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

Part 2 (A New-Fashioned Sunday Dinner continued)

How It Tasted

Leg of Lamb with Potatoes

Milomir: [coming in from the yard]: I bet they can smell that all over the neighborhood.

Yes, the lamb was rather pungent—and sweet! I’ve eaten lamb before but only in kabobs grilled/charred over the barbeque. This meat was so very sweet in comparison it was a little disconcerting—think Donner Party, or cartoon savages dancing around a pot.

Lamb Gravy

Filip: This gravy has lumps in it.

Too true, I’m afraid—between the lumps and the sweetness (from the lamb drippings) it was like eating tapioca pudding. I wish I’d taken time to strain it. Usually my gravy comes out fine, but not this time.

Head Lettuce with Thousand Island Dressing

So nice for once to have a plentiful serving of lettuce! That fact alone made this dish a winner—we all ate down to the bottom of our respective bowls.

Bread with Butter and Currant Jelly

The bread (standard supermarket loaf) was good, but the sugary wallop of the jelly was the last thing in the world this lamb-based meal needed. Dutifully I put a spoonful on my bread, but my husband and son passed (“I don’t want diabetes”).

Mint Sauce

Milomir: Is it supposed to be green?

I have to admit that this sauce looked pretty gruesome by the time it made it to the table—it earned no points for appearance, certainly. The strong flavor of vinegar also contrasted oddly with the lamb, making it seem sweeter still. I persuaded all my dining companions to take a taste, but that’s as far as they were willing to go.

Pineapple [Rainbow] Sherbet

Filip: I like it. It tastes like fruit.

Although not the called-for pineapple this supermarket sherbet went over well. Myself, I thought the fruity flavor didn’t mix particularly well with the cake’s caramel frosting. Plain vanilla ice cream probably would have been a better choice.

Bettina’s Loaf Cake

The cake was fine, the frosting every bit as yucky as I’d feared. The nuts did nothing to hide the icing’s grittiness—DH and Son weren’t the only ones who surreptitiously scraped it off onto their dessert plates.

Would I Make This Again?

A leg of lamb sans garlic or any kind of marinade? Probably not—the meat was simply too sweet by itself. The mint sauce was also a flop, and so too was the caramel frosting on the cake.

But the salad, the cake (aside from the gritty icing), and the sherbet were fine, and so the meal wasn’t a total loss. Was it tasty? Sort of. Did it uphold the Fourth Commandment by being as work-free as possible? Definitely not. Bettina may have sailed through this dinner and escaped Rev. Clinkersmith’s wrath, but not me…he’d have meted out twenty-four hours in the stocks for breaking the Sabbath, and an extra day for my blasphemy as I labored over the stove!

Chapter 7 (A New-Fashioned Sunday Dinner)

Introduction

It’s Sunday, the official Day of Rest—but is it really?

Once again Bettina is facing a particularly challenging guest in the person of one Rev. Henry Clinkersmith, a puritanical minster with an eager appetite and an equally keen desire to promote his version of Christianity. Will Bettina be able to follow Clinkersmith’s dictum to “obey the fourth commandment and give [her] family a good Sunday dinner, too”?

Part 1

The Menu

Leg of Lamb with Potatoes

Lamb Gravy

Head Lettuce

Thousand Island Dressing

Mint Sauce

Bread

Butter

Currant Jelly (1932 edition)

Pineapple Sherbet

Bettina’s Loaf Cake

Coffee

Preparing the Meal

Leg of Lamb with Potatoes

I noticed two major differences between the 1918 and 1932 versions of this recipe and was initially puzzled about how to proceed. By 1932 the leg of lamb had swelled from four to seven pounds, and the fireless cooker originally used had been replaced with a conventional oven.

It’s a bit difficult to square Bettina’s desire for a relatively labor-free day with the frequent basting and attention a seven-pound leg of lamb in an oven requires, but OK…I’m not particularly eager to prepare a large chunk of meat in a device powered with retained heat—none of Bettina’s books offer any remedies for food poisoning!<grin>

I was fortunate enough to find a 5-pound lamb roast (cut from the center of the leg) in the supermarket, thus sparing me a time-consuming trip to the butcher shop. The lamb is from Australia and seemed formidable after I freed it from the packaging.

(Looking at it it’s pretty obvious why the fireless cooker originally used to prepare the dish calls for a smaller chunk of meat—no way a seven pounder with a complete and untrimmed shank would fit, not even in my larger-than-average model)

Lamb Gravy

A brew of meat drippings, flour, water, salt…not particularly healthy by today’s standards (is any gravy?), but simple enough to prepare (or so I thought!)

Head Lettuce with Thousand Island Dressing

I decided to splurge here and give everyone a full bowl of greens instead of the leaf or two Bettina generally deems sufficient.

Having made any number of homemade salad dressings under Bettina’s tutelage I was beginning to feel like an old kitchen hand as I poured the ingredients into a bottle and began to shake it up…until the cap flew off and the dressing splashed all over the floor.

Mint Sauce

The menu calls for mint sauce, not the jelly most of us are familiar with. I cheated here and used my electric chopper to cut the mint leaves as fine as possible, but something didn’t come out quite right:

Yummy—not!

In desperation I dumped this concoction in my electric blender in hopes that some frantic pulsing would get this mess to congeal.

Nope—but maybe a few hours in the refrigerator will improve it.

Bread with ----?

I had my choice here of butter (1918) or currant jelly (1932) and in the end chose to serve both.

Pineapple Sherbet

This item (purchased, as per Bettina’s instructions) seemed like it would be a snap, but I had a devil of a time locating it. After checking a number of supermarkets and finding every other possible flavor (orange, lime, raspberry, grape, berry) I gave up and purchased rainbow sherbet with a strip of pineapple in it.

Bettina’s Loaf Cake

A relatively simple loaf cake recipe—unfrosted in the 1918 edition of the book, slathered with caramel icing in 1932.

Making the cake itself was no problem but, as always, the boiled icing was a headache. I cooked the sugar, milk, and butter without incident to the soft ball stage and, as the recipe instructed, pulled it off the stove to cool down.

Everything was fine until I added the vanilla and then—disaster! My fine-grained icing instantly turned into a dense and crumbly mess—the result, I suppose, of adding room-temperature flavoring to the still-too warm syrup.

Refusing to give up I added a tablespoon of hot tap water, turned on the electric mixer, and tried to lube it up. It didn’t help much, but nevertheless I went ahead, frosted the cake, and threw on a handful of ground pecans. Maybe the crunch of this gritty frosting will be disguised by the crunch of the nuts?

How It Looked

Part 2 (Cousin Matilda Calls)

How It Tasted

Little Chocolate Cakes

Forget the ladylike glasses of iced fruit juice…Matilda must have needed at least a gallon of water to float each of these cakes down—and then a healthy dose of castor oil to keep them moving along.

These chocolate cakes were dreadful, possibly the worst things I’ve ever eaten. They tasted a tiny bit like brownies and a great deal like chocolate mixed with sawdust…bleah!

Fruit Juice

This was lemonade, with a handful of mint added—the so-called pineapple juice added to the pitcher had zero effect on the taste, appearance, or smell.

Would I Make This Again?

No, no—a thousand times no! It’s absolutely clear why these recipes were changed in later editions of the book. Doubtless the idea of feeding kitchen refuse to one’s guest raised the eyebrows of readers and produced mild amusement at best—more likely, raucous laughter. I definitely would like to try the updated recipe (Little Fudge Cakes) but later--when the taste of chocolate-flavored sawdust has faded from my memory.

Chapter 6 (Cousin Matilda Calls)

Introduction

Snobbish Cousin Matilda is coming to tea, and Bettina is in a panic. How can her “charmingly simple” honeymoon cottage compete with Matilda’s grand “establishment”? And what is she to feed this judgmental lady on a scant three hours’ notice? Heavens!—what’s a new bride to do?

Part 1

The Menu

Little Chocolate Cakes

Fruit Juice

A seemingly simple but scrumptious tea—but on closer inspection once can see passive-aggressive forces at work. The menu was substantially altered in the 1932 edition of the book, and after perusing the original recipes it’s not difficult to see why.

Preparing the Meal

Little Chocolate Cakes

Tiny tea cakes made with chocolate, butter, eggs, and…not flour, but a generous helping of dried bread crumbs. Yes, breadcrumbs--a fact frugal Bettina freely shares with her guests. It’s hard to believe that such cakes can be described as “rich and dainty”, but you never know…maybe the White Mountain Frosting slathered over them will help.

Fruit Juice

Lemonade with a twist…namely, the water from a boiled pineapple core.

The core, naturally enough, was left over from the sliced pineapple served at the previous meal (“Bob Helps Get Dinner”). As instructed, I plopped it in a saucepan of water and boiled it…and boiled it and boiled it. Two hours cooking time had no discernable effect on either the core or the water surrounding it, and chopping it to bits and cooking it some more didn’t help at all. This indestructible core brought Willy Wonka’s Everlasting Gobstoppers—the candy that could be sucked for hours without growing any smaller.

The Table

Bettina had at her disposal sprays of wild roses and a tea cart to serve from, but for me no such luck. I had to make do with my dining room table, a hand-stitched tablecloth, and what flowers I could scrounge from the garden. Oddly enough I did have a “dull green pottery” bowl to fill with cherries, and the overall effect was pleasant.

And, even though it wasn't part of the menu, I added a plate of sandwiches to pacify my ravenous crew. It was a couple of hours past lunchtime, and I knew cakes and fruit juice were just not going to be enough.

How It Looked

Dainty as all get out…Matilda would surely approve!

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!