The Fun of Cooking: A Story for Girls and Boys

CHAPTER IX
IN CAMP (CONTINUED)

There was a wait of a week before the camp stove could arrive, and during that time, Jack took lessons in all sorts of cooking, and learned to make a number of good things; and this was fortunate, for one day two friends of his father surprised them; they were on their way to a camp farther in the woods, and wanted to stay a night and a day with the Blairs before going on. This meant that there were four people to cook for instead of two, and it needed all the experience Jack had to do his share of the work.

The visitors did not come until supper was done, and everything was eaten up; not even a bit of fish was left over. So the Blairs had to go to their stores and find something they could get ready quickly, and something very hearty as well.

"These fellows are as hungry as hunters," Mr. Blair said, while the men were washing up in the lake and getting ready for supper. "Here's some tinned meat; let's have that, with potatoes in it."

"But potatoes take so long to cook – "

"Not the way I'm going to cook them; only ten minutes. You can peel four and slice them very thin, and put them in cold water, and then peel and slice an onion while I open the meat and boil the kettle for coffee. Then I'll show you how to make a:"

TEN-MINUTE STEW

4 potatoes, sliced very thin.

1 onion, sliced thin.

1 can of tinned meat (not corned beef).

Salt and pepper.

1 rounded tablespoonful of flour.

1 large cup of cold water.

Put the potatoes on to cook in a saucepan of boiling salted water. Then put the onion in a hot frying-pan with a tablespoonful of pork or bacon fat, and fry brown. Put the flour in the cold water and stir till it is smooth, and mix this with the onion and stir it up; when the potatoes are done, drain them and add next, and then put in the sliced meat and heat; do not boil.

By the time this was done, the coffee was ready too, and the nice hot stew was served with large cups of the coffee and plenty of bread and butter. With a second cup of coffee and crackers and cheese, their guests had made an excellent supper.

The next morning, Jack got up extra early, because he knew everybody would be anxious to go fishing. So he soon had the kettle boiling and the breakfast started, and cooked it all by himself while the men dressed. The principal dish was:

FRIED SALT PORK

Slice thin and put in a frying-pan with enough warm water to cover; stir it around till the water begins to simmer, and turn this all off and drain the pork. Then fry till crisp. Put this in a hot dish near the fire while you make the gravy.

1 tablespoonful of flour.

2 cups of boiling water.

A little pepper.

Put the flour in the grease in the frying-pan, and rub till smooth and brown; add the water slowly, stirring all the time, and then the pepper; when smooth and a little thick, pour over the fried pork.

With this he had pancakes, plenty of them, which were delicious with the pork gravy, and on these, with plenty of coffee, the men said they could get along very comfortably till dinner-time.

For dinner they had some of the fish they caught, broiled, with boiled potatoes; and, for dessert, corn-cakes and maple-syrup. For supper Jack took the fish left from dinner and made:

FISH-BALLS

1 pint of cooked fish, picked up small.

1 quart of hot mashed potato.

1 tablespoonful of butter.

A little pepper.

Beat all together till very light, and make into balls the size of an egg. Have ready a pail of very hot fat, and drop in two balls at a time and cook till light brown; take them out; keep hot; and put in two more, and so on.

After this, he had something which had taken a long time to make, but he did not mind it.

FRIED CORN-MEAL MUSH

1 rounded tablespoonful of salt.

1 quart of yellow corn-meal.

4 quarts of water.

Bring the water to a hard boil in a kettle over the fire; mix the meal with enough cold water to make a thick batter (this is to avoid lumps). Drop spoonfuls of the meal into the water gradually, so it does not stop boiling; when all is in, stir steadily for ten minutes. Then put a cover on the pot and hang it high over the fire so it will cook slowly for one hour; stir occasionally so it will not burn; then pack tightly in a pan and let it get perfectly cold and firm. (The best plan is to let it stand all night if you can.) When you wish to use it, slice it, and fry in very hot grease in the frying-pan till brown.

The next day the men left, after saying they had had a fine visit and had never had such good things to eat in camp. Then Jack and his father had a quiet time till the guide appeared once more, his boat full of stores and his pockets crammed with newspapers and letters; and in the end of his boat he had a small sheet-iron stove. That they quickly set up under the edge of the lean-to where, if it rained, it would not get wet and rusty.

"And now, Jack," said his father, rubbing his hands, "you shall taste my baked beans. I may say without boasting that they will be the very best you ever ate in your life. Women may be able to cook ordinary food, but it takes a man to cook beans – and I'm the man!"

Jack laughed, and said he wanted to learn how so he could beat his father making them, and he watched carefully everything that was done.

BAKED BEANS

Pick over a pint of beans and throw away all that are shriveled and poor. Wash the rest and put them in cold water to cover them, and let them stand all night. The next day, put the beans in fresh water and gently cook them half an hour, skimming them occasionally.

In another kettle, put a piece of salt pork as large as a man's fist; cover it with water and let it cook till the beans are done. Then drain the water off both, and cut the pork in two pieces; slice each piece part way down, leaving the lower portion solid. Put one piece in the bottom of an earthen dish, and pile the beans around and over it, and put the other piece on top. Mix

½ teaspoonful of salt.

¼ teaspoonful of pepper.

1 tablespoonful of molasses or sugar.

½ teaspoonful of dry mustard.

Pour this all over the beans and cover the pan; put in the oven, and bake at least two hours; uncover and brown during the last twenty minutes. If the beans get very dry, pour on half a cup of boiling water when they are half done.

"Aha!" said Father Blair, as he put the pan in the oven when they were ready to bake. "Those will be simply fine. Now we could have made them by putting them in a kettle over the fire and baking them so, or we could have buried the kettle in a hole in the ashes; but they are really better done in an oven if one happens to have one. And, anyway, I needed a stove to bake biscuit in, so that's why I got one. I think we will make some for supper, too, and put them in when the beans come out. The name of the one big biscuit I'm going to make to-night is:"

CAMPER'S BREAD

1½ pints of flour.

1½ rounded teaspoonfuls of baking-powder.

½ teaspoonful of salt.

2 rounded teaspoonfuls of any kind of fat (lard is best).

½ pint of cold water.

Put the baking-powder and salt in the flour; mix well and then rub in the lard till there are no lumps left and it does not stick to the pan; add the water, a little at a time, and stir with the spoon till smooth. Grease a pan and put the dough in in rather a thin layer; smooth the top and bake, till, when you put in a sliver of wood, it comes out clean. Eat while warm; do not cut, but break into pieces.

"Now I could have cooked this just as I could have cooked the beans, without the oven. I could have put it in the frying-pan in a bed of hot ashes and covered it and put ashes on top and let it cook till done; but it's better to cook it this way if you can, because it's lighter and browner. When you want regular biscuits, all you do is to make the dough into little balls, and be sure you put flour on your hands before you try it, Jack, or you'll get into an awful mess. And then you put them in the pan and just bake them till they are done."

"I like the big loaf," said Jack. "It's more like real camp cooking; biscuits are for a house."

"And now we are going to have something extra good to-day – green corn on the cob. I tell you that's a luxury for campers! How will you have it, boiled or roasted?"

"Both," said Jack, who liked corn immensely.

"Very well, but one way at a time, young man! We will have it boiled this noon, and we will roast it over the coals to-night."

BOILED CORN

Have a deep kettle full of water boiling hard; take off the husks and silk, and boil the ears hard for twenty minutes; serve with butter and salt.

"Some campers boil the corn in the husk and think it is better that way, but I find I always burn my fingers taking off the leaves and silk, so I believe in peeling it as we do at home," said Jack's father, as he put the ears in the kettle slowly, so as not to stop the boiling of the water. "Now for supper, this is the way to fix it:"

ROAST CORN

Take off the husks and silk. Put a stick in the end of the ear, and toast it brown over a bed of coals; have ready butter and salt to put on each.

The baked beans proved all their cook promised they should be, and almost the best thing about them was that they were just as good cold as hot, and so saved cooking things sometimes when they were in a hurry.

One day, they caught a perfectly huge fish, too large to broil well, and then their little stove proved a treasure, for the oven would just hold a baking pan; they cooked it in this way:

BAKED FISH

Clean and scale the fish, but do not take off the head or tail. Slice an onion fine, and fry brown in two tablespoonfuls of fat; add to this a cup of fine, dry bread crumbs and a little salt and pepper, and stir till brown. Wipe dry the inside of the fish, and put this stuffing in; wind a string around the outside to hold it firmly in place. Put in a pan with four slices of salt pork or bacon, and lay three or four more on the top of the fish; shake a little flour, salt, and pepper over all. Bake in a hot oven till the skin begins to break open a little; every fifteen minutes open the oven door and baste the fish; that is, pour a spoonful of juice from the pan over the fish; if there is not enough, pour a small cup of boiling water into the pan.

With this they had

BOILED ONIONS

Peel onions of about the same size, and drop them in a kettle of boiling, salted water; when they have cooked half an hour, throw this water away and put them in fresh boiling water. This will prevent their being too strong. Cook for one hour altogether. Put melted butter, pepper, and salt over them.

Before they could possibly think it was time to go home, their vacation was over.

For dinner, the last night, Father Blair made something very good indeed:

CAMP PUDDING

½ pound of dried prunes.

8 slices of bread, cut thin and buttered.

½ cup of sugar.

1 tablespoonful of butter.

Wash the prunes and cover them with cold water, and let them stand all night. In the morning, put them on the fire in this water, and cook slowly till they are very soft; then take out the stones. Line a dish with the bread, cut in pieces, with a layer on the bottom; put on a spoonful of prunes and juice, then a layer of bread, and so on till the dish is full, with bread on top; sprinkle with sugar and bits of butter and bake brown.

"My, but we've had a good time!" said Jack, thoughtfully rubbing the end of his sunburned nose as he watched the shores of the lake fade away the next day. "I never supposed it was such fun to camp. And I've become quite a cook; now haven't I, Father Blair?"

"I should say you had. Too bad your mother and the girls can't know about it. But they will never know!" and his father smiled mischievously.

"Well, perhaps some day I'll cook something for them," said Jack, sheepishly. "I don't mind knowing how to cook as much as I thought I should, now that I know men cook. I guess I'll surprise them some day, Father!"

CHAPTER X
JAMS AND JELLY

Norah was preserving peaches. The fragrant odor filled the house one day, and Mildred sniffed it delightedly. "Dear me! I wish I could make preserves," she sighed. "Norah's always look so lovely in their jars, and they taste so good, too. I wonder if she would let me help her?"

But no, Norah would not. Peaches, she explained, must be done up very carefully, and nobody could do them up unless they knew just how.

"But, Norah, if you can't begin till you know how, how does anybody ever learn? And I want to do them so much! Just see how beautiful yours are," and Mildred looked longingly at the row of jars on the kitchen table full of yellow peaches in a syrup like golden sunshine. "Oh, Norah!" she murmured pathetically.

But Norah was firm. Miss Mildred couldn't do up peaches; she was too young; and, anyway, she couldn't be bothered teaching her. So Mildred sighed and gave it up. But when she told her mother about it, Mother Blair laughed.

"You want to begin at the top," she said, "Norah is quite right in saying that peaches are not easy to put up – that is, not the very best, most beautiful peaches, and nobody wants any other kind. But why not make something else to begin with, jams and jellies and other good things? And by the time you know all about those, you will find that peaches will be perfectly easy for you."

Mildred brightened up. "Now that's what I call a good idea, one of your very best, Mother Blair. Can't I make something right away to-day?"

"Just as soon as Norah is all through with her preserving, if she doesn't mind, you may. And perhaps she has something all ready for you to begin on. Run and ask her if you may have the parts of the peaches she did not want to use."

That puzzled Mildred, and as she hurried to the kitchen she thought about it.

"Norah, Mother says you are not going to use all the parts of the peaches, and perhaps I may have what you don't want. But what are they? Because if they are just the skins and stones, I don't want them either."

Norah was just fastening on the last top on her jars of preserves, and she looked very good-natured.

"Sure, I've got lots left!" she said, and showed Mildred a large covered bowl filled with bits of peach pulp.

"I won't put any bruised peaches in preserves," she explained, "so I just cut up peaches with soft spots and put 'em in here; and when I'm done, I make a shortcake out of 'em. If I've got enough, sometimes I make 'em into – "

"Jam!" interrupted Mildred. "Of course! delicious peach jam that I love. Oh, Norah, do let me make some; don't use any of those peach bits for shortcake – let's have something else for lunch."

"Well," said Norah, "I guess you can have 'em." So Mildred ran for her apron and a receipt, which, when she read it over, proved, strangely enough, to be a rule for making not only peach but all sorts of jams.

JAM

Prepare your fruit nicely; strawberries must be washed and hulled, peaches pared and cut up, raspberries looked over for poor ones. When they are ready, measure

1 large cup of fruit to

1 small cup of sugar.

Mash the fruit and put it in a kettle in layers with the sugar, and press and stir it till it is all wet and juicy. Then gently boil it, stirring constantly from the bottom up, so the fruit will not burn. Mash with a wooden potato masher till all is smooth. When it has cooked nearly an hour, try a little on a cold saucer and see if it gets firm. When it does, it is done. Some jams take longer to cook than others, because some fruits are more juicy.

This sounded very easy indeed, and Mildred began to mash and measure at once, and soon the jam was over the fire. But it took a long time to cook. Norah brought a dishpan full of jelly-glasses and put them in the sink, and Mildred washed these and dried them and arranged them on two trays, all ready for the jam; but every moment or two she stirred the jam well. By and by, after more than an hour, the peaches looked transparent, and then Norah said they were done; and, sure enough, when she hurriedly put some on a saucer and stood this on the ice in the refrigerator to get it cold quickly, it grew a little stiff and the edges were like jelly.

Mildred carefully lifted the hot saucepan from the fire and began to dip out the jam with a cup and put it in the glasses; when she finished, there were eight of them, all filled with clear golden-pinky-brownish jam, beautiful to look at, and, oh, so good to taste! Mildred ran for her mother and Brownie to look at it. "I wish Father and Jack were here," she sighed, "and Miss Betty, too. I am so proud, I want everybody to see it."

"It really is lovely," said her mother. "I never saw any that was nicer. Next winter we will eat it on hot buttered toast, and put it in layer cake, and have it ready for school sandwiches."

"But only eight little, little glasses," mourned Mildred. "Why didn't I make eight dozen of them?"

"Well, eight dozen is a good many," laughed her mother. "Perhaps – just perhaps, you know, you might find you got tired even of peach jam before you had eaten all those up. But the beauty of making jams in fruit time is that you can make a few glasses of it any time you want to. Peaches are just in season now, and we have them nearly every day, so you can put up more at any time."

"Of course!" said Mildred, delightedly. "I never thought of that. I'll make the rest of my eight dozen yet, Mother Blair; I'm sure it won't be a bit too much."

"Why not make some other things that are just as good? Grapes are in season too, and plums, and pears – "

"I'll make them all! I'll make every single kind of jam that there is!"

"You can make jelly too, and compotes, and spiced things; I'll be so glad to have you learn, and they are all as easy as can be."

"But, Mother, what can I make?" Brownie looked very sober. "Is Mildred going to make everything all alone? I like to make things, too."

"Of course you do, and you shall certainly help; jams are so easy anybody in the world can make them."

"Even Jack?" laughed Mildred.

"Yes, even Jack, if he wanted to. Why don't you and Brownie together make some nice grape jam to-morrow?"

The girls said they would love to; then their mother had them write down a special receipt, because grape jam is the one kind that is different from every other.

GRAPE JAM

Wash the grapes; take them off the stems one by one as though you meant to eat them, but press them between your fingers and put the skins in one dish and the pulp in another. When you have finished, heat the pulp and stir it till you can see that the seeds have come out; then put the pulp through the colander. Add this to the skins, measure, and follow your regular rule.

This seemed like a queer receipt; grape skins in jam! It sounded rather horrid. But they made it, anyway, and when they had finished, though it was a clear, reddish black, it was really delicious.

It happened that the grapes grew in their own garden, and so many of them were ripe that, when they had used up quite a large basketful, there were plenty left. Norah had been planning to use them in jelly, but she said she could wait a day longer for that, and the girls might have them if they wanted to, and she would show them how to make something very good indeed and very easy. This was:

SPICED FRUIT

3 pints of fruit, all prepared.

1½ small cups of vinegar.

1¾ pints of sugar.

2 teaspoonfuls of powdered cinnamon.

1 teaspoonful of powdered cloves.

Boil till thick; about an hour and a half.

In making spiced grapes, prepare them exactly as for jam, and use pulp and skins.

Their mother did not know they were making this new kind of preserve, and she was delighted when she was shown all the little glasses of it.

"All spiced fruits are especially nice with meat," she said, "and with this rule you can spice almost any kind of fruit; pears, or peaches, or apples, or plums – "

"Or strawberries, or pineapple, or raspberries," said Brownie.

"Oh, no! I ought to have said any kind of autumn fruit – that is a good way to remember which ones to use. And, Mildred, Norah divided this rule for you, to make it easier, but when I put up spiced fruit, I take twice as much of everything."

"What a pity I'm so stupid about arithmetic!" sighed Mildred. "Think of having to take twice one and three quarter pints of sugar, and twice one and a half cups of vinegar! I'll never get them right."

"Mildred, you remind me of a story some one told me the other day, about a girl who had just come home from college; it's a true story too, and the girl lives right in this town. She thought she would like to learn to cook, so she found a rule for cake in the cook-book and read it to herself; it began something like this: Three cups of flour, two cups of sugar, three teaspoonfuls of baking-powder, and so on. Presently her mother went into the kitchen and found on the table three cups, all filled with flour, two more cups filled with sugar, one cup of milk, another cup of raisins, three teaspoons in a row, all filled with baking-powder, and so on. Think of that!"

"I s'pose they didn't teach multiplying in that college," said Brownie, sympathetically.

Mildred and her mother laughed. "Well, I suppose I'll just have to learn to do fractions in my head!" said Mildred.

"There isn't any other way, if you are going to be a good cook," her mother replied. "You can't guess at things, or you will spoil them; you have to measure exactly. Now that you have finished these grapes, I'll give you some more receipts, if you want them."

The girls hastened to bring out their pretty red-covered books. "Just see, Mother Blair," said Mildred, turning over the leaves, "how many pages are filled up – with such good things, too!" And she gave a sigh of such complete satisfaction, that her mother laughed. Then they settled themselves at the table to write the new receipts.

APPLE CONSERVE

4 pints of apples, measured after they are peeled and cut up in bits.

4 pints of sugar.

2 lemons, juice and grated peel.

2 large pieces of preserved ginger (the kind that comes in little pots).

Mix all together and cook till thick; about an hour and a half.

CRANBERRY CONSERVE

2½ pints of washed and chopped cranberries.

2½ pints of sugar.

2 large oranges.

1 pint (or package) seeded raisins, chopped a little, after washing.

Cut the oranges in halves and take out the pulp with a spoon; then scrape the skins well till they are clean and not very much of the white lining is left; chop the rest. Mix all together and cook till thick.

"These two conserves are so very nice that we do not put them on the table and eat them up any day in the week, but save them for Sunday night supper and other times like that," said Mother Blair; "and sometimes they can go into sandwiches for afternoon tea. Now would you like just a very easy jelly? Here is a nice one."

APPLE JELLY

Wash twenty red apples that are not very sweet; cut them up in small pieces without peeling them or taking out the cores. Put them in a kettle and just cover them with water; cook slowly till it is all like soft apple-sauce. Then put it in a bag – a flour sack is the best – tie up the top, and hang the bag up over night with a large bowl underneath to catch the juice. In the morning measure this. Mix

1 pint of juice.

1 small pint of sugar.

Put on the fire and boil gently twenty minutes, skimming it occasionally; lift off the saucepan and drop into the jelly one large lemon, cut up in quarters, squeezing them a little; then put a small wire strainer over each jelly-glass in turn and pour the jelly into each from a cup.

"There! When you can make that kind of jelly, you will almost have learned how to make any other kind. And this is lovely, so pink and delicate, and it always gets just firm enough and not too stiff to be nice. Now, Mildred, you may try this to-morrow if you like, and, if it's perfect, you shall have a prize."

The next day the jam was firm on top, and Norah said it ought to be covered and put away at once or it would get too hard.

"How shall I cover it, Mother?" Mildred asked anxiously. "Paste on papers or something?"

"Oh, no, indeed! nobody does that way any more. Ask Norah if she has any paraffin left over."

But no, she had used every bit she had to cover her grape jelly; so Brownie had to go to the drug-store and get ten cents' worth. It came in a large cake, so clear and white it looked good enough to eat, but it wasn't, as the little girl found out by tasting. It was just like candles, and only mice like to eat candles. Norah said she would show the girls how to cover jams and jellies and spiced things, and everything you put in jelly-glasses.

"You take this little saucepan that I keep on purpose for paraffin," she said, "and put the whole cake in it after you cut it in two, and melt it; only be careful and don't let it splash on my clean stove and make it greasy. And while it is melting you can wipe off the jam glasses with a warm, wet dish-cloth and make them all clean and dry."

While Brownie was washing off the glasses Mildred cut some little slips of paper and printed on these the names for the different things they had made; peach on some, and spiced grapes on others, and grape jam or apple jelly on the rest. Then she got the pot of paste from the library; by this time the paraffin was melted and all ready to use. Norah showed them how to pour a little on top of each glass, right on the jam, and then tip the glasses a little so it would run up the sides toward the top. In a moment it hardened, and was ready for the tin covers to go on so the mice could not get at it, and then they pasted the labels on, and it was done.

Norah helped carry the trays to the preserve closet and put them away in rows, being very careful not to tip them and slide the paraffin up the sides of the glasses. Then they stood and looked at them, and, oh, how proud the girls felt!

"I'll make some more to-morrow," said Mildred, "and some more after that, and some more after that, and some more after that!"