Jeanette looked as if she were about ready to toss her cookies. Instead, she tossed her flaming red hair out of her eyes, stomped over to the fridge, and demanded to see what vegetables I’d come up with. Humbly I showed her.
“You call that bok choy? That’s as limp as Delbert James’s wrist.”
“Hey, I heard that,” Delbert called from his position by the stove. Surprisingly, he didn’t seem at all miffed. If anything, he sounded amused. I, for one, was not amused. It meant that Susannah had got her information right, and that Billy Dee probably did have a girlfriend. Not that it concerned me, of course.
“And are those supposed to be Chinese pea pods? I’ve seen pureed vegetables crisper than these!” shouted Jeanette.
“Children, children,” said Lydia gently. She turned to me. “Would you happen to have any clarified butter, Miss Yoder? I need it for the curry.”
I confessed that all my butter was blurry. “Can you make your curry without butter? Then maybe everyone will eat it.”
Lydia smiled patiently. “But the curry contains yogurt. If they won’t eat butter, they certainly won’t eat yogurt.”
“Keeping animals penned up is a form of slavery, and forcibly taking milk from them is a form of abuse,” Jeanette butted in, “possibly even sexual abuse. And besides which, dairy products clog one’s arteries, not to mention, milk is a leading cause of flatulence.”
“Do you have any olive oil then?” asked Lydia graciously. How I admired that woman!
“Yes, I do,” I said happily. I normally don’t stock the stuff, but this bottle was left behind by a guest, an Italian count, who had a fetish for anything extra virgin. The two-liter bottle he left behind was hardly compensation for all the times he chased me around the inn. Had he not been an octogenarian, or at least a little cuter, he might have caught me.
“Good. Olive oil will do just fine,” the saintly woman said.
That settled, we all set back to work. In a few minutes we were joined by Joel and Garrett. Then by a disgruntled Linda.
“There isn’t any dandelion vinegar in the cellar, Ms. Yoder. Just millions and millions of horrible spiders. You must call an exterminator!”
I could see that she was shaken, and her face was the color of a peeled leek bulb, but I hadn’t heard any screams. “Are you sure you went all the way to the back, to those shelves behind the furnace?”
“Ms. Yoder, even Indiana Jones couldn’t do that! The place is crawling with those things. I insist that you call an exterminator.”
Those were pretty strong words coming from a mere snippet of a kid, if you ask me. “Ms. McMahon, I am shocked at how you talk. And I thought you reverenced life! Killing spiders, indeed. What, pray tell, is worse? To kill a nasty old cow for food, or to slaughter an entire community of innocent insects?”
“Spiders are not insects! And they aren’t innocent. They’re horrible!”
“Have you ever been bitten by one?”
“No.”
“Mugged, raped, or otherwise accosted?”
"Very funny,” said Jeanette. That woman butts into more things than a drunken billy goat. “Leave the poor kid alone. She’s absolutely right. This place is a dump. What a dump!”
“Bette Davis you’re not,” said Delbert gaily.
“But dumpy’s another thing.” I think I said that.
“What?”
“If you don’t have any basmati rice, then ordinary long grain will do,” said the ever vigilant and cooperative Lydia.
“Now where are those canned beans I’m supposed to doctor up?” asked Garrett impatiently.
Before I could reply, Susannah and Shnookums meandered in. At first I could only assume that Shnookums had accompanied her, but it would have been a safe bet. Susannah was wearing enough yardage to conceal a Great Dane. Just thinking that made me count my blessings. If Shnookums had been a Great Dane, those wouldn’t have been pellets I found on my pillow the week before.
Billy obligingly transferred his stew to a cast-iron Dutch oven, which he then stuck in the oven, so as to open up more stove-top space. I made Susannah say thank you.
Because Susannah is anything but competent, and claims to be more anemic than a perpetual blood donor, I myself got out the huge pot for her cookies. Susannah did, after all, want to make a double batch.
Susannah’s recipe only requires a few minutes at the stove, but my sister was determined to make them count. Quite unexpectedly, she burst into a high- pitched wail. I’m sure the sound startled everyone in the room but me, who immediately recognized it as a tune from the centuries-old hymnal, the Ausbund. This isn’t even a Mennonite hymn, but an Amish one, and I can only guess that Susannah’s motive was to give her captive audience the authentic flavor of Pennsylvania Dutch life, which her cooking couldn’t deliver.