Pleasin' the Husband with a Man-size Meal

"June is a wonderful month for housekeepers."--quote from Bettina in "Bettina's First Real Dinner"

In Chapter 2 of A Thousand Ways to Please a Husband, Bettina sets the pace for the dinners to come with what Bob calls "a regular man-size meal", although she warns him that they won't be having steak every night.

Well, I have to tell you, I have never cooked a pan-broiled steak, probably haven't even eaten one. Barbecued, yes, and cut up in a stew, but my family were just never really big steak cookers. But in Bettina and Bob's day, some people even considered steak a good breakfast option, so knowing how to prepare steak properly (for your man?) went without saying.

(That's John Candy eating steak in The Great Outdoors. Sorry it's so small.)

I also don't bother making a white sauce for new potatoes...besides, with Bettina making gravy for the steak, it seems pretty superfluous. We're happy just to eat them plain, maybe with a bit of butter and parsley.

I could also do without salad made from leftover canned peas, pimiento and celery. Especially since that's all the vegetable that poor Bob's getting, other than the potatoes.

But we do make shortcake kind of like Bettina's.

So what can we learn from Chapter 2?

1. Bettina cooks two days' worth of potatoes at once, "to save gas and bother." This especially makes sense if you're only feeding a couple of people, but it's a good idea any time if you have a way to use or store the extra. You can cook pasta for a hot meal and use the rest for salad; cook oatmeal one morning and then microwave the leftovers; or, as Bettina did, cook extra potatoes and then use them in all kinds of ways.

2. She says it's too extravangant to "order by telephone," "unless you know exactly what you are getting." We've often been bothered by telemarketers trying to sign us up for groceries-online businesses, but that's never been an option that appealed to us. As Bettina says, it might be convenient, but you'd have to know exactly what you want, and what the good deals are.

3. After Bettina goes shopping, she puts things away in "labelled glass jars" on the pantry shelves. I don't think this means that she was scooping things out of larger sacks, because she went shopping with a basket and didn't have a car. But for those of us who bring home bags of dry goods from scoop-your-own stores, it can be a good idea to decant them into other containers, especially if your kitchen is prone to any kind of pests. I've also noticed that bulk-purchased brown sugar keeps much better if you get it out of the thin bag. You can always restore it with a piece of bread or apple, but better to keep it soft in the first place and save the trouble.

"It makes me feel happy, I can tell you, to have a home like this."--Bob