A Thousand Ways to Please a Husband With Bettina's Best Recipes (13 page)

Wash the fruit, mix with the sugar, flour, salt and lemon juice. Line a deep pie tin with a plain pie paste and sprinkle one tablespoon sugar over bottom crust. Add the berry mixture. Wet the lower crust slightly. Roll out the upper crust and make slits in the middle to allow the steam to escape. Place on the lower crust, pinching the edges together. Bake in a moderately hot oven forty minutes.

Tomato Jelly
(Six portions)

2 C-tomatoes
½ C-water
1 T-sugar
1 bay leaf
3 cloves
1 t-salt
2 T-gelatine

Simmer tomatoes, water, sugar, bay leaf, cloves, and salt
for ten minutes. Strain. Soak the gelatin in two tablespoons cold water, and add the hot vegetable mixture. Pour into small wet moulds. Chill for two hours and serve with salad dressing.

Boiled Salad Dressing
(One cup)

2 egg yolks
2 T-flour
1 t-salt
1 t-mustard
¹
/
₈
t-paprika
½ t-butter
¹
/
₃
C-vinegar
¹
/
₃
C-water
2 T-sugar

Beat egg-yolks thoroughly and add the dry ingredients (mixed and sifted). Gradually add the vinegar and water. Cook in a double boiler until thick and creamy, or directly over small flame, stirring constantly. If whipped cream is to be used, no butter need to be added. If not, add butter the last thing. Beat with a Dover egg beater until creamy. Keep in a cool place.

Sour Cream Cookies
(Three dozen)

1 C-sugar
½ C-butter (or lard and butter mixed)
2 eggs
½ C-sour cream or sour milk
½ t-soda
½ t-salt
2 t-grated nutmeg
about 2 C-flour, or as little as possible

Cream the fat, add the sugar. Cream again. Add the eggs well beaten, sour milk, one cup flour, soda, salt and nutmeg mixed and sifted together. Add the rest of the flour. Roll out to one-third of an inch thickness, cut any desired shape, and bake in a moderately hot oven for fifteen minutes. Sugar mixed with a little flour may be sifted over the dough before cutting. Raisins may also be pressed into the top of each cooky.

Doughnuts
(Thirty)

¼ C-sugar
1 egg beaten
²
/
₃
C-milk
2 C-flour
½ t-salt
¼ t-cinnamon
2 t-baking powder

Mix the beaten egg and sugar, add the milk, flour, salt, cinnamon and baking powder, sifted together. Take one-half of the dough, and roll out one-third of an inch thick. Cut with a doughnut cutter. Roll and cut the other half. Put the scraps together and roll again. Fry in deep fat, turning until a delicate brown. Drain on brown paper.

"W
ILL you look at the way that child eats her cereal!" ejaculated Polly at the breakfast table. "And I simply can't get her to eat it at home! In fact, on warm days like this, she won't eat any breakfast at all."

"I like Aunt Betty's cereal; it looks so pretty," explained little Dorothy gravely, looking down at her plate of moulded cereal surrounded by plump red raspberries.

"I hope you don't mind my serving it cold today," said Bettina. "It seemed so warm yesterday that I cooked the cereal and put it in moulds in the refrigerator."

"No indeed! The change is a regular treat for the children. They like fixed-up things like this, and it certainly does give anyone an appetite."

"Well, in hot weather, no one feels much like eating, anyhow, so I try to make things as attractive as I can. And I want the children to have just what they like.... You needn't be afraid of this cream, Polly. We buy it from a neighbor, and I am absolutely sure that it is both clean and good. I'm ashamed to say that we have no certified milk in this town. Isn't that dreadful? And people keep on buying it of dairies that they don't know one thing about! Why, I've seen women who had just moved to town, and who knew nothing about conditions here, begin housekeeping by cleaning house thoroughly from top to bottom, and at the same time, leave an order for milk with the first dairy wagon that happened to drive down their street! And they buy groceries and meat from the nearest stores without knowing that three blocks
away there may be other stores that are better, cleaner and less expensive. Shouldn't you think that women would insist upon knowing all about the food they are giving their children? It seems to me that much common sense in a housewife is a great deal more important even than knowing how to cook and sew."

"I think that knowing how to plan and buy is more important than knowing how to do things with your hands," said Polly. "After all, it's the result that counts. You're a wonder, Bettina, because you have a useful head and useful hands, too, but I haven't. So I try to know as much as possible about every article of food and clothing that I buy, and to be sure that I am getting the very best value from Tom's money, but I don't know how to cook or sew or trim hats or embroider. I like friends and babies and outdoor exercise, but I'll confess that I don't like housework."

"Well, Tom and the children seem to be perfectly contented and happy, and so do you. Therefore, you are a successful housekeeper."

"You are the right kind of a sister-in-law to have, Betty! I quite approve of Bob's choice!"

The breakfast that morning consisted of:

Moulded Cream of Wheat
Raspberries
Sugar Cream
Poached Eggs on Toast
Coffee

BETTINA'S RECIPES

(All measurements are level)

Wheat Cereal
(Three portions)

1 C-wheat
2 T-cold water
¹
/
₃
C-raspberries

Cook the wheat according to the instructions on the package, only cook twice as long as the directions suggest. Mix cereal and cold water. Add boiling water slowly. This method prevents lumping. Wet individual moulds with cold water, place raspberries around the inside of the mould and fill with the wheat. Allow to remain in mould for fifteen minutes.
Remove from mould, surround with more berries and serve. If desired cold, chill in the refrigerator. Cereals may be cooked in a double boiler or a fireless cooker.

Method of Cooking Cereals

Put the water and salt in the upper part of double boiler and place directly over the flame. When the water boils, add the cereal very slowly, stirring constantly. Cook for five minutes directly over the fire. Place the upper part in the lower part of the double boiler containing boiling water, and cook the required time. All cereals must be thoroughly cooked.

AUGUST.

Twenty little jelly-glasses, twenty pots of jam,
Twenty jars of pickles and preserves,
Making other wealth than this appear a stupid sham,——
Ah, you dears! What color, gleam and curves!

"H
ONK! Honk!" sounded an auto horn at Bettina's door one cool morning, as a crowd of lively voices also summoned her.

"Bettina, O, Bettina! We've come to get you to play tennis with us this morning. You must! You've been neglecting us for Bob and we're jealous."

"Oh, girls, I simply can't! I have just bought quarts and quarts of cherries and currants of a boy who came to the door, and I must take today to put them up!"

"That's easy! Leave 'em till tomorrow!" said Alice cheerfully.

"I can't do that, because they're just at the canning point and it isn't a good thing to have them a bit over-ripe. Then these are freshly picked, and that is the best way to have them."

"I'll stay and help; may I?" said Ruth, who had suddenly developed a deep interest in things domestic.

"Why, of course I'd love to have you, Ruth, but seeding cherries is slow work, and I believe that playing tennis would be more exciting."

"But not half so interesting as to hear you tell me how you do things. I love to listen."

"We'll all stay," suggested Mary. "It'll do us good. But you'll have to lend us big aprons; can you?" And she looked down at her white middy, skirt, and shoes.

"Come on!" shouted Elsie. "You can lecture as we seed cherries, Bettina. How are you going to put them up?"

"Well, Bob likes plain currant jelly, and plain canned cherries awfully well. I may preserve some cherries with currant juice, too, but I think I'll not do anything very elaborate today."

"Goodness, that sounds elaborate enough to suit me! Will you be looking over the currants while we are stoning cherries?"

"Leave the stones in half of them, girls; many people like them that way better."

"What were you doing to all those jars?"

"Just getting ready to sterilize them. You see I'll put them on a folded cloth, in this big kettle of cold water. Then I'll slowly heat the water to the boiling point, and fill the jars immediately with the fruit and syrup. I must scald the rubber rings, too, before I use them."

Bettina was rapidly looking over currants as she talked. "Girls, do you notice my jelly strainer? See, it's a piece of cheese-cloth fastened into a wire strainer. It can be attached to any kettle. I haven't used it yet, but I know that it will be very convenient. You know it's best to strain the juice through the cheese-cloth without pressure. If I have the cloth double, the juice will be quite clear. If I wanted an especially clear jelly, I could even have the juice pass through a flannel or felt bag."

"How on earth can you tell when the jelly jells?" asked Ruth.

"Well, I test it this way. I take up, in a cold silver spoon, a little of the mixture that is cooking. If it jells and breaks from the spoon, it has been cooking long enough. Of course I remove the rest from the fire while testing it, because it might be done."

"Bettina, cooking and jelly-making and things like that seem to be so natural for you!" cried Ruth. "I get so frightened
sometimes when I think what if I should be a poor housekeeper and make Fred unhappy!"

"Alice," said Mary, "Heaven forbid that either of us should ever be talking like that about a man!"

"Goodness, I should say so!" declared Alice emphatically, a little too emphatically, thought Bettina.

BETTINA'S RECIPES

(All measurements are level)

Currant Jelly

2 qts. currants
sugar

Pick over currants, but do not remove the stems. Wash and drain. Mash a few with a vegetable masher in the bottom of a porcelain-lined or granite kettle. Add more currants and mash. Continue adding currants until all are used. Bring to a boil slowly and let simmer without stirring until the currants appear white. Strain through a coarse strainer, and allow juice to drain through a jelly bag. Measure the juice, and boil ten minutes. Gradually add an equal amount of heated sugar, stirring occasionally to prevent burning, and continue boiling until the test shows that the mixture has jelled. When filling sterilized glasses, place them in a pan containing a little boiling water. This keeps the glasses from breaking when hot jelly is poured in. Fill and set the glasses of jelly aside to cool. Cover with hot melted paraffin.

Canned Cherries

6 qts. cherries
1½ qts. sugar
½ pt. water

Measure the cherries after the stems have been removed. Stone if desired. If they are stoned, be sure to save the juice. Put the sugar and water in a kettle and stir over the fire until the sugar is dissolved. Add the cherries and heat slowly to the boiling point. Boil ten minutes skimming carefully. Put into sterilized jars, filling the jars to overflowing with the syrup. Seal securely. (When filling the jars stand them in a pan containing boiling water. This keeps them from breaking.)