Bettina Chapter 5: Bob Helps to Get Dinner

In Chapter 5 of A Thousand Ways to Please a Husband, Bettina supplies a lot of 1917 cooking tips, and Bob comes up with one of his own (shake homemade salad dressing in a jar). But she sure doesn't know how to cook string beans (25 minutes and then reheat?--might as well have canned ones. Or maybe the fireless cooker just does them really slowly.)

This is the first time that Bettina throws out a casual reference to the "fireless cooker." After a couple of these, I got suspicious and checked the end of the book to see if the whole thing had perhaps been published by the Fireless Cooker Company. But no, I guess the authors were just enthusiastic. I'll post more about the cookers when Bettina gets into more detail about them in a later chapter.

So what can we learn from this chapter?

1. Let willing helpers help, and listen to their ideas. Guys, even non-kitchen-savvy ones like Bob, can think of good shortcuts. Then there was the little kid in one of the simple-cooking-living books who asked his mommy why they couldn't just EAT the berries instead of waiting while she decided what she was going to do with them. (That's what they did.)

2. Don't put smelly things in the "icebox" without a lid or some kind of covering. I didn't know that pineapple fell into the pungent category, but it's better to cover things in the fridge anyway, to keep them from drying out.

3. Bettina makes her own salad dressing and other things that you might think you need to buy by the jar. A good source of DIY kitchen ideas: the Make It From Scratch Carnival. That's the link to the site for submissions; the carnival has its own website, and here's the latest (June 24th) edition.