GOLDENROD EGGS

1/2 tablespoonful b.u.t.ter.

3/4 tablespoonful flour.

1/4 teaspoonful salt.

1/2 cup hot milk.

Rub the b.u.t.ter and flour, and add the milk and salt. Have ready

1 hard boiled egg. (Boil ten minutes.) 1 slice of toast.

Cut the egg in half, take off the white part and chop it; stir this into the white sauce. Cut the crust off the toast and pour over; then quickly rub the egg yolk through the sieve and sprinkle over all. Keep the sauce and toast hot in the oven until you put on the yolk; serve very hot in a covered dish.

BAKED APPLE

Peel and core a large sour apple. Put in a deep-earthen dish, fill the center with sugar, and just cover the bottom of the dish with water. Bake in a hot oven till soft, basting every five minutes with the syrup in the bottom of the dish. (That is, with a spoon pour the juice over the apple.) Serve hot or cold, with cream.

Mildred could already make baked custard, so she did not need a new rule for that. But soft-boiled custard she had to learn.

SOFT CUSTARD

1 cup of rich milk.

2 eggs.

1 tablespoonful sugar.

1/2 teaspoonful vanilla.

Put the milk on the fire to heat; beat the yolks of the eggs, add the sugar and beat again; stir this into the hot milk, add the salt and stir till the whole grows thick like cream. Then take it off at once; be careful not to let it boil at all or it will be spoiled. Let it get very cold; put it in a gla.s.s, beat half of the white of one egg and add this just before serving. Or, whip one spoonful of thick cream and put this on top of the custard.

After Mildred had learned to make all these good things, she used to search her cook book for receipts for other things, and as her mother got better she made something new every day. By the time Mother Blair was perfectly well and strong again, she felt she had grown to be a real sick-cook. And the best thing of all was that the doctor said the reason her mother got well so fast was that she had had such nourishing and delicious things to eat!

CHAPTER XIII

A DOLL-AND-LITTLE-GIRL PARTY

Mother Blair had an old school friend coming out to spend the day, and she had written that she must bring her little five year old daughter with her. This wasn't a bit convenient for the Blairs, because Miss Betty was to give a luncheon for the older people, and Mildred had planned to go to town for the day; and, of course, Jack couldn't be bothered to help take care of a child. That, surely, wasn't man's work, he declared.

So Brownie saw that she must entertain the small Helen all by herself, and she sat down to think what she should do for her.

"Five years old," she said to herself. "That means dolls, I guess. I'm pretty old for dolls, but of course I _could_ get Araminta down from the attic, only she's packed up so nicely that I hate to disturb her. I wonder if five year olds play games? Mother Blair, do you think we could play in the attic with Helen's doll and Araminta, if I get her out, or what can we do?"

"Helen has had a bad cough, dear, and I'm afraid her mother would think that she must stay where there were no draughts. Why don't you have a little bit of a party for her? We could ask four other children about her age--"

"Oh, Mother, _I_ know! I'll have a dolls' party, and cook cunning things in tiny little dishes just big enough for dolls to eat. That would be perfectly lovely, and I know Mildred would help me make some of them the day before."

"That would really be ever so much fun," Mother Blair said. "Run and ask Norah if she has any very little tins and molds that you can use, and I'll look up some receipts for you. Brownie, that dolls' party is what I call a really bright idea."

Norah was not at all busy just then so she got a kitchen chair and hunted on the top shelf in the tin closet and found several things for Brownie. One was a little tumbler of heavy gla.s.s, half the size of a small jelly gla.s.s; it had been used in traveling one summer when the Blairs were younger. Then there were six m.u.f.fin tins fastened together like a pan which were never used because they made m.u.f.fins so tiny that Jack said six were only a bite. And beside these she found a little tin cutter meant to cut vegetables into shapes for soup; this one was a tube with a star on the end, or rather the outline of one. Norah said that it would make lovely little cookies, each one the size of a five cent piece. Brownie was delighted with it.

"But, Norah, we won't want m.u.f.fins," she said. "I remember when I was five, I couldn't have even one for breakfast--not till I was about seven, I guess it was. And Mother says Mrs. Lane is just as partickler as can be about Helen."

"I know something you can make in 'em," nodded Norah. "Not m.u.f.fins. You just wait. You make it out of rice, and rice is awful good for children."

So Brownie ran into her mother's room to tell her what they had found and plan the meal with her.

"Suppose you have a really nice luncheon for both the dolls and the girls," she said. "You can have the low sewing table and set it with small plates and little napkins and have low chairs around it; the four children could sit on two sides of the table and Helen at one end and you at the other, and the company could all hold their children in their laps and you need not have any doll at all because you are hostess. How would that do?"

"Perfectly lovely, Mother. And now what shall we have to eat?"

"How would you like a hot first course--perhaps some kind of chicken and potatoes, with jelly and little cups of cocoa!"

"Oh, yes, Mother; and tiny sandwiches!"

"Yes, indeed; and then some dessert that children like; will that be enough, do you think?"

"Well, if they are not so very hungry, I think it will be."

Mother Blair laughed. "I think it is all their mothers would want them to eat for luncheon, anyway. Now what did Norah find for you?"

Brownie told about the little m.u.f.fin tins, and said Norah said they could have something made of rice in them; and there was a little star cooky cutter and a little bit of a tumbler.

Mrs. Blair said they were all exactly what would be needed.

"I rather think Norah meant to use the m.u.f.fin tins for these, Brownie.

See how easy they are to make, and so good, too."

RICE PATTIES

1 heaping tablespoonful of rice.

2 cups of cold water.

1/2 teaspoonful salt.

1 teaspoonful b.u.t.ter.

1/2 an egg.

1 large cupful of cooked chicken, cut into bits.

1 small cup of thick white sauce. (See your rule.)

Wash the rice and put it over to cook in the double boiler in the water; add the salt; when it has cooked twenty minutes without stirring, taste it and see if it is soft, and notice if the water has boiled away so it is dry; if it is done, take off the cover and stand the boiler in the oven or on the back of the stove till each grain of rice is full and there is not a drop of water left.

Then mix with the egg after you have beaten it and divided it, and put a spoonful into each m.u.f.fin pan after it has been b.u.t.tered; press this on the sides and bottom like a thick pie crust; warm the b.u.t.ter and put a little on the edges of each and put them in the oven till brown. Make the white sauce, heat the chicken in it and fill the patties at the last moment; put a bit of parsley on top of each one.

"We used to have these patties often for lunch and Norah would put in creamed fish or left-over vegetables, or eggs. We have not had them for ever so long, and we must remember and have them again, they are so good. And Brownie, remind me to have chicken for dinner the night before the party, so there will be some to warm up the next day."

"Wait one minute, Mother, please. I want to ask Norah if these are what she had thought of for us."

Strangely enough they were, only she had intended to have the rice sh.e.l.ls filled with scrambled eggs. "But the chicken's better," she said.

"Trust your mother for thinkin' of it."

Brownie ran back again. "I just wanted to be sure she hadn't thought of anything nicer," she said. "And she hadn't. These are going to be perfectly lovely."