Part 10 (1/2)

Break up the walnuts, saving a dozen halves unbroken. Cut the potatoes and eggs into bits of even size, as large as the tip of your finger; stone the olives and cut them up, too; mix them together in a bowl, but do not stir them much, or you will break the potatoes; sprinkle well with French dressing, and put on the ice; when it is lunch or supper time, mix quickly, only once, with stiff mayonnaise, and put on lettuce; this is a delicious salad to have with cold meats.

Margaret's mother liked to have gingerbread or cookies for lunch often, so those things came next in the cook-book.

Gingerbread

1 cup mola.s.ses.

1 egg.

1 teaspoonful of soda.

1 teaspoonful of ginger.

1 tablespoonful melted b.u.t.ter.

1/2 cup of milk.

2 cups of flour.

Beat the eggs without separating, but very light; put the soda into the mola.s.ses, put them in the milk, with the ginger and b.u.t.ter, then one cup of flour, measure in a medium-sized cup and only level, then the egg, and last the rest of the flour.

Bake in a b.u.t.tered biscuit-tin. For a change, sometimes add a teaspoonful of cloves and cinnamon, mixed, to this, and a cup of chopped almonds. Or, when the gingerbread is ready for the oven drop over halves of almonds.

Soft Gingerbread, to Be Eaten Hot

1 cup of mola.s.ses.

1/2 cup boiling water.

1/4 cup melted b.u.t.ter.

1 1/2 cups flour.

3/4 teaspoonful soda.

1 teaspoonful ginger.

1/2 teaspoonful salt.

Put the soda in the mola.s.ses and beat it well in a good-sized bowl, then put in the melted b.u.t.ter, ginger, salt, and flour, and beat again, and add last the water, very hot indeed. Have a b.u.t.tered tin ready, and put it at once in the oven; when half-baked, it is well to put a piece of paper over it, as all gingerbread burns easily.

You can add cloves and cinnamon to this rule, and sometimes you can make it and serve it hot as a pudding, with a sauce of sugar and water, thickened and flavored.

Ginger Cookies

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

1 cup mola.s.ses.

1/2 cup brown sugar.

1 teaspoonful ginger.

1 tablespoonful mixed cinnamon and cloves.

1 teaspoonful soda, dissolved in a tablespoonful of water.

Flour enough to make it so stiff you cannot stir it with a spoon.

Melt the mola.s.ses and b.u.t.ter together on the stove, and then take the saucepan off and add the rest of the things in the recipe, and turn the dough out on a floured board and roll it very thin, and cut in circles with a biscuit-cutter. Put a little flour on the bottom of four shallow pans, lift the cookies with the cake-turner and lay them in, and put them in the oven. They will bake very quickly, so you must watch them. When you want these to be extra nice, put a teaspoonful of mixed cinnamon and cloves in them and sprinkle the tops with sugar.