Chapter 8 (Celebrating the Fourth)

Introduction

The 4^th of July…is there a better way to celebrate than having a jolly holiday picnic with friends? Bob has been persuaded to bring the ladies along, Bettina has a hamper stuffed with “dainty and interesting” food, and the woman-hating Harry Harrison and his foil Alice can be counted on to provide the fireworks!

Part 1

The Menu

Lobster and Salmon Salad

Ham Sandwiches

Nut Bread Sandwiches

Pickles

Radishes

Potato Chips

Devilled Eggs

Moist Chocolate Cake

Bananas

Oranges

Torpedo Candies

Lemonade

Well, my original plans involved nothing more elaborate than toting the food to park just a scant two blocks from our house.

Alas “the best laid-plans of mice and men!…”

In a breathtakingly short period of time this casual picnic lunch transformed into a major expedition to a waterpark some sixty miles away. It was enough to take my breath away and led to a lot of frantic, last-minute scrambling.

Now not only did I have an elaborate lunch to prepare I had to find some way to safely transport it AND assemble all the bathing suits, suntan lotions, swim goggles, and other paraphernalia we’d need.

Quite a challenge…I’m going to need more than a little Bettina Magic to pull this off.

Preparing the Meal

Lobster and Salmon Salad

 This isn’t exactly a dish I’d choose to take on a summertime picnic, but a little luck and a lot of ice will hopefully keep it bacteria-free.

I had no luck finding canned lobster (does it still exist?) in any of my three regular supermarkets and in the end had to settle for frozen lobster tails at $7.99 a pop. Ouch.

Of course the tails were “dead meat”—fortunate, as there’s no way could I deal with living, thrashing crustaceans or find the courage to boil them alive in a pot.

Doesn’t appear to be a lot of meat on these tails, but at those prices I was unwilling to spring for more than two.

It’s true—lobsters (or rather, lobster parts) do turn red when boiled.

As a seafood novice I hadn’t a clue as to how to get the meat out the shells, or even what implements to use. So I gathered up anything and everything I thought might be helpful.

Whatever it takes…

Thankfully the salmon was commercially cooked and canned, and I chose a boiled salad dressing to lessen further the chances of food poisoning. As the dressing had to be cooked in the top of a double broiler I expected it to take forever to congeal, but no…much to my surprise it was done in a trice. Taste-wise it was pretty strong, but diluting it with sour cream as per the recipe should tone it down.

Ham Sandwiches

Hmm…how is ½ cup of chopped ham mixed with pickles and salad dressing supposed to cover twelve slices of bread? Another one of those times that the proportions offered up in Bettina’s recipes seemed to have no basis in reality. By spreading the sandwich filling super-thin I managed to make up 3 1/2 sandwiches, but they looked pretty meager…

…and skimpier still after I dutifully trimmed the crusts off.

Nut Bread Sandwiches

Graham flour = whole wheat flour. I wasted an unconscionable amount of time in the supermarket figuring this one out!

Even spread with butter these sandwiches seem a little dry…

Pickles

As a rule I love all kinds of pickles and so was delighted to have an excuse to buy my favorite (expensive) Vlassic dills.

Radishes

Regular radishes seemed a little blah for such a special occasion, and so I decided to cut them into rosettes. I found a recipe on the Internet, but after making the instructed cuts I was less than impressed.

These don’t look like flowers to me. Hopefully soaking them in ice water will encourage to open up.

Potato Chips

Lay’s finest…good enough for me, but I couldn’t help wondering if Bettina AKA Wonder Woman made hers from scratch.

 Devilled Eggs

Another one of my favorites—I make these fairly often and am curious to try a different recipe. As instructed I put the filled eggs halves together and wrapped them in frilled tissue paper--or at least tissue paper with a frilled tail.

I’m not sure these look “just like torpedoes!” but the paper wrappings will at least keep the halves together.

Moist Chocolate Cake

A relatively simple cake that cleverly relies on mashed potatoes for texture—so why was it replaced by “Delicious Sour Milk Cake” in the 1932 edition of the book?

It didn’t take a whole lot of sleuthing to figure it out--taking a layer cake on a picnic isn’t the greatest of ideas. But, trying my best to stick with the original menu, I made an executive decision to bake the batter in loaf rather than layer pans.

Second problem: a tiny amount of batter this recipe produced wouldn’t be enough for any pan that didn’t come out of Thumbelina’s kitchen. But after a little searching I located and purchased a quarter-sized loaf pan that seemed the right size for the scant two cups of batter I had to work with.

And of course this mini-cake was to be iced with the challenging White Mountain Frosting.

Would have been perfect if I hadn’t accidently dropped the candy thermometer into the pot of boiling syrup. Oops!

Bananas and Oranges

I was initially surprised that a special picnic lunch would feature ordinary bananas and oranges. Pretty boring when summertime nectarines, peaches, and cherries are so readily available.

But of course bananas and oranges were considered rare and expensive delicacies in the early 20^th century—so much so that they were often placed in Christmas stockings as a special holiday treat.

Torpedo Candies

I wasn’t sure at all what these candies might be…rocket-shaped marshmallows primed with a grain or two of gunpowder?

But after some research I stumbled across “liquorice torpedoes” in an online British food stores. Apparently they’re the equivalent of what Americans know as Good and Plenty [bits of black licorice in a hard candy shell].

I’m not convinced this is what Bettina served her guests, but it’s the best I can do.

 Lemonade

As always Bettina’s recipes seem to require more than the usual effort—in this case lemonade made with boiled sugar syrup rather than granulated dumped in the pitcher.

This item has shown up before (“Cousin Matilda Calls”) and, like last time, I ignored Bettina’s instructions to boil the syrup for exactly five minutes and relied instead on a candy thermometer to bring it to the soft ball stage. It came out fine and, after mixing in the lemon juice, I stashed it in the refrigerator for the next day.

The Tableware

Easy enough: red, white, and blue napkins; plastic cups in the same colors; paper plates festooned with Old Glory stickers; and a fruit basket skewered with small American flags. Corny but festive, and saves me to trouble of washing plates and silverware after the picnic is over.

The "Table"

Not exactly Bettina’s pristine tablecloth spread out by a babbling brook…rather, the trunk of our car in a ten-acre parking lot outside the waterpark.

Naturally we weren’t allowed to bring any of this feast through the gates, and I had the unenviable task of convince DH, Son, and his friend to pass up the overpriced food stands and come back out to the car at lunchtime. It was a challenge but in the end I managed--the effort I’d put into creating this meal must have put a little Bettina steel in my spine.

How It Looked