“Freni, you weren’t making bricks, you were making pancakes. Did you use eggs?”
Freni crossed her arms over her ample, apron-covered bosom and stamped her right foot three times. Except for the arm-crossing, I’ve seen bulls act just like that before they charge.
“Well, Freni?”
“You cook for the crazy English, Magdalena. I quit!”
“Please, God,” I prayed, “let her stay quit until this crowd of English has crossed the Red Sea.”
Unfortunately God does not always ignore our prayers. I would much rather have had to deal with a continuance of complaints than with a corpse clutching Mama’s dresden plate quilt.
Chapter 10: Freni Hostetler’s Buckwheat Pancake Recipe
Ingredients:
½ cup all-purpose flour
¾ cup buckwheat flour
3 tablespoons sugar
1 teaspoon baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
Pinch cinnamon
3 eggs
1 cup light cream
2 tablespoons bacon grease
Sift together dry ingredients. Hand-beat eggs and cream, just until blended. Add bacon grease to liquid. Stir well. By stages pour and stir liquid ingredients into dry mixture until it is smooth and of batter consistency.
Pour or spoon batter onto a hot, cast-iron griddle that has been liberally greased with lard. Fry until upper surfaces of pancakes are pocked with bubbles. Turn and fry until reverse side is golden brown.
Serve oozing with fresh butter and dripping with maple syrup. Homemade pork and sage sausages are the perfect complement.
Chapter 11
I took over in the kitchen. I stirred together some water, some vegetable oil, some all-purpose flour, some buckwheat flour, and some baking powder. I left out the salt and the sugar because both Jeanette and Linda informed me that they were worse than poison, and Jeanette threatened to sue me if these impurities ever passed her lips again on my premises. The pinch of cinnamon I just plain forgot.
I fried the mixture on a different griddle that had been sparsely coated with vegetable oil. The pancakes, if that is what you wish to call them, were flat, heavy, miserable things that broke apart when I turned them. They had all the aroma and appeal of week-old cow-pies, but most of the guests loved them.
“I don’t mean to offend you, Miss Yoder,” said the ever polite Billy Dee, “but I don’t suppose there are any of Mrs. Hostetler’s pancakes left back in the kitchen?”
Jeanette glared openly at him, and Linda unsuccessfully tried to suppress a shudder. I trotted back to the kitchen and piled up a plate of all Freni’s pancakes that I wasn’t capable of eating myself. When I placed it in front of Billy Dee his face lit up like a kerosene lamp with a freshly cleaned globe. “Any bacon back there?” he asked hopefully.
Of course I didn’t disappoint Billy Dee. I retrieved a plate of home-cured bacon, fried crisp but not crumbly, and placed it proudly in front of him. Billy Dee was obviously delighted, but the other three reacted like I do when someone lights up a cigarette in my presence. Actually, they were probably more polite. They simply retreated to the far end of the table and huddled together in a defensive posture undoubtedly intended to ward off meat molecules that might break loose from Billy’s bacon and bombard them. For the remainder of their scant meal they remained in their closed cluster and conversed in hushed, conspiratorial tones.
That was just fine with me. I loaded up a plate for myself and joined the more convivial carnivore.
“Isn’t meat-eating inconsistent with your stand on hunting?” I asked him pleasantly.
Billy Dee bit into another slice of bacon. “Not at all, Miss Yoder. In the animal kingdom there’ve always been, and will always be, carnivores. They kill, and then eat what they kill. You know, like lions and leopards and things.
“And then there’s the scavengers, like the jackals. They eat the meat the carnivores leave behind. Think of me as a scavenger. Someone else killed this pig and left it behind. I’m simply cleaning up after him.”
“As can be expected, your analogy holds up only so far,” I was bold enough to say. “I mean, if it’s all right for lions and leopards to kill for meat, why isn’t it all right for Congressman Ream and his party?”
Billy Dee smiled patiently at me. “Lions and leopards are biologically programmed to kill other animals. They do it for survival. They don’t have no choice. The Congressman does.”
“Ah, but the jackals are just like the lions, aren’t they? They’re programmed to scavenge meat. They don’t have any choice either. But you do!”
Billy defiantly stuck another slice of bacon into his grinning mouth. “Think of my scavenging as a service to you and the rest of mankind. Whatever bacon I eat, there’s less for you to have to worry about. I am unselfishly defiling my body so that you can lead a cleaner, purer life. I’m doing the right thing. The morally correct thing.”