A Thousand Ways to Please a Husband With Bettina's Best Recipes (21 page)

Potato Croquettes
(Three portions)

1 C-hot mashed or riced potatoes
¹
/
₈
t-celery salt
½ t-chopped parsley
¹
/
₈
t-onion extract
1 egg-yolk
1 T-milk
1 t-salt
1 T-butter
¹
/
₈
t-paprika
3 T-flour

Mix the mashed potatoes, celery salt, parsley, onion extract, egg yolk, milk, salt, butter and paprika. Beat two minutes. Shape into balls two inches in diameter. Roll in flour and allow to stand fifteen minutes. Cook in deep fat three minutes or more until a delicate brown. Drain on brown paper and keep hot in a moderate oven.

Escalloped Cauliflower
(Three portions)

1 small head of cauliflower
1 qt. water
1 t-salt
1½ C-vegetable white sauce, seasoned
¼ C-buttered crumbs

Soak the cauliflower in cold water to which a tablespoon of vinegar has been added. Cut apart and cook in a quart of water to which salt has been added. Make white sauce and add the cauliflower. Pour into a well-buttered baking dish. Cover with buttered crumbs. Bake twenty minutes in a moderate oven.

"W
E have gone 'over home' for so many Sunday dinners lately," Bettina had said to her mother, "that I want you and father to come here tomorrow."

"But, Bettina," her mother protested, "isn't it too much work for you? And won't you be going to church?"

"I can't go to church tomorrow, anyhow, for Bob's Uncle Eric is to be in town all morning; he leaves at noon, and the Dixons have offered us their car to take him for a drive. Don't worry, Mother, I'll have a simple dinner—a 'roast beef dinner,' I believe. I often think that is the very easiest kind."

Sunday morning was so beautiful that Bettina could not bear to stay indoors. Accordingly, she set the breakfast table on the porch, even though Uncle Eric protested that it was too far for her to walk back and forth with the golden brown waffles she baked for his especial delight. When he and Bob had eaten two "batches," Uncle Eric insisted that he could bake them himself for a while. He installed Bettina in her chair at the table, and forced waffles upon her till she begged for mercy.

"Gracious!" Bettina exclaimed as she heard the "honk" of the Dixons' automobile at the door. "There are the Dixons already and we have just finished breakfast! Bob, you and Uncle Eric will have to go on without me, for I must get the roast in the oven and do the morning's work."

"Well, I learned today to make waffles," said Uncle Eric.

For dinner that day Bettina served:

Roast Beef Brown Gravy
Browned Potatoes Baked Squash
Lettuce French Dressing
Lemon Sherbet Devil's Food Cake
Coffee

BETTINA'S RECIPES

(All measurements are level)

Roast Beef
(Eight portions)

3½ lb. rump roast of beef
4 T-flour
2 t-salt
¼ C-hot water

Roll the roast in the flour and set on a rack in a dripping-pan. Place in a hot oven and sear over all sides. Sprinkle the salt over the meat and add the hot water. Cover the meat and cook in a moderate oven. Baste every fifteen minutes. Allow fifteen minutes a pound for a rare roast, and twenty minutes a pound for a well done roast. When properly done, the outside fat is crisp and brown.

Brown Potatoes
(Six portions)

6 potatoes
1 t-salt

Wash and peel the potatoes. Sprinkle with salt. Forty minutes before the roast is to be done, add the potatoes. During the last ten minutes of cooking the lid may be removed from the meat and potatoes to allow all to brown nicely.

Browned Gravy
(Six portions)

4 T-beef drippings
2 T-flour
1 C-water
¼ t-salt

Place four tablespoons of beef drippings in a pan, add the flour and allow to brown. Add the rest of the drippings, the water and the salt. Cook two minutes. Serve hot.

Baked Squash
(Six portions)

1 squash
2 T-butter
1½ t-salt
¾ t-paprika

Wash and wipe the squash, and cut into halves, then quarters. Remove the seeds. Place the pieces of squash, skin
down, in a baking-dish and bake in a moderate oven until tender (about one hour). Remove from the oven, mash up with a fork, and add to each portion one-half a teaspoon of butter, one-fourth a teaspoon of salt, and one-eighth a teaspoon of paprika. Reheat in the oven and serve hot.

Devil's Food Cake
(Sixteen pieces)

¹
/
₃
C-butter
1 C-sugar
1 egg
²
/
₃
C-sour milk
1 t-vanilla
²
/
₃
t-soda
2 C-flour
2 squares of melted chocolate

Cream the butter, add the sugar and continue to cream the mixture. Add the egg, well beaten, and the chocolate. Mix well. Add the soda and flour sifted together, and the sour milk and vanilla. Beat three minutes. Bake in two layer cake pans prepared with waxed piper for twenty-five minutes in a moderate oven.

Icing
(Sixteen portions)

2 C-"C" sugar
½ C-water
2 egg-whites beaten stiffly
1 t-vanilla

Cook the sugar and water together until it clicks when a little is dropped into a cup of cold water. Pour slowly over the beaten egg whites. Beat vigorously until creamy. Add the vanilla. Pour on one layer of the cake. Place the upper layer on top, and pour the rest of the icing upon it. Spread evenly over the top and over the sides.

"I
USUALLY complain when it rains—I have that habit—but I must confess that I like a rainy evening at home once in a while," said Bob, as he and Bettina sat down at the dinner table. "Dinner on a rainy night always seems so cozy."

"Liver and bacon don't constitute a very elaborate dinner," said Bettina. "But they taste good for a change. And oh, Bob, tonight I want you to try a new recipe I heard of—peanut fudge. It sounds delicious."

"I'm there," said Bob. "I was just thinking it would be a good candy evening. Then, when the candy is done, we'll assemble under the new reading lamp and eat it."

"Yes, it'll be a good way to initiate the reading lamp! Wasn't it dear of Uncle Eric to give it to us? I kept wondering why he was so anxious to know just what I planned to do with the money I won for my nut bread at the fair. I even took him around and pointed out this particular lamp as the thing I had been saving for. And here it arrived the day after he left, as a gift to me! It was dear of Uncle Eric! But now what on earth shall I do with my fair money?"

"Don't worry about that, Bettina. Put it in the bank."

"But I'd like to get something as sort of a monument to my luck. Have you any particular needs, Bob?"

"Not a need in the world! Except for one more of those fine fruit gems over there."

That night they had for dinner:

Liver and Bacon Creamed Turnips
Fruit Gems Apple Sauce
Tea

BETTINA'S RECIPES

(All measurements are level)

Creamed Turnips
(Two portions)

1 C-turnip cubes
¹
/
₃
t-salt
1 T-butter
1 T-flour
¼ t-salt
½ C-milk

Peel the turnips. Cut into one-half inch cubes. Soak in cold water ten minutes. Cook in boiling water in an uncovered utensil until transparent no longer. Drain and sprinkle with salt. Melt the butter, add the flour and the one-fourth teaspoon salt, blend well, add the milk gradually and cook until creamy. Add the turnips and serve.

Liver and Bacon
(Two portions)

4 slices bacon
²
/
₃
lb. liver
1 t-salt
¼ t-paprika
3 T-flour

Cover slices of calves' liver cut one-half inch thick with boiling water. Allow to stand five minutes. Drain and cut into pieces for serving. Sprinkle with salt and pepper and roll in flour. Have a frying pan very hot. Add sliced bacon. When the bacon has cooked on each side, pile up on one side of the pan and add the liver, placing a piece of bacon on top of each portion of liver, thus preventing the bacon from getting too well done, and also seasoning the liver. Brown the liver thoroughly on both sides. (It should be cooked about ten minutes.) Serve hot.

Fruit Gems
(Nine Gems)

2 C-flour
3 t-baking powder
3 T-sugar
¼ t-salt
¾ C-milk
1 egg
1 T-melted butter
¹
/
₃
C-seeded, chopped raisins or currants

Mix the flour, baking powder, sugar and salt. Break the egg into the milk, stir well, pour into the dry ingredients. Beat vigorously one minute. Add the melted butter and raisins or currants. Bake in nine well buttered gem pans for twenty minutes in a moderate oven.

Peanut Fudge
(Six portions)

1 C-"C" sugar
1 C-granulated sugar
¼ t-cream of tartar
2 squares of chocolate
²
/
₃
C-milk
1 T-butter
1 t-vanilla
½ C-broken peanuts

Mix the sugar, cream of tartar, chocolate, milk and butter. Cook over a moderate fire until the fudge forms a soft ball when a little is dropped into cold water. Remove from the fire, allow to stand without stirring for twenty minutes. Beat vigorously until creamy. Add the vanilla and peanuts. When very thick remove to a buttered plate. Allow to harden and cut in squares.

"I
S it still as much fun to keep house as it was at first, Charlotte?" asked Bettina as she and Bob sat down to dinner with the Dixons.

"Fun?" said Charlotte. "Bettina, look at me! Or better still, look at Frank! And the funny part of it all is that Aunt Isabel thinks our keeping house is a result of her preachments against boarding and hotel living. Why, she quite approves of me now! And I'll just keep quiet and let her feel that she was the one who did it, but all the while in my heart I'll be remembering that it was the sight of your happiness that roused my ambition to make a home myself."

"I tell you," said Mr. Dixon, "we can never thank you enough, Bettina. Now shall I play 'Home Sweet Home' on the piano? And will you all join in the chorus?"

"Not if you sing, too," said Mrs. Dixon, smiling at her husband's foolishness. "I've learned a great deal from you, since I began, Bettina, and not the smallest lesson is that of having company without dreading it. I don't try to make things elaborate, just dainty and simple food such as we have every day. Why, tonight I didn't make a single change for you and Bob! And I don't believe I should dread even Aunt Isabel's sudden arrival now."

"Aunt Isabel is really a good soul, Bettina," said Frank. "Charlotte has never learned how much worse her bark is than her bite, and she takes it to heart when Aunt Isabel speaks her mind. Why, I remember so well the scoldings she used
to give me when I was a boy, and the cookies she would manage to treat me with afterward! I used to anticipate those pleasant scoldings!"

"If a scolding always comes before food," said Bob, "Charlotte must have given you an extra good one before inviting us to partake of that delicious-looking chocolate pie!"

That evening they had:

Cold Sliced Ham Creamed Potatoes
Tomatoes Stuffed with Rice
Peach Butter
Chocolate Pie
Coffee

BETTINA'S RECIPES

(All measurements are level)

Tomatoes Stuffed with Rice
(Six portions)

6 tomatoes
½ C-rice, cooked
½ C-green pepper, chopped
2 T-grated cheese
1 t-chopped onion
¼ t-salt
1 T-butter

Remove a piece one inch in diameter from the stem end of each tomato. Take out the seeds. Fill the shells with the rice, pepper, cheese, onion and salt, well mixed. Place a small dot of butter on top of each. Place in a small pan and bake twenty-five minutes in a moderate oven.

Chocolate Pie Crust
(Six portions)

1 C-flour
¹
/
₃
C-lard
¼ t-salt
3 T-ice water

Mix the flour and salt, cut in the lard with a knife, add the liquid slowly, stirring with the knife. More water may be needed. Roll out thin, fit onto a tin pan, prick with holes, and bake in a hot oven until light brown (about seven minutes).