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Originally Bettina cooked both the bread and the veal loaf in her wondrous fireless cooker, but by 1932 the cooker had been replaced by the far more conventional oven.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 (Celebrating the Fourth Continued)

How It Tasted

Lobster and Salmon Salad

Happily this salad survived the trip…when we opened the cooler it was still thoroughly chilled. The only flaw was the overcooked lobster meat—rather like chewing a mouthful of rubber bands. The taste was good though, but I longed for a handful of crackers to toss upon the salad.

Ham Sandwiches

With only 3 1/2 sandwiches to divide amongst the four of us I wondered beforehand who was going to get the short end of the stick. But this turned out not to be a problem as everyone (including me) only managed a single nibble. The bite of the green olives and chopped pickles combined set our collective hair on end! One taste was enough, more than enough in fact.

Nut Bread Sandwiches

Dry, oh so very very dry. Even the butter spread on the bread was no help, and in the end we fed the sandwiches to a flock of very happy ducks.

Pickles

These were fine, in fact great. As I said before I love pickles, and Vlassic Dills are my favorites.

Radishes

Much to my surprise these radish rosettes consented to open up by lunchtime, and there were reasonably well received by my hungry crew. The radishes lent some much-needed color to the meal, and their snap gave our taste buds a much-needed jolt after the bitter-tasting ham sandwiches and the dry-as-dust nut bread.

Devilled Eggs

Unlike the recipe I generally use these didn’t require onions—much to their detriment, I’m afraid. I never realized before that onions and the parsley I sometimes toss in add some visual interest to the filling—Bettina’s version looked like eggs freshly pulled from boiling water and then simply cut in half.

Potato Chips

Everyone really chowed down on these…by the end of lunch the party-sized bag I brought along was 2/3 empty.

Moist Chocolate Cake

Filip: What is this—gingerbread?

Well, gingerbread mixed with chocolate, I suppose. I myself enjoyed this—it certainly was different—but the boys merely toyed with their slices and my husband wasn’t impressed.

Bananas and Oranges

As expected everyone passed these by—such ordinary fruit couldn’t compete with fresh peaches, cherries, or nectarines.

Torpedo Candies

For some reason or other everyone  found the sight of the candies was amusing. When I filled the star-shaped ceramic bowl with these pink-and-white pellets the boys stared at them for a moment, then at me, and finally started giggling. It did seem like an odd choice for a picnic lunch, but in the end the dish was half-emptied.

Lemonade

I was the only one who drank any of this—the boys insisted on sodas and my husband had smuggled a can of his favorite beer into the picnic cooler.

But I have to admit that Bettina’s lemonade was far better than the bottled stuffed I generally buy. Tt tasted freshly-squeezed and really was refreshing on such a hot day. An extra spoonsful or two of sugar added would have made it better still, but to me this drink was a winner.

Would I Make This Again?

No, I probably would not—the ham sandwiches and nut bread were failures, and the fruit and the cake weren’t well-received. We all seemed to enjoy the lobster salad, I liked the lemonade, and the pickles and chips were eaten with gusto, but frankly this picnic lunch wasn’t worth even a quarter of the effort it took to make it.

Nor in the end was I too pleased with the overall effect of the red, white, and blue decorations. “Corny but festive” paper plates look sad and forlorn when they’re covered with food stains, and I was a bit disconcerted to see the American flag (even in sticker form) being buried under scoops of gooey salmon salad.