Chapter 16 (Bettina Has a Caller)

Introduction

It’s a bright July morning, and the doctor is definitely in!

The day after the motor picnic a distraught Mrs. Dixon (wife of the gentleman who drove the automobile) comes rapping at Bettina’s door. The poor woman is simply beside herself--Hubby Frank has been castigating her for her lack of domestic skills and, still worse, staying out late six nights out of seven.

Yikes! sounds like a marriage headed for the rocks. Fortunately Dr. Bettina knows just what her patient should do: brush up her cooking skills, rent a house on the sly, and install Frank therein as Lord of the Manor.

“You do as I tell you for one month and I’ll guarantee that Frank will be home every single minute that he can,” prescribes Bettina, and Mrs. Dixon (with happy tears in her eyes) agrees.

Quite a bizarre little vignette and an—ahem--interesting life philosophy on the part of Dr. Bettina.

Still, it would be comforting to believe that all of life’s troubles (particularly those of the marital sort) can be smoothed away by a plate of muffins and a pot of good coffee. Certainly Mrs. Dixon is a ready convert—but can she really learn to cook without setting the kitchen on fire or inadvertently poisoning Frank?

Part 1

The Menu

Coffee

Twin Mountain Muffins

Preparing the Meal

Coffee

…real, sure ‘nough coffee that will make Frank’s eyes stick out!—Bettina to Mrs. Dixon

One has to wonder just what exactly is in this brew—a pinch of arsenic?

But upon reading the recipe I was a tad disappointed to see that’s it’s just a standard coffee recipe—no rat poison listed but rather a teaspoon of egg white, and brewed in a pot rather than a percolator.

I was curious enough about the egg white—I’d seen it listed in various coffee recipes before—to look it up, and apparently its purpose is to clarify the coffee and help the grounds settle to the bottom.

Sounds a bit strange, but I’m certainly willing to try—if nothing else the coffee’s supposedly eye-popping effects should be interesting to see!

Step 1. Boil two lots of water—one with which to scald out the pot and the other to dissolve the coffee in.

Step 2. Separate the egg

Step 3. Make a paste of ground coffee, cold water, and egg white and then add the boiling water.

Step 4. Boil the coffee on the stove for two minutes

Step 5. Turn away from the stove for just a second and hear the pot boiling over

Step 6. Clean up the mess; repeat steps one through five ad infinitum

Twin Mountain Muffins

A relatively simple muffin with an intriguing name. I really don’t know why these muffins are called Twin Mountain. Reading the list of ingredients I don’t see anything out of the ordinary, and the scanty ¼ cup of sugar called for is a pretty sure bet they’ll taste plainer than plain.

Once again with the sifter (clearly Bettina's favorite appliance)

Egg and milk added to the dry ingredients; mix; then into the oven

Now the reason for the name is obvious. In fact, the one in the foreground looks like Mt. St. Helen’s just seconds before eruption

Upon cooling these muffins seemed a little rubbery, so I performed a little vivisection and broke one in half.

I don’t believe those tunnels are supposed to be there…

How It Looked

Part 2 (A Motor Picnic continued)

How It Tasted

Warm Veal Loaf

Filip: What’s the white stuff on top?

Egg white brushed across the top of a baking meatloaf makes for, well…a meatloaf with a layer of cooked egg on top. I couldn’t figure out the point of this step while preparing the loaf, and I still don’t understand it. It’s a mystery, I suppose, on par with the fate of Amelia Earhart or the construction of Stonehenge.

On the other hand, preparing this dish did reveal what the meatloaf was supposed to be basted with: fat. Lots and lots of fat. This veal loaf produced so much grease the stuff I poured off should have gone straight into the crankcase of the car.

But removing the fat had one negative effect that, had I thought it through, might have been remedied on the spot…

Sans fat the loaf was simply dry—terribly dry, so dry that I had to rush a pitcher of water to the table to help us wash it down. The taste of the meat was fine, I suppose, but texture was oddly sandy, like I’d run short of breadcrumbs and had to empty the cat’s litter box into the mixing bowl.

Bottled Mushroom Gravy

This commercial gravy made an unexpected appearance at the table—namely, when I realized that the meal was going into a death spiral thanks to the sandy-textured meatloaf. Seeing the forks on either side of me slowing and knowing  what was about to happen I pulled the gravy from the pantry, zapped it in the microwave, and glopped it over the main dish.

Thank heavens. This gravy wasn’t authentic Bettina by a long shot, but it did lubricate the meat enough for us to get it down and, perhaps even better, hid the icky egg white on the top of the loaf.

Cold Potato Salad

Milomir, Filip, and Susan: [crunch] X 3

This was an unusual salad, no question. As noted before there were almost more vegetables in it than potatoes, and consequently we sounded like a family of woodchucks crunching and clattering our way through it.

Probably the cupsful of celery, onion, pimento, and pickles in this salad helped offset the unhealthy fats in the dressing, but the overall effect was…simply odd. It was like no potato salad I’d ever tasted before and (with luck) ever will again.

Fresh Brown Bread

Once again this dour Yankee loaf produced only the most tepid of reactions from the family. Spread with butter it was edible, but the flavor simply didn’t suit us and most of the loaf remained untouched on the plate.

Spanish Buns

Filip: What are these black things?

I’m not sure how it happened, but at some point during the cooking process the currants in these buns/muffins shrank back to their dehydrated state. After a couple of bites my husband and son split their respective muffins and carefully picked out the cinder-like fruits while I toyed with mine and wondered secretly how to slip it under the table to the dog.

Bananas

These bananas were definitely past their prime by the time I got them to the table. I read somewhere or other that only bananas with brown spots are fully ripe and ready for consumption, but obviously DH and SON hadn’t seen the article…they literally rolled their eyes when they saw the fruit and rejected it out of hand.

Hot Coffee

I really wondered—still do--how hot coffee made its way onto this menu. After all, it’s supposedly a warm July evening and, as far as I know, Bob and Bettina haven’t set up housekeeping south of the Equator.

Still, despite the unnecessary heat this coffee provided the caffeine was welcome and, all in all, it made a nice finishing touch to the meal.

Would I Make This Meal Again?

Not without some serious changes and substitutions, I’m afraid. The meatloaf was too dry, the salad too crunchy, and the muffins/buns dotted with (apparently) rodent droppings.

Frankly, I can’t help wondering at the reaction of the motoring party when Bettina spread this “feast” before them. One look, one bite, would have convinced everyone to spring for the early 20^th-century equivalent of a pizza. And those kisses Bob showered Bettina with beforehand? He would have taken them all back in a heartbeat and then spent the next week sleeping in the den.

Chapter 15 (A Motor Picnic)

Introduction

Bettina has fine supper for two on the stove, but then life (or rather Bob) throws her a curve ball. An hour before dinner he telephones with a rather jaw-dropping proposal: that Bettina transform the dinner into a picnic meal so they can join another young couple and go motoring that evening.

Seems like an impossible task but, like a debrouillard in the basement of Orwell’s Hotel X Bettina harnesses her inner power and somehow “gets it done”. When the motoring party pulls up at the door, Bettina is ready and smiling, a loaded picnic basket on her arm—and receives a shower of kisses from a visibly relieved Bob.

Once again the written instructions for preparing this meal have changed considerably between the two editions of the book. Originally Bettina cooked both the bread and the veal loaf in her wondrous fireless cooker, but by 1932 the cooker had been replaced by the far more conventional oven.

Frankly, I was a bit confused as to which set of directions to follow. Despite the revision the fireless (or thermal, in my case) cooker seemed the easiest and most convenient way to prepare the bread, but I was all too happy to use the oven for the veal and thereby eliminate all concerns about undercooked meat and e coli.

Likewise, the thought of hauling my family to the nearest park to partake in this feast seemed far from appealing—although their expressions when they saw me pulling a meatloaf out of the picnic basket would have been priceless!

In the end some reasonable compromises seemed to be in order: to use the cooker for the bread, the oven for the veal, and forget about transporting the meal any farther than the dining room table.

Part 1

The Menu

Warm Veal Loaf

Cold Potato Salad

Fresh Brown Bread

Butter

Spanish Buns

Bananas

Coffee

Preparing the Meal

Warm Veal Loaf

This is basically a meatloaf made of ground veal rather than beef—plus a few goodies like smashed crackers, spices, and a half pound of salt pork.

When it came time to do my shopping I was genuinely surprised to find cured salt pork at the local Safeway. This is an item I thought became extinct about the same time as the whalebone corset, but no…there it was in the refrigerated meat section between the bacon and the ham.

Well! This chunk of meat had historical undertones, and I was eager to give it a try. Unfortunately my electric chopper was a bit less enthusiastic, and it moaned and groaned trying to shred the stuff.

After ending the chopper’s misery with a flick of the off switch the rest was easy. The veal had already been ground in the market, so all I had left to do was mix it and the pork with crackers crumbs, spices, and cream and then pat it into a greased loaf pan.

The loaf is to be brushed with egg white and I’m really not sure why. And what am I supposed to baste this with, as the recipe suggests?

Cold Potato Salad

Now this is one dish I can really get excited about. I love potato salad and enjoy trying different kinds, so an opportunity to test out Bettina’s is pretty appealing.

Oddly enough the green beans Bettina adds in the opening vignette are nowhere to be found in the printed recipe. Very strange, as I said...but they’re one potential ingredient I’m happy to leave out. I’ve tried and enjoyed various pea-and-potato concoctions, but potato and green bean salad seems a little too adventurous for my palate (not to mention my family’s!)

As so often happens this Bettina salad requires homemade dressing, but for once I’m determined to spare myself that pickle-juice pucker and choose a recipe that’s lighter on the vinegar.

Fortunately I found a suitable dressing in Bettina’s Best Salads that cuts the vinegar down to a tolerable ¼ of a cup, and that is what I made.

This recipe certainly calls for a lot of chopped vegetables…almost as many veggies as potatoes, in fact.

Unfortunately I didn’t mix up quite enough of the dressing—I fell just short of the full cup required.

Brown Bread

Grrr…I just made this a few days ago for that ghastly salmon salad tea and so I’m not exactly pleased to find it on the menu now.

I’m not sure why I dislike this dish—perhaps because the end result is neither fish nor fowl: a starch too sweet to serve as the main breadstuff but too dour to make a good dessert.

Still, it’s on the menu, it’s easy enough to prepare, and I always enjoy a chance to use my thermal cooker. So…

Batter up!

Spanish Buns

I’m curious about these so-called buns (really muffins in disguise) and particularly intrigued by the fact that they require currants rather than the more typical raisins.

On Shopping Day I didn’t even attempt to locate fresh currants at the supermarket—I knew before I started it was a hopeless quest. Fortunately dried currants are easily available cost only a little more than a box of raisins.

These things are tiny—rather like midget raisins

A hot water bath to try to plump them up

And on to mixing the batter…

Once again Bettina’s recipe makes for a very sturdy dough. Stirring/mashing this made my wrist ache and, as so often happens, I’m a bit doubtful about the results.

I also wasn’t sure about the powdered sugar icing with which to frost the cakes, but in the end it tasted fine. Probably it was the vanilla that killed the chemical taste of the cornstarch…or perhaps after so many Bettina cakes my taste buds have developed callouses.

Bananas

The appearance of this everyday fruit on a supposedly festive menu makes me realize once again that we in the 21^st century take a lot for granted. I’m sure Bettina’s bunch of bananas was well received at the picnic, but here? Eh. I know my family won’t be the least impressed and, quite honestly, neither will I.

Hot Coffee

The hot beverage that surfaces at almost every Bettina meal. Between the coffee and the tea it’s a wonder that our heroine and her husband don’t have the caffeine jitters 24/7—or mega-headaches when the supply inevitably runs out (this is the summer of 1918 and there's a war on, ya know).

How It Looked

Part 2 (A Sunday Evening Tea continued)

How It Tasted

Salmon Salad with Jellied Vegetables

Milomir: Please don’t ever make this again.

A box of tea launched the American Revolution…Ghandi’s handful of salt struck a major blow against the British Empire…and salmon salad with jellied vegetable sparked flat out rebellion at the Mostic dining room table.

In terms of repulsiveness this gruesome twosome by far surpassed Bettina’s bread crumb teacakes—something I never would have believed possible.

How best to describe it...overcooked vegetables glued together with petroleum jelly? A bowl of cat vomit garnished with hardboiled egg slices? Words and images simply fail here—I’m totally at a loss.

Equally noteworthy was the reaction of my husband and son. Both threw down their forks after the first bite (smart move) while I, the lug nut, grimly chewed on in an attempt to “show” them that it wasn’t as bad as it looked.

Boston Brown Bread

I honestly can’t vote, either yay or nay, on the success of this dish. So preoccupied was I in eating and then keeping down the salmon salad that I hardly noticed it was on the table.

Husband and Son tried it though and both thought it was OK. They each ate a couple of slices spread with butter and both viewed it (as predicted) as more as a dessert than part of the main course.

Sliced Fresh Peaches

These peaches were a balm to my traumatized stomach, and in fact we all seemed to like them. Boiling the skins softened the fruit to an amazing degree—almost too much--but eaten with cream they were tasty and at least a moderately successful.

One Egg Cake with Chocolate Icing

Sadly this cake wasn’t nearly as good as it looked. The taste was fine, but the minimal amounts of fat and egg called for in the recipe had a negative effect on the texture. It reminded of a day-old supermarket cakes be purchased at half price—seemingly stale, although I’d taken it out of the oven just hours before. Eaten with the peaches and cream it was edible, but I really couldn’t call it a success.

Iced Tea

This went a long way toward salvaging the meal and was the one true success. My husband appreciated the mint and the fact that I’d cut down on the ice cubes this time around, my son liked the lemon flavor, and I was happy a beverage on hand—any beverage—to help wash down the globs of gelatin still lingering in my esophagus.

Would I Make This Again?

Only in a hostage situation—and with a gun pressed to my head.

It’s been a few days and still it’s hard for me to think objectively about this tea. The fallout from that bomb of a salad was so great that trying to get through the rest of the meal was like supping under a mushroom cloud. Even now the memory of the salad still lingers--like a foul taste in one’s mouth, or a bad dream looping all throughout the night.

In Bettina’s world this meal would have had her guests scrambling over each other to get to the door—and then to the hospital, where their stomachs could be pumped. The salmon salad really was that bad, that terrible...something people would have to be paid to eat—say, a hundred dollars a mouthful.

Chapter 14 (A Sunday Evening Tea)

Introduction

Time for tea and, as guests are on hand, it’s a splendid opportunity for Bettina to pass along some of her exemplary domestic skills. After taking Ruth and Fiancé Fred step-by-step through the tea making process she promises them a silver tea ball as a wedding present and—best of all—wheels out a tea cart of delicacies!

Part 1

The Menu

Salmon Salad with Jellied Vegetables

Boston Brown Bread-Butter

Sliced Fresh Peaches

One Egg Cake

Chocolate Frosting

Iced Tea

Preparing the Meal

Salmon Salad with Jellied Vegetables

Not a completely unfamiliar dish to me as I believe I prepared this before—was is for Bettina’s 4^th of July picnic?

Yes (just checked)—although that was in fact salmon and lobster salad. No lobster called for this time, which will make the dish easier…and cheaper (no $7.99 tails required, thank heavens).

According to the recipe any kind of cooked vegetables can be jellied, so I’m relying on the lazy cook’s mainstay: canned (specifically peas and carrots).

The recipe also gives me the option of using either water or beef broth to mix with the unflavored gelatin. Think I’ll plump for the broth in hopes of giving the salad a little extra zing.

The real challenge with this dish is my choice of mold. The book’s editors recommend a donut-shaped one so the “center may be filled with flaked salmon over which salad dressing has been poured”. Having no ring mold at my disposal I have no choice but to improvise:

A large cereal bowl with a water-filled jar in the center

I was pleasantly surprised at how simple this salad turned out to be: simply mix the vegetables, pimento, lemon juice, and salt into the gelatin, plop it in the mold and chill (I’ll prepare the salmon filling just before serving).

Boston Brown Bread

Well, my thermal cooker should be ecstatic-- it’s been some time since I’ve had need for it services.

It can’t wait!

I’m no New Englander and so this dish seems an odd choice to accompany the main course. Wouldn’t a bread heavy with molasses and raisins be more appropriate as a dessert?

Still, I won’t quibble as the ingredients are so basic: whole wheat, cornmeal, and rye mixed with sour milk, molasses, and raisins. Mixing this stuff together took just a few minutes (although the fact that the grains of rye did gum up my sifter!) and, having no conventional steaming vessel on hand, I simply dumped the batter into a 29 ounce can that once held fruit cocktail.

No lid, so I covered the top with a length of parchment paper and tied it in place with butcher’s twine.

The can of batter has to be placed in the inner pot of the thermal cooker, filled with water, and boiled on the stove for half an hour before being sealed in the cooker.

After the thirty minutes were up I shut the still-boiling pot in the cooker and voila it’ll be ready in five or six hours.

Sliced Fresh Peaches

I served sliced peaches just a few days ago (“Bob Helps With the Dinner”) and had a devil of a time getting the skins off--even a boiling water bath didn’t loosen them. In the end I had to use a vegetable peeler, which resulted in three bruised and battered globes of fruit.

But not again. This time I’m determined to cook those skins off, and I’ll boil the fruit however long it takes.

I boiled these for two minutes, plunged them in cold water, and WADDYA KNOW…

…it worked!

Either this lot of peaches was riper than the last, the pinch of salt I added to the water somehow helped, or the planets obligingly lined up. Who knows? Who cares? I’m thrilled!

One Egg Cake

I can’t predict how this cake will taste but the single egg it requires is a guarantee that it will at least be economical. The small size of the finish product also appeals to me—I sometimes make full-sized cakes and it’s always struggle for me, DH, and Son to finish them before they grow stale.

The ingredients for this cake are atypical: flour, sugar, baking soda, and of course the single egg.

Unfortunately the recipe doesn’t specify how to treat the bottom and sides of the pan to keep the batter from sticking.

Having read ahead a few chapters I know Bettina abhors the practice of buttering and flouring cake pans, so I’ll get out my trusty parchment paper and line the pan with that.

The cake smelled wonderful in the oven but unfortunately developed a large fault line down the middle (this is California, after all).

Grrr…

Well, with luck the chocolate frosting (see below) will cover it up....

Chocolate Frosting

This is a quick frosting to prepare as it’s essentially butter and powdered sugar (no cooking required) but, as so often happens, I’m stumped by the recipe’s wording.

The recipes calls for “1 square” of chocolate but doesn’t translate that vague measurement into grams or ounces. “1 square” snapped off my modern bar of baking chocolate is exactly ½ ounce—not nearly enough, I’d think, to flavor even a small amount of frosting. I suppose I’ll simply have to play it by ear, begin with the half-ounce and then add some more if necessary.

As I suspected the frosting looked pretty wan with just the ½ ounce of chocolate—really more like mocha or caramel. So I added another square to get the proper color and flavor.

Happily I was able to hide that huge crack in the cake with frosting. In fact I’m quite impressed with the end result—this dessert really does look appetizing and fit for one of Bettina’s do’s.

Iced Tea

This recipe too I just made just a short time ago, alongside the battered peach slices. As DH isn’t particularly impressed by ordinary iced tea I’ll heed Bettina’s advice and toss in a handful of fresh mint.

Chow time...

How It Looked