Part 2 (Bob Helps Get Dinner Continued)

How It Tasted

Halibut Steak

Fortunately any fishy smell dissipated by the time the steaks made it to the table, and they tasted good (not $36.98 good, but good).

Each steak had one large chunk of bone and a few smaller ones—I managed to steer clear of them but my husband and son were less successful and did some minor grumbling about “these bones—I think I swallowed one!”

New Potatoes in Cream Sauce

This dish of potatoes was far more successful than its predecessors, thanks I believe to several factors: choosing an appropriately-sized serving dish, sprinkling parsley over it as a garnish, and using hot rather than the sweet paprika. This not only gave the sauce a little more zip but also improved the color.

String Beans in Butter Sauce

Found the strings!

Tomato, Cucumber and Pimento Salad

A tasty salad but once again the lettuce leaves were viewed by my family as a decoration and carefully discarded. It was hard for me not to grumble when I saw those sad scraps of green piling up--don’t they realize there are starving rabbits in China?

French Dressing

Despite all the shaking this dressing didn’t thicken, and refrigerating for a few hours didn’t help either. The taste was fine, but I was surprised at how little there was in the jar. Bob speaks grandly of refrigerating leftover dressing for “next time”, but in our case there simply wasn’t any. This recipe designed for two served exactly that and there wasn’t a drop left over.

Sliced Pineapple

I wasn’t sure the tips I received about ripening green pineapple (tie up in a plastic bag and store upside down for a day or two) were any good, but I do have to admit it worked perfectly. The addition of sugar and lemon juice also helped hide any deficiencies in the fruit, and my family gobbled it up (“This is good!”).

Would I Make This Again?

In a word—yes. Probably, though, I’d find a substitute for that horrifically expensive halibut--I could almost see its price tag dancing before my eyes as we ate. I’ve heard that cod and haddock are similar, so next time I’ll probably give one or the other a try.

But the potatoes were adequate, the salad very good, and the pineapple excellent—realistically, who could ask for more?

Chapter 5 (Bob Helps Get Dinner)

Introduction

Obviously Bettina has decided that her husband’s share of kitchen work should cover more than sitting down at the table and tucking into the victuals...hence Bob’s first cooking lesson!

Home Ec 101, a la Bettina : mixing up a salad dressing using pre-measured ingredients, how to remove beans from the cooker and sliced pineapple from the icebox, the proper way to cut up a lemon, and how to snip up parsley.

After Bob’s completes his tasks and the two sit down to eat Bettina comments brightly, “Things are good tonight, aren’t they?”—warming up her man up for a lesson in Remedial Dishwashing?

Part 1

The Menu

Halibut Steak

New Potatoes in Cream

String Beans

Butter Sauce

Bread

Butter

Tomato, Cucumber and Pimento Salad

French Dressing

Fresh Pineapple

A very typical Bettina menu--heavy on the salt and the protein, I’m afraid. I’m beginning to feel like a Paleolithic creature with scales (from all the fish) and pinfeathers (from the glut of eggs) swimming in an ocean of cream sauce. Granted, I don’t cook a la Bettina every day, but something a little lighter would be nice…

Halibut Steak

Despite Bettina’s testimonial I can’t agree that halibut is both “good and inexpensive”—not in our neck of the woods, anyway.

In fact, initially I was pleased to be serving fresh fish (for once) but ran into problems right off the bat locating a source—probably would have been cheaper more efficient, as it turned out, to row out to sea and catch my own.

After numerous calls I located a fish market in the next town that sold halibut—alas at a whopping $28.99 per pound! I instantly decided that the frozen steaks found at Safeway would be fine, but to my horror they were every bit as expensive: $18.99 per 12 oz.

Resigned to this blow to my pocketbook I swallowed hard and purchased 20oz (enough for the three of us) for a grand total of $37.98—by far the most expensive meat that’s ever graced our table.

All I can think is THIS HAD BETTER BE GOOD!

New Potatoes in Cream

Another dish that’s appeared on the table a little more often than I’d like. But…OK. Although parley isn’t mentioned in the recipe, chopping it is one of the kindergarten tasks Bettina assigns Bob. A lucky break for me—a bit of green sprinkled over the dish might relieve its overall drabness. So too should serving the potatoes in a cozy little casserole rather than mammoth, oversized baking dish.

String Beans with Butter Sauce

Hooray! the first Bettina-sanctioned use of my thermal/fireless cooker. Since its arrival I’ve actually taken it for some test runs by cooking a couple of simple dishes: rice (a horrible failure—the finished product crunched between our teeth), and steamed bread (OK).

Oddly enough A Thousand Ways to Please a Husband gives no fireless cooker recipe for string beans, and so I forced to turn to The Fireless Cook Book by Margaret Mitchell (yes, the Margaret Mitchell. Who knew she was a cook—and a good one?)

As per the recipe I washed the beans, cut off the ends, and searched in vain for strings to pull off. Maybe modern beans have been genetically engineered to be stringless? I have no idea, but I certainly couldn’t find any.

Bread

The standard unsliced supermarket loaf—same old same old.

Tomato, Cucumber and Pimento Salad

Slices of cucumber and tomato arranged on a lettuce leaf and sprinkled with pimento. I always love these retro salads, and the bright red and green will give a much-need touch of color to this visually bland menu.

French Dressing

Making this dressing gave me a new respect for Bob, who must have worked out regularly or been related to the Man of Steel.

Following Bettina’s instructions I measured the salad dressing ingredients into a jar and shook it as my curious family gathered around.

Eventually it turned into a game of Pass the Bottle—literally. DH shook, Filip shook, and I shook until my arms were about to fall off. The stuff never did become thick and creamy, and I finally tossed it into the refrigerator hoping the cold might work a miracle.

Pineapple

Thanks goodness for simple desserts! Cutting up a pineapple is easy but, like the halibut, purchasing it turned out to be harder than I thought.

In search of a decent fruit I checked two different lots at two different markets and was faced with exactly two choices: overripe pineapples with cracks in the sides or specimens so green they could have doubled as billy clubs.

After some thought I chose the underripe pineapple, certain that my faithful friend the Internet could provide some tricks for getting the thing in shape.

The general consensus was to store it in a plastic bag and then turn the pineapple upside down to allow the natural sugars to spread throughout the fruit.

Sounds pretty whacky—but we’ll see.

The Table

In this chapter Bettina mentions using the sinister-sounding “coreopsis” as her centerpiece, and naturally I was curious. I’d never heard of that before and so was forced to do some research.

As a flower it’s rather pretty, something like a daisy:

Alas the name is a little less attractive—in fact, positively revolving.

According to Wikipedia, the word coreopsis is derived from the Greek word for bedbug, and these little gems are also known as “tickseeds” because of the seeds’ resemblance to dead bugs.

Charming.

No bedbug flowers around here (thank goodness), but the roses left over from Betinna’s “Ladies Luncheon” are still fresh.

How It Looked

Unfortunately I forgot to snap a shot of the table after the food was laid out. Darn!

Bettina’s Fireless Cooker

The fireless cooker, so often mentioned by Bettina in the 1917 edition of A Thousand Ways to Please a Husband, was initially something of a mystery to me. Our heroine extolls it as something she uses “every day of the year”, inspires the soon-to-be-betrothed Ruth to request one as a wedding gift, and encourages Uncle John to buy one at once for his ailing and overburdened wife “to keep her at home.”

Sounds like a quite the deus ex machina--but just what is a fireless cooker? And why were all references to it dropped in the 1932 edition of the book? Was this device too expensive for the average early-20^th century housewife? Was it too cumbersome to be practical? Or, like early versions of the pressure cooker, did it prove to be something the book’s editors soon realized had the potential to blow out the walls of their readers’ kitchens?

In fact, Bettina’s fireless cooker was a device that that relied on trapped thermal heat to process the food—a concept still known to today’s backpackers and hikers and generally utilized in what is now known as a “thermal cooker”.

Before the 20^th century such devices were referred to as “hay boxes”: a box or container lined with hay or other insulating materials into which a pot of heated food could be deposited. The trapped heat allowed the food to continue cooking for hours with minimal supervision—a godsend no doubt to women managing the large families of the period.

However, Bettina’s fireless cooker incorporated what must have seen the latest in cooking technology: stones that could be heated upon the stove and then deposited in the box above and below the pot of food.

Apparently this breakthrough was short-lived—today’s thermal cookers are more like the hayboxes of yesteryear and use only the heat generated by the pot of food itself (no surprise as the heating and depositing of large stone into the fireless cooker must have led to any number of injuries). They range from models the size of a thermos to those with a capacity of seven liters—and some are even larger.

The fictional Bettina and her real-life creators would probably be pleased to see that versions of the fireless cooker has lived on into our century, readily found on the Internet and moderately affordable for most.

Who could resist such a dream machine? After a little research I myself purchased one for myself (courtesy of Amazon)—an sturdy Japanese model that, upon arrival, provided an evening of unexpected jollies.

No, not from the cooker itself, which I found rather dazzling with its promise of almost-effortless food preparation. Rather, the hilarity came from the list of foods and their cooking times that was enclosed within the box.

Very amusing—and a good reminder that what’s considered an appropriate dish varies from country to country. Vive le Difference, one might think…but in fact, Bettina’s boiled cow tongue and "bacon pigs in blankets" would seem right at home with the pig’s intestines and fish head soup listed here!

Part 2 (Bettina Gives a Luncheon continued)

How It Tasted

Strawberries au Natural

Moske: How can I eat when there’s paper on the plate?

Filip:   Look—these strawberries are hollow.

Me:     [the sound of grinding teeth]

Kornlet Soup

Incredibly sweet--so much so that even my husband and son (who normally adore corn) couldn't manage to empty their bowls.

Croutons

Just a couple of extra minutes in the oven resulted in these dreadful little pellets. Not something I’d care to feed my guests—unless they had hamster teeth and took their exercise on a wheel

Whipped Cream

Ultimately we used this for both the soup and the strawberries. Because it contained no sugar it reduced the overwhelming sweetness of both the soup and the powdered sugar that was served with the berries.

Salmon Timbales with Egg Sauce

These didn’t dry out nearly as much as I’d hoped while in the oven—a mistake using water- rather than oil-packed salmon. They tasted fine, but the odor of fish was all-pervasive (more on this later).

Buttered Beets

Moske: These are good—probably even better with some sour cream.

Filip:   Mine are cold. Can you heat them up for me?

I enjoyed these, as much for the color as the taste. I think they’d be really good mixed with vinegar or, as my husband suggested, a little sour cream.

Potato Croquettes

Mashed potatoes (heavy on the butter, milk, and salt) deep-fried in oil—a cardiologist’s nightmare but really really good. I’ve made this dish before and never failed to enjoy it. These potato balls were rich and light as soufflé but so much easier to prepare.

Pinwheel Biscuits

My son selected one of these biscuits and dropped it onto his plate--when it made an audible clunk he surreptitiously returned it to the serving dish. Out of a sense of duty I gnawed my way through one but my husband rejected them completely--they were horribly tough.

Vegetable Salad with Salad Dressing

Moske: Why haven’t you ever made these before?

Filip:   Refused the dressing but ate his salad down to the lettuce leaf at the bottom.

 These were every bit as good as they looked although the chopped nuts on top were a little froufrou.

Wafers

Produced by A & K Wong, Incorporated and basically flattened-out fortune cookies. I figured we’d be too stuffed at this point for anything more substantial and that’s exactly how it turned out.

Fancy Cakes with Whipped Mountain Icing

The cakes themselves were very nice—the mixture of lemon and vanilla extract was perfect—but again we’d eaten too much to do more than nibble on them.

The frosting? Well, I’ve already described all the trouble I had making that. It tasted good but definitely wasn’t worth all the trauma.

POSTSCRIPT: Within twenty-four hours every one of these cakes had been devoured—the cake recipe’s definitely a keeper (but fie! on the icing)

Coffee

I’m ordinarily not a coffee drinker, but this evening I poured myself a large cup and fortified it with plenty of cream and sugar. I knew as soon as the meal was over I’d have to turn my attention to the kitchen and the havoc I’d created therein.

BEFORE

AFTER

The Post Mortem

A lot went wrong with this meal, more in the preparation than how the food ultimately came out. So after a good night’s sleep, getting the kitchen back in order, and a great deal of serious thought I believe it boils down to this:

Timing

 I knew ahead of time (despite Bettina’s fervent denials) that this “cunning” meal was going to be the most challenging to date, and so I was careful to prepare in advance. I had no intention of letting this dainty luncheon take over the whole day, so I attended Mass as usual, got the kitchen in order beforehand, and took a brief nap so I’d be fresh as the proverbial daisy.

Wasted effort. One hour into meal prep I was ready to throw up my hands, shut down operations, and call out to Domino’s for a pizza.

Clean as the kitchen was to begin with, I neglected the important step of switching on the dishwasher for the final load. Consequently crucial items like the whisk and my large mixing bowl weren’t accessible, and I wasted precious time rummaging through the racks, hauling out the necessary equipment, and washing it by hand. In a remarkably short period of time all the dishcloths were sodden, stacks of dishes and utensils were dripping onto the counter, and I’d gone through an entire roll of paper towels.

It was also a hideous mistake (one of many) to announce oh-so-casually to my family that the meal would take just two hours to prepare and we’d surely be eating by five. When that hour came and went my husband and son began pacing the kitchen like hungry wolves, noses quivering as they hovered over the bubbling pots. It was at that point that a major household renovation went to the top of my To Do list—specifically a sturdy door for the kitchen that could be bolted from the inside.

I suppose it could also be considered a timing issue that the trouble I had with one dish inevitably led to problems with the next. Fussing over the thickness of the pinwheel dough led to the delay in getting the croutons into the oven—and then to my forgetting all about them when the White Mountain frosting disaster took center stage—which prevented me from getting the beets on the stove in time—and so on and so on.

Equipment Failure

This role this played in my kitchen troubles now seems painfully obvious: my equipment wasn’t clean and ready to go before I started cooking, I lacked the proper bowls and plates in which to place the finished dishes, and after a certain point I was no longer able to locate specific items on countertops covered with food scraps, utensils, and trash.

The bungalow apron failed me also—even with its protection my clothes came out so spotted and stained it looked like I’d spent the afternoon butchering pigs.

Lack of practice/intermediate cooking skills

 What I DIDN’T know going into this meal could fill a blog by itself: that oversized beets would take forever to cook, that water-packed salmon would make for a very messy dish, the experience necessary for tricky items like sauces and boiled icings. In the heat of battle I had three cookbooks open on the counter: Bettina’s, a Betty Crocker number dating from the 1960s, and a contemporary edition of The Joy of Cooking (the irony of this last absolutely kills me) Taken together the three provided contradictory and confusing advice and added to the general clutter as stuff piled up on every available surface.

The Menu

 Quite honestly, I’m amazed by the dishes editors Weaver and LeCron arranged for this particular occasion. Despite the pink and white touches most of the food looked drab and unappetizing--the corn soup, creamed salmon, and egg sauce practically indistinguishable. The only bit of color at the table was provided by the beets, the salad, and the pink lemonade I added at the last moment in an attempt to brighten things up.

And (forgive me, Bettina!) it seems a horrible mistake to serve fish at a supposedly dainty luncheon—unless one has a supply of clothespins on hand for the guests to clamp about their noses. The pervasive smell of canned salmon clung to my clothes, got into the other dishes (particularly the rolls and the potato croquettes), and swirled over the table like a genie when we finally sat down to eat.

Would I Make This Meal Again?

I’m usually up for a rematch when meals flounder from bad planning and/or lack of experience, but in this case I honestly don’t know. There just isn’t anything noteworthy or special about creamed salmon and corn. Take away frills like the doilies and that impossible cake frosting and you have a simple and reliable meal suitable for a weekday evening—really nothing more.

Chapter 4 (Bettina Gives a Luncheon)

Introduction

A week into married life and Bettina feels the urge to throw a party (to the celebrate the capture of and continuing possession of Bob’s scalp, one gathers).

OK. Eight ladies to feed, no modern appliances to be had, and “cunning” the theme of the day…a challenging meal, to say the least.

Part 1

The Menu

Strawberries au Natural

Kornlet Soup

Whipped Cream

Croutons

Salmon Timbales with Egg Sauce

Buttered Beets

Potato Croquettes

Pinwheel Biscuits

Butter Balls

Vegetable Salad

Salad Dressing

Wafers

Fancy Cakes

Coffee

Preparing the Scene

The Table

Usually I don’t fuss much about the table beyond putting down my nice plates ie the only set in the house that matches, and some decent flatware, but special occasions like a Bettina luncheon obviously require special effort.

Doilies

I made a stab or two at finding these on my pre-meal shopping expeditions but in the end was forced to make my own. Felt a bit childish snipping away at bits of white paper, but reading ahead I see Bettina herself spends a lot of time herself with crepe paper, scissors, and a paste pot.

Good enough. Who’s going to notice these anyway when they’re hidden beneath mounds of strawberries and powdered sugar?

Flowers

A simple matter—I have roses and geraniums growing in my yard. These cut flowers proved a little too short for my favorite vase, but a few pink and white napkins stuffed in the bottom fixed that up fine.

Tablecloth

I have my choice here of red or white. Both have advantages: the red--potential beet- and strawberry stains will camouflaged by the soldiers in a bush; the white: can be thoroughly bleached when the meal is over. So white it is.

 A pink gown for the hostess/galley slave

No dice. Bettina served (and, one imagines, cooked) this meal in a fancy gown, but here my pink and white bungalow apron will have to do. Add mukluks in place of B’s clattery heels and I’m good to go.

Preparing the Food

Strawberries au Natural

It seems a bit early for strawberries even in sunny California--I had a heck of time finding berries that were suitably ripe. Alas the only ones available looked like they sprouted in Paul Bunyan’s garden—so large four or five on each plate was more than enough.

Kornlett Soup

A Thousand Ways fails to give any reciped for this, and I was sorely tempted to skip it. But a second vegetable seemed like a good idea in this heavy-on-the-starches-and-sweets menu, so I broke out of BettinaLand long enough to find a recipe from the venerable Alice Bradley Menu-Cook-Book

Happily the soup called for canned corn rather than fresh, but the downside of this was that the jackets proved tough as nails. Even after simmering in milk for an hour they didn’t soften, and the sieve I ultimately forced them now looks somewhat the worse for wear.

Croutons

As per the recipe I cut stale bread into cubes,

mixed them with butter and spices, and put them back in the oven to brown. But thanks to the White Mountain Frosting disaster (see below) I got distracted and unwittingly let the them burn to a crisp.

Salmon Timbales

Thankfully another recipe calling for canned rather than fresh. But despite the fact that I followed the instructions to the letter, the stuff was supremely wet and practically oozed in the baking cups. I believe now that Bettina’s salmon was canned in oil—my choice of the water-packed stuff resulted in the semi-failure of the dish that followed.

Egg Sauce

The salmon juice used to prepare this dish was water rather than oil and probably the reason the sauce congealed into a cement-like lump that refused to leave the pan. After much fussing and re-boiling I was able to thin it out, but it required almost three cups of milk to do so.

Buttered Beets

The only beets I’ve ever eaten have been dumped from a can, and so through sheer ignorance I chose the largest and toughest specimens on the planet to prepare for this meal. Easily the size of Navel oranges these monster beets took a long time to soften—after boiling away for more than an hour they still resisted my efforts to pierce them with a fork.

Potato Croquettes

This retro dish is one I’ve made before and, knowing its requirements so well, I made sure to have mashed potatoes at the ready. Mixing up the ingredients was easy, but I realized very quickly after hauling out my deep-fryer that there was absolutely no space on the counter to place it. In the end it was an easy fix: place one arm on the countertop and sweep everything into the sink.

Pinwheel Biscuits

The primary breadstuff for the meal, and a good choice (or so I thought) because it doesn’t require yeast. I was also pretty happy for a chance to try out a newly-purchased pastry cutter—my old method of using two knives to slash the lard into the flour had proven hard on the mixing bowl, damaging to the cutlery, and murder on my arms.

The cutter worked like a charm, and with minimal effort I got the dough mixed and onto a floured board. It was only after I’d patted it down to the required height that I realized there was a problem: a 6 X 4 X 1 rectangle that was supposed to be rolled up lengthwise and somehow cut into 16 one-inch slices.

Chalking this weird dilemma up to a typo in the book I cut the dough into six pieces, popped them in the oven, and made a mental note to try to figure it out later.

Butter Balls

Unfortunately the only scoop in the house was designed for dishing out ice cream. Instead of Bettina’s dainty rounds of butter I ended up with spheres the size of golf balls.

Vegetable Salad

Easily the item on the menu I had the most fun with. Somewhat to my surprise I found these old-fashioned salads—essentially just slices of tomato and cucumber stacked on the ubiquitous lettuce leaf—utterly charming. A feast for the eyes, certainly, after hours of staring at beige-colored fish, egg sauce, and corn.

Salad Dressing

A dressing that was a cooked on the stove and stabilized with a generous addition (two tablespoons) of flour. I’d made it the day before, stored it in the fridge, and had only to thin with cream.

Wafers

The term “wafer” seems kind of vague—could be anything from a cannoli to a Triscuit. A Thousand Ways to Please a Husband provided no clarification, and for once I’m decided not to fuss—graham crackers or whatever was in the pantry would be fine.

Fancy Cakes

The sheet of cake itself I’d also made the previous day (figured I'd apply the fancy-shaped cookie cutter the day of the luncheon)—in part because I planned to whip the required egg whites with my (new) rotary egg beater and knew it would be difficult. At the time the process seemed a killer—but in retrospect mere child’s play after the effort involved in preparing the frosting (see below).

White Mountain Frosting

A disaster of epic proportions—think crash of the Hindenburg, the Serpent in the Garden, or Bettina’s mother-in-law taking over her kitchen.

Take 1

After finishing with the pinwheel biscuits I mixed up sugar, water, and cream of tartar into my trusty saucepan and set it on the stove to boil. After checking the temperature with a candy thermometer (a taboo item in any historical recreation, I know) I pulled it from the burner and only then noticed something shiny floating in the syrup.

Yup. In the space of just a few minutes I’d managed to boil away the saucepan’s inner coating and it was now coming off in flakes.

Take 2

After unceremoniously tossing the wrecked pot and its contents into the sink I doggedly hauled out another. I knew right away that it would be too large for a mere cupful or two of sugar syrup, but the fact that it was indestructible (no lining) mattered more, and so once again I measured out the sugar and water, plopped it on the stove, and quickly cranked up the heat.

Too quickly, as it turned out--in just minutes the syrup was turning amber. Quickly I grabbed for the candy thermometer, realized it had disappeared under the mess on the counters, and frantically begin to search--failing all the while to pull the pot off the burner.

By the time I located the thermometer the stuff in the pan was almost black and glued to the bottom and sides.

At this point the urge to hurl the pot to the floor, stamp my feet, and scream was almost overwhelming. But, marshaling the remaining bits of my self-control, I filled the pot with water, returned it to the stove, and grimly began to boil off the mess inside.

Take 3

In an hour’s time the pot was clean, the rest of the meal was almost finished, and like a stubborn fool I decided to try once more. For the third time I measured out the ingredients, set the sugar water to boil, and actually stood there watching it like a hawk.

Third time’s the charm—or the Spirit of Bettina intervened—planets lined up?—but the recipe finally worked. After pouring the syrup into the egg whites I was able to beat it into submission and, while it never became fluffy, it tasted fine and (amazingly enough) wasn’t gritty in the least.

So a success—after THREE agonizing tries.

Casualties: one saucepan, two hours of my life, and the cost of a box of hair dye for covering my first grays.

How It Looked