The Fun of Cooking: A Story for Girls and Boys

(If the potato is left-over, and so is cold, add ½ a cup of hot milk to it and beat it up till it is smooth and hot.)

Mix the meat, water, and seasoning all together in a saucepan and let it cook till it gets rather dry, stirring it often. Butter a baking dish and cover the sides and bottom with the potato, half an inch thick. Put the meat in the center, and then put the rest of the potato over the top and make it nice and smooth. Put bits of butter all over the top and brown in the oven.

CREAMED SALMON

1 can of salmon (medium size).

1 large cup of white sauce, well seasoned with salt and pepper.

Open the can, drain the fish of oil and take out the skin and bones; mix lightly, lay on squares of buttered toast; put slices of lemon and bits of parsley all around the edge of the platter. (You can use any sort of cooked fish instead of salmon.)

HOT SARDINES

1 box large sardines.

4 slices of toast

Juice of ½ a lemon.

Sprinkles of salt, pepper and dry mustard.

Open the sardines and lift them out carefully; drain the oil off. Put them on a tin plate in the oven to get very hot while you make toast and cut it into strips; cut the crust off and butter them a little. When the sardines are hot put one on each strip of toast, sprinkle with lemon juice, salt, pepper and mustard (only a tiny bit of mustard), and serve at once on a hot dish with parsley all around.

Besides these good things the children made all sorts of potatoes and muffins and everything else they had learned, and they really had a beautiful time. But the most fun of all was on Saturday when they had the cooking to do for two days and plenty of time in which to do it.

CHAPTER XV

THANKSGIVING DAY SUPPER

"Mother Blair, did you ever think that Thanksgiving Day has one great defect?"

"Why, no, Mildred, I don't believe I ever did," smiled her mother. "Do tell me what it is."

"Well, we have to have dinner in the afternoon so the littlest cousins can go home early, and so Norah can get away in time for her regular party – she always goes to one, you know, that evening; and that leaves us with nothing to do for hours before bedtime. I don't know why it is, but that time always drags."

"That is a real defect, Mildred, and I'm glad you told me, because we don't want any part of Thanksgiving Day to drag. It ought to be lovely till the very end. What can you think of that we can do to make it so?"

"I think if all the cousins would stay on instead of going home at dark, and if we arranged something interesting, like a little play or charades, first, and then, when we got hungry, about eight o'clock, we had a hot supper, that would be just perfect."

"Of course! That's a bright idea, Mildred. All the cousins are old enough now to spend the evening, and we can have a lovely time together. You arrange the play, and I'll get up the supper for you."

"No, indeed, Mother Blair! We three juniors will get it – that's part of the fun. And don't you think it would be nice to have it in here on the big library table? We could bring the things in on trays and then just help ourselves."

"That's another bright idea! Of course it would be delightful to have it in here. Then afterwards we could have a wood fire in the grate and sit around it to tell stories, and have games, and charades, and sing some songs together, and be just as thankful as possible. What shall we have for supper? I fancy we shall not want anything very heavy after our dinner."

"No, of course not; but it can be something awfully good. Cold turkey to begin with, and something hot to go with it, and – and what else, Mother Blair?"

"Oh, cranberry jelly, and perhaps a salad, and then something sweet to finish with. Do you think that would do?"

"Yes, and some kind of a hot drink, I suppose; coffee for Father and Uncle and Aunt Mary and you, and cocoa for the rest of us; only I'm so tired of cocoa, I don't believe I could drink a drop."

"We certainly have had it pretty often for lunch lately; I've noticed it myself and meant to speak to Norah about it. I think I can find something else for all of us which you will like better – something especially meant for Thanksgiving."

"What the Pilgrim Fathers had for their Thanksgiving dinner, I suppose," laughed Mildred. "I'm sure it will be good, too, and we'll love it."

School closed the day before Thanksgiving, and that afternoon Mildred and Brownie began to be thankful, because there would be no more lessons till Monday. They put their books away, planned the funny little play they were going to have the next evening, and got together everything they would need for that; then they said it was time to think about the supper in the library.

"We will wait till Norah has gone out and the kitchen is all in order," said Mildred. "Then we can get out the things we want to carry into the other room, and put them on two trays; Jack and Cousin Fred can carry them when we are ready. Plates, and knives, and forks, and glasses, and napkins; and the platter of turkey – "

"And salt," said Brownie, "and bread, and butter."

"Yes; and cranberry jelly. Then we will make the hot things and bring them in afterward."

"What shall we make to-day, Mildred?"

"I wonder if Norah has made the cranberry jelly for dinner yet; if she hasn't, you and I might make that now, and divide it and put part away for the supper. And we can make the dessert, or whatever Mother thinks we had better have. The salad we shall have to make to-morrow."

Norah was that very minute preparing to make the cranberry jelly, but she said she was in a hurry, and the girls could make it if they would promise not to get in her way. They got the receipt from their mother, and began in a corner as far off from Norah as they could get.

CRANBERRY JELLY

1 quart of cranberries. Pick them over and wash them, then chop them a little.

1½ cups of cold water.

2 cups of sugar.

Boil five minutes; rub while hot through a sieve, and pour into a pretty mold.

This rule, of course, had to be doubled for two molds. They found it was not very easy to get the cranberries through the sieve; by talking turns, however, they were slowly squeezing them through when Norah came to their aid and gave them the wooden potato-masher to use instead of the spoon they were working with. The molds were set away to get hard, and then they asked their mother for something else to do.

"I've been thinking," she said, "that we ought to have for supper something the men would like very much; they will have had turkey once already, and perhaps they will be tired of it. Would you like scalloped oysters?"

"Mother, we'd perfectly love them!" exclaimed Mildred. "But do you think we could make them? I always thought they were very hard to make."

"My dear, they are the easiest thing in the world. To save time, you may copy the rule now, and then to-morrow, when everybody is here, I will not have to stop visiting and explain it."

SCALLOPED OYSTERS

1 quart of oysters.

2 packages of crackers, or as many loose ones – about half a pound. Roll fine.

Salt, pepper, and butter.

1 small cup of milk.

Drain the oysters and examine each one carefully to see that it is free from shell; strain and measure the juice; add to it an equal quantity of milk. Butter a deep baking-dish and put in a layer of crumbs, and cover these with a layer of oysters; sprinkle with salt and pepper and dot with butter; put on another layer of crumbs, then one of oysters, season, and so on till the dish is full, with a layer of crumbs on top; cover with small bits of butter; pour on the oyster juice and milk, and bake about half an hour, or till brown. Serve at once – it must not stand.