Holiday Stories for Young People | Page 5

Quick Biscuits. Apple-Sauce. Strawberries and Cream. Tapioca Blanc-Mange. Cup-Cake. Cookies. Cocoa.
The ham, having been boiled till tender the afternoon before, was chopped very fine, a tiny dash of mustard added to it, and then it was spread smoothly between two pieces of the thinnest possible bread-and-butter. Around each of the sandwiches, when finished, I tied a very narrow blue ribbon. The effect was pretty.
The tongue was sliced evenly, and arranged on a plate with tender leaves of lettuce around its edge.
The biscuits I made myself. Mother taught me how. First I took a quart of flour, and dropped into it two teaspoonfuls of our favorite baking-powder. This I sifted twice, so that the powder and flour were thoroughly blended. Mother says that cakes and biscuits and all kinds of pastry are nicer and lighter if the flour is sifted twice, or even three times. I added now a tablespoonful of lard and a half teaspoonful of salt, and mixed the biscuit with milk. The rule is to handle as little as possible, and have the dough very soft. Roll into a mass an inch thick, and cut the little cakes apart with a tin biscuit-cutter. They must be baked in a very hot oven.
No little housekeeper need expect to have perfect biscuits the first time she makes them. It is very much like playing the piano. One needs practice. But after she has followed this receipt a half dozen times, she will know exactly how much milk she will require for her dough, and she will have no difficulty in handling the soft mass. A dust of flour over the hands will prevent it from sticking to them.
Mother always insists that a good cook should get all her materials together before she begins her work.
The way is to think in the first place of every ingredient and utensil needed, then to set the sugar, flour, spice, salt, lard, butter, milk, eggs, cream, molasses, flavoring, sieves, spoons, egg-beaters, cups, strainers, rolling-pins, and pans, in a convenient spot, so that you do not have to stop at some important step in the process, while you go to hunt for a necessary thing which has disappeared or been forgotten.
Mother has often told me of a funny time she had when she was quite a young housekeeper, afflicted with a borrowing neighbor. This lady seldom had anything of her own at hand when it was wanted, so she depended upon the obliging disposition of her friends.
One day my mother put on her large housekeeping apron and stepped across the yard to her outdoor kitchen. The kitchens in Kentucky were never a part of the house, but always at a little distance from it, in a separate building.
"Aunt Phyllis," said my mother to the cook, who was browning coffee grains in a skillet over the fire, "I thought I told you that I was coming here to make pound cake and cream pies this morning. Why is nothing ready?"
"La, me, Miss Emmeline!" replied Aunt Phyllis. "Miss 'Tilda Jenkins done carried off every pie pan and rolling-pin and pastry-board, and borrowed all de eggs and cream fo' herself. Her bakin' isn't mo'n begun."
This was a high-handed proceeding, but nothing could be done in the case. It was Mrs. Jenkins' habit, and mother had always been so amiable about it that the servants, who were easygoing, never troubled themselves to ask the mistress, but lent the inconvenient borrower whatever she desired.
Sometimes just as we were going to church, I was too little at the time to remember, mother said that a small black boy with very white teeth and a very woolly head, would pop up at her chamber door, exclaiming,
"Howdy, Miss Emmeline. Miss 'Tilda done sent me to borrow yo' Prayer-book. She goin' to church to-day herself."
Or, of a summer evening, her maid would appear with a modest request for Miss Emmeline's lace shawl and red satin fan; Miss 'Tilda wanted to make a call and had nothing to wear.
All this, I think, made mother perfectly set against our ever borrowing so much as a slatepencil or a pin. We were always to use our own things or go without. I never had a sister, but cousins often spent months at the house, and were in and out of my room in the freest way, forever bringing me their gloves to mend or their ties to clean, as cousins will.
"Never borrow," said my mother. "Buy, or give away, or do without, but be beholden to nobody for a loan."
Another rule for little housekeepers is to wash their hands and faces and have their hair in the nicest order before they begin to cook. The nails should be cleaned and the toilet attended to as carefully as if the girl were going to a party, before she