"It's only the infants that we can use in this affair," declared Dorothy
after she had replenished the saucepan from another in which she had
been heating water for the purpose, over a second alcohol stove that her
mother had lent them. Spinach, onions and parsnips were done in half an
hour and potatoes in twenty-five minutes.
They finally gave up trying to cook vegetables whole over this stove,
for they concluded that not only was it necessary to have extremely
young vegetables but the size of the cooking utensils must of necessity
be too small to have the proceedings a success. They learned one way,
however, of getting ahead of the tiny saucepan and the small stove. That
was by cutting the corn from the cob and by peeling the potatoes and
slicing them very thin before they dropped them into boiling water. Then
they were manageable.
"Miss Dawson, the domestic science teacher, says that the water you cook
any starchy foods in must always be boiling like mad," Ethel Blue
explained to her aunt one day when she came out to see how matters were
going. "If it isn't the starch is mushy. That's why you mustn't be
impatient to put on rice and potatoes and cereals until the water is
just bouncing."
"Almost all vegetables have some starch," explained Mrs. Morton. "Water
_really_ boiling is your greatest friend. When you girls are old enough
to drink tea you must remember that boiling water for tea is something
more than putting on water in a saucepan or taking it out of a kettle on
the stove.
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