Holiday Stories for Young People Part 2

But Amy did eat apple-sauce at our house. Aunt Hetty taught me how to make it, and I think it very good. We always cook it in an earthenware crock over a very quick fire. This is our receipt: Pare and slice the apples, eight large ones are sufficient for a generous dish, and put them on with a very little water. As soon as they are soft and pulpy stir in enough granulated sugar to make them as sweet as your father and brothers like them. Take them off and strain them through a fine sieve into a gla.s.s dish. Cook the apple-sauce about two hours before it is wanted on the table. Put beside it a bowl of whipped cream, and when you help to the sauce add a heaping spoonful of the cream to every dish.

People spoil apple-sauce by making it carelessly, so that it is lumpy and coa.r.s.e, or has seeds or bits of the core sticking in it, and mother says that both apple-pies and apple-sauce should be used the day they are made. They lose their _bouquet_, the fine delicate flavor is all gone if you keep them long before using. A great divine used to say that "the natural life of an apple pie is just twelve hours."

_Tapioca Blanc-Mange._--This is the receipt: One pint of fresh milk, three-quarters of a cupful of sugar, half a pound of tapioca soaked in cold water four hours, a small teaspoonful of vanilla, a pinch of salt.

Heat the milk and stir in the tapioca previously soaked. Mix well and add the sugar. Boil it slowly fifteen minutes, then take it off and beat until nearly cold. Pour into moulds, and stand upon the ice.

This is very nice served with a teaspoonful of currant or raspberry jelly to each helping, and if cream is added it makes a beautiful dessert. This ought to be made the day before it is needed. I made mine before noon and it was quite ready, but you see it tired me to have it on my mind, and it _might_ have been a failure.

_Cup-Cake._--Three teacups of sifted sugar and one cup and a half of b.u.t.ter beaten to a cream, three eggs well beaten (white and yolks separately), three teacupfuls of sifted flour. Flavor with essence of lemon or rose water. A half teaspoonful is enough. Dissolve a teaspoonful of cream of tartar and a half teaspoonful of baking soda in a very little milk. When they foam, stir them quickly into the cake.

Beat well until the mixture is perfectly smooth, and has tiny bubbles here and there on the surface. Bake in a very quick oven.

_Cookies._--These were in the house. We always keep a good supply. One cup of b.u.t.ter, one of sugar, one of sour milk, half a nutmeg grated, one teaspoonful of saleratus dissolved in a little boiling water, flour enough to roll out the cookies. Cut into small round cakes and bake.

Keep these in a close tin. They will last a long time unless the house is supplied with hungry school-boys.

_Cocoa._--Two ounces of cocoa and one quart of boiling water. Boil together for a half hour on the back of the stove, then add a quart of milk and two tablespoonfuls of sugar. Boil for ten minutes and serve.

Everything on the table was enjoyed, and we girls had a very merry time.

After tea and before the brothers came, we arranged a plan for learning to make bread. I forgot to speak of the strawberries, but good strawberries and rich cream need no directions. A pretty way of serving them for breakfast, or for people who prefer them without cream, is simply to arrange the beautiful fruit unhulled on a cut gla.s.s dish, and dip each berry by its dainty stem into a little sparkling mound of powdered sugar.

As for our games, our talk, our royally good time, girls will understand this without my describing it. As Veva said, you can't put the soul of a good time down on the club's record book, and I find I can't put it down here in black and white. But when we said good-night, each girl felt perfectly satisfied with the day, and the brothers pleaded for many more such evenings.

CHAPTER III.

A FAIR WHITE LOAF.

"It's very well," said Miss Clem Downing, Marjorie's sister, "for you little housekeepers to make cakes and creams; anybody can do that; but you'll never be housekeepers in earnest, little or big, my dears, till you can make good eatable bread."

"Bread," said Mr. Pierce to Amy, "is the crowning test of housewifery. A lady is a loaf-giver, don't you know?"

"When Jeanie shall present me with a perfect loaf of bread, I'll present her with a five-dollar gold piece," said Jeanie's father.

"I don't want Veva meddling in the kitchen," observed Mrs. Fay, with emphasis. "The maids are vexatious enough, and the cook cross enough as it is. If ever Veva learns breadmaking, it must be outside of this house."

"Don't bother me, daughter," said Mrs. Partridge, looking up from the cup she was painting. "It will be time for you to learn breadmaking when the bakers shut their shops."

As for the writer of this story, her mother's way had been to teach her breadmaking when she was just tall enough to have a tiny moulding-board on a chair, but Milly did not feel qualified to take hold of a regular cooking cla.s.s. It was the same with Linda Curtis. Grandmamma suggested our having a teacher, and paying her for her trouble.

"Miss m.u.f.fet?" said Veva.

"Miss m.u.f.fet," we all exclaimed.

"And then," said Jeanie, "our money will enable her to buy the winter cloak she is so much in need of, and she will not feel as if she were accepting charity, because she will earn the money if she teaches us."

"Indeed, she will," exclaimed Veva. "I know beforehand that she will have one fearfully stupid pupil, and that is Veva Fay."

Breakfast was no sooner over next morning, and grandmamma dressed and settled in comfort, than away we flew to our friend. "We," means Linda and myself. She is my nearest neighbor, and we often act for the club.

Miss m.u.f.fet lived by herself in a bit of a house, her only companions being a very deaf sister and a very noisy parrot.

"Pa.s.sel o' girls! Pa.s.sel o' girls!" screamed the parrot, as we lifted the latch and walked up the little bricked pathway, bordered with lady-slippers and prince's feather, to the porch, which was half hidden by clematis.

Miss m.u.f.fet was known to every man, woman and child in Bloomdale. She was sent for on every extra occasion, and at weddings, christenings and funerals, when there was more work than usual to be done, the little brisk woman, so quiet and so capable, was always on hand. She could do a little of everything, from seating Tommy's trousers to setting patches in Ellen's sleeves; from making lambrequins and table scarfs to laundrying lace curtains and upholstering furniture. As for cooking, preserving and canning, she was celebrated for miles around and beyond our towns.h.i.+p.

"Would Miss m.u.f.fet undertake to show a few girls how to make bread and rolls and biscuit and sally-lunn, and have patience with them till they were perfect little housekeepers, so far as bread was concerned."

It was some little time before we could make Miss m.u.f.fet understand our plan, and persuade her to let us pay for our lessons; but when she did understand, she entered into the plan with enthusiasm.

"La me! What a clever notion to be sure! Sister Jane, poor dear, would approve of it highly, if she weren't so deaf. Begin to-day? Well, well!

You don't want the gra.s.s to grow under your feet, do you? All right!

I'll be at your house, Milly, at six o'clock this evening to give the first lesson. Have the girls there, if you can. It's as easy to teach a dozen as one."

"Milly," said Linda, "the club ought to have a uniform and badges. I don't think a club is complete that hasn't a badge."

"We all have white ap.r.o.ns," I said.

"Yes; ordinary ap.r.o.ns, but not great kitchen ap.r.o.ns to cover us up from head to foot."

"Well, if the club adopts the plan it will not be hard to make such ap.r.o.ns. We must certainly have caps, and those should be thought of at once."

Grandmamma was always my resort when I was at my wits' end, and so I went to her with a question: "Had she anything which would do for our caps?"

"There must be something in my lower left-hand wardrobe drawer," said grandmamma, considering. "Thee may bring me a green bag, which thee will see in the far corner, and then we will talk about those caps in earnest."

That wonderful green bag proved a sort of fairy find. There were remnants of mull, Swiss, jaconet and other fabrics--white, plain and barred. Grandmamma cut us a pattern. At four the seven girls were a.s.sembled in her room. Jeanie on a ha.s.sock at her feet, the remainder grouped as they chose.

How our fingers flew! It was just a quarter to six when every cap was finished, and each girl had decided upon her special color. We hadn't the ribbon to make our bows, and were obliged to wait till somebody should go to the city to procure it; but each girl knew her favorite color, and that was a comfort. Linda Curtis chose blue, and I would wear rose-tints (my parents did not insist on my wearing Quaker gray, and I dressed like "the world's people"), Veva chose old gold, and each of the others had a preference.

"You will look like a field of daisies and clover, dearies," said grandmamma.

"There!" cried Jeanie. "Why not have a four-leaved clover as our badge?

There isn't anything prettier."

The four-leaved clover carried the day, though one or two did speak for the daisy, the maiden-hair fern and the p.u.s.s.y willow. All this was before the subject of the national flower had been agitated.

"Where are my pupils?" Miss m.u.f.fet appeared promptly at the hour, and wore a most business-like air as she began her instructions. "Compressed yeast has found its way to Bloomdale, my dears," she said, "so that I shall not have to begin by telling you how to make yeast. That useful lesson may wait till another day. Before we do anything, I will give you some rules for good family bread, and you may write them down, if you please.

"1. Always sift your flour thoroughly."

Seven pencils wrote that rule in seven notebooks.

"2. Mix the dough as soft as it can be handled. You must never have it too stiff.

"3. Set it to rise in a moderately warm place.