Part 14 (1/2)

1 small cabbage.

1 cup cream sauce.

Take off the outside leaves of the cabbage; cut it up in four pieces, and cut out the hard core and lay it in cold, salted water for half an hour. Then wipe it dry and slice it, not too fine, and put it in a saucepan; cover it with boiling water with a teaspoonful of salt in it, and boil hard for fifteen minutes without any cover. While it is cooking, make a cup of cream sauce.

Take up the cabbage, press it in the colander with a plate till all the water is out; put it in a hot covered dish, sprinkle well with salt, and pour the cream sauce over. This will not have any unpleasant odor in cooking, and it will be so tender and easy to digest that even a little girl may have two helpings.

If you like it to look green, put a tiny bit of soda in the water when you cook it.

Lima Beans

Sh.e.l.l them and cook like peas; pour over them a half-cup of cream sauce, if you like this better than having them dry.

Peas

Sh.e.l.l them and drop them into a saucepan of boiling water, into which you have put a teaspoonful of salt and one of sugar.

Boil them till they are tender, from fifteen minutes, if they are fresh from the garden, to half an hour or more, if they have stood in the grocer's for a day or two. When they are done they will have little dents in their sides, and you can easily mash two or three with a fork on a plate. Then drain off the water, put in three shakes of pepper, more salt if they do not taste just right, and a piece of b.u.t.ter the size of a hickory-nut, and shake them till the b.u.t.ter melts; serve in a hot covered dish.

String Beans

Pull off the strings and cut off the ends; hold three or four beans in your hand and cut them into long, very narrow strips, not into square pieces. Then cook them exactly as you did the peas.

Stewed Tomatoes

6 large tomatoes.

1 teaspoonful of salt.

1 teaspoonful of sugar.

1 pinch soda.

3 shakes of pepper.

b.u.t.ter as large as an English walnut.

Peel and cut the tomatoes up small, saving the juice; put together in a saucepan with the seasoning, the soda mixed in a teaspoonful of water before it is put in. Simmer twenty minutes, stirring till it is smooth, and last put in half a cup of bread or cracker crumbs, or a cup of toast, cut into small bits. Serve in a hot, covered dish.

Asparagus

Untie the bunch, sc.r.a.pe the stalks clean, and put it in cold water for half an hour. Tie the bunch again, and cut enough off the white ends to make all the pieces the same length. Stand them in boiling water in a porcelain kettle, and cook gently for about twenty minutes. Lay on a platter on squares of b.u.t.tered toast, and pour over the toast and the tips of the asparagus a cup of cream sauce. Or do not put it on toast, but pour melted b.u.t.ter over the tips after it is on the platter. To make it delicious, mix the juice of a lemon with the b.u.t.ter.

Sometimes put a little grated cheese on the ends last of all.

Onions

Peel off the outside skin and cook them in boiling, salted water till they are tender; drain them, put them in a baking-dish, and pour over them a tablespoonful of melted b.u.t.ter, three shakes of pepper, and a sprinkling of salt, and put in the oven and brown a very little. Or, cover them with a cup of white sauce instead of the melted b.u.t.ter, and sprinkle with salt and pepper, but do not put in the oven.

Corn