Mrs Newlywed Finds Nothing Romantic About A Cooker

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 12, Issue 25, 27 February 1948, Page 6

Mrs Newlywed Finds Nothing Romantic About A Cooker

Romance of early wedded bliss first stubs its toe up against the kitchen stove. There is no “moonlight and roses” about-a cooker. To so many young wives today, fresh from office desk or workbench, it represents a grim and somewhat alarming reality.

The nearest a good many of them have got to cooking is to boil an egg or a kettle, and a tuning fork rings far more familiar than a toasting fork. Then Cupid unleashes his arrow and as new and proud young wives, they start to set up home. With a blithe ignorance that if they but knew it would be likely to send chills up the spines of potential victims, they are especially anxious to get into the kitchen and show their newly possessed menfolk what good little cooks they are! Someone has suggested that a special medal should be struck for those husbands who have to suffer in silence the learn-by-erron early cooking efforts of their young wives. Heriocally some sit down to a slab of boot leather that was once a succulent steak, bacon charred to a' cinder, soggy puddings and pastry that looks tired and defeated before it ever reaches the table. And because they are still very newly married and very much in love, they grin and bear it—and reach for the bi-carb. bottle on the sly. Little has been printed about the agonies of initiation for the inexperienced young cook. • Her “first fine frenzy” soon departs to be replaced by the more positive type. She makes all the mistakes possible. The sugar bowl gets confused with the salt; there should be a law against baking soda looking like baking powder; the recipe didn’t warn that sugar stuck to the bottom of a saucepan; and why should there be degrees of heat to add to her confusion?

Then there was the young and flustered country wife who, when confronted with a coal range for the first time, threw a shovelful of coal into the soup .instead of the grate!

Another young hopeful, struck by the bright red appearance of her cake mixture, discovered in the nick of time that she had used cayenne pepper instead of spice.

Another who had heard of slow steam cooking put her cabbage on to cook for an hour or two—and neglected to add any water. Still another newlywed added pound for pound of salts to her jam instead of sugar, and a sister , of similar status thought the right way to cook poached eggs was to whip them, up in hot water! T%ln there is the true story of a baked rice pudding. Finding both dish and pudding burnt black in the oven, the young wife, rather than admit her failure, buried the lot in the back yard. The following evening her husband went to the identical spot to plant some seeds, and up came the rice pudding!