and the salmon beautifully brown; so she took up the potatoes, and put them in the covered dish on the back of the stove where they would keep hot, and asked Brownie to lay the hot plates around the table, one for each person. Then she went into the parlor and said "How do you do?" to the guests, and after a moment slipped out again, and put everything on the sideboard, made the tea, filled the glasses, and put butter on the bread-and-butter plates. Then Brownie asked everybody to come to supper.

When they had all sat down, Mildred passed the dish of salmon, offering it on the left side, of course, just as Norah always did; then she put the dish down before her father and passed the potatoes and muffins in the same way, while Mother Blair poured the tea and handed it around without rising from her seat. And then everybody began to eat, and say, "Oh, how good this salmon is!" and "Did you ever taste such muffins?" and "Did you really, really make all these good things yourselves, children? We don't see how you ever did it!" And they ate at two helpings of everything, and Father Blair ate three. And when it was time to take the dishes off, there was not a speck of salmon left, nor a spoonful of potato, nor even a single muffin.

Then Brownie quietly took the crumbs off as she had seen Norah do, brushing them onto a plate with a folded napkin; and as she was doing this, Jack slipped out to the refrigerator and got the custards, all as cold as ice and brown on top, looking as pretty as could be in their cunning cups; each cup was set on a dessert plate and a spoon laid by its side, and the fresh cakes were passed with them.

Soon after supper the company went home, and then Mildred said: "I feel exactly like a toy balloon – so light inside! Wasn't that a good supper? And didn't they like the things we had! And isn't it fun to have company! When I am grown up and have a house of my own, I shall have company every day in the week."

"I shall make a point of coming every other day at least," said Father Blair. "I'm so proud of my family to-night! Those Wentworths may be staying at the very best hotel in town, but I know they don't have such suppers there."

"Don't you wish you could cook, Jack?" inquired his mother, with a twinkle in her eye. And then everybody laughed, and said: "Dear me, what good times we Blairs do have together!"

CHAPTER VI

MILDRED'S SCHOOL PARTY

One day early in June, Mildred ran up to her mother's room as soon as she came home from school. She tossed her hat on the bed, and dropped her books in an arm-chair. "Oh, Mother!" she exclaimed, out of breath, "do you suppose I could have twenty girls here some afternoon for a little bit of a party! I do so want to ask them right away, before exams begin. They are my twenty most particular friends, and some of them are going away just as school closes, so, you see, I have to hurry."

"Of course you may have them," said Mother Blair. "But only twenty particular friends, Mildred? What about the rest of the class?"

Mildred laughed. "Well, I mean these are the girls I happen to know best of all, and I want to have a kind of farewell before summer really comes. What sort of a party shall we have, Mother? I mean, what shall we have to eat?"

"I should think strawberry ice-cream would be just the thing, with some cake to go with it, and something cold to drink; is that about what you had thought of?"

"Just exactly, Mother. But do you think we can make enough ice-cream here at home for twenty people? Wouldn't it be better to buy it?"

"Oh, I am sure we can easily make it, and home-made ice-cream is so good – better, I think, than we could buy. We can borrow Miss Betty's freezer, which holds two quarts, and as ours holds three, that will be plenty. We count that a quart will serve about seven, – more cooking arithmetic, Mildred! If one quart will be enough for seven people, how many quarts will be needed for twenty?"