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.
Grandmother"s Sugar Cookies
1 cup of b.u.t.ter.
2 cups of sugar.
2 eggs.
1 cup of milk.
2 teaspoonfuls of baking-powder.
1/2 teaspoonful of vanilla.
Flour enough to roll out easily.
Rub the b.u.t.ter and sugar to a cream; put in the milk, then the eggs beaten together lightly, then two cups of flour, into which you have sifted the baking-powder; then the vanilla. Take a bit of this and put it on the floured board and see if it ""rolls out easily,""
and, if it does not, but is soft and sticky, put in a handful more of flour. These cookies must not be any stiffer than you can help, or they will not be good, so try not to use any more flour than you must.
They usually had tea for luncheon or supper at Margaret"s house, but sometimes they had chocolate instead, so these things came next in the cook-book.
Tea
1/2 teaspoonful of black tea for each person.
1/2 teaspoonful for the pot.
Boiling water.
Fill the kettle half-full of fresh, cold water, because you cannot make good tea with water which has been once heated. When it is very hot, fill the china teapot and put it where it will keep warm.
When the water boils very hard, empty out the teapot, put in the tea, and put on the boiling water; do not stand it on the stove, as too many people do, but send it right to the table; it will be ready as soon as it is time to pour it--about three minutes. If you are making tea for only one person, you will need a teaspoonful of tea, as you will see by the rule, and two small cups of water will be enough. If for more, put in a half-teaspoonful for each person, and one cup of water more.
Iced Tea
Put in a deep pitcher one teaspoonful of dry tea for each person and two over. Pour on a cup of boiling water for each person, and cover the pitcher and let it stand five minutes. Then stir well, strain and pour while still hot on large pieces of ice.
Put in a gla.s.s pitcher and serve a bowl of cracked ice, a lemon, sliced thin, and a bowl of powdered sugar with it. Pour it into gla.s.ses instead of cups.
Lemonade
Sometimes in the afternoon Margaret"s aunts had tea and cakes or wafers, and in summer they often had iced tea or lemonade.
This is the way Margaret made lemonade:
Squeeze four lemons, and add ten teaspoonfuls of powdered sugar; stir till it dissolves. Add six gla.s.ses of water, and strain.
Pour in a gla.s.s pitcher, and serve with gla.s.ses filled half-full of cracked ice. If you want this very nice, put a little shredded pineapple with the lemons. Sometimes the juice of red raspberries is liked, also.
Lemonade with Grape-juice
Make the lemonade as before, and add half as much bottled grape-juice, but do not put in any other fruit. Serve with plenty of ice, in small gla.s.ses.
Chocolate
2 cups boiling water.