The Man who Cooks.

Cromwell Argus, Volume V, Issue 236, 19 May 1874, Page 7

The Man who Cooks.

Every old Californian having in " '49" baked his own bread and boiled his beans, adeems himself a good family cook. He maintains even a greater conceit than this'; he deems himself a cook superior to any woman in the world, when he chooses to concentrate his mind on culinary affairs. On such a man, when duly married, there breaks out once or twice a year a culinary mania. He must cook ; he will cook. He watches his oppor-, tunity when his wife has prolonged her afternoon visit, a little longer than usual. He,invades the kitchen. He kindles a fire in the stove. Before kindling that fire he leaves open every door in the house, from cellar to garret. He turns the damper wrong. The stove smokes the wrong way. He draws water in the wrong bucket to fill the teakettle. These things are terrible to mention, but they are often done in California. Be throws potato and other parings in the cleanest pail he can find. Whenever he walks av.d whatever he touches he leaves a "muss." Ho leavca knives, forks, and spoons all over

tltc house; also, dish-rags; he puts one of these iu. his pocket. He ceases to be a rational or accountable being. An old male California cook, married, and in his wife's kitchen, is hot a well-spring of pleasure. He brings all the frying-pans he can find into use. He sets their sooty bottoms on the clean pine table. He concemplates making tea. He reflects as to the quantity he used iu the mines for "making." He cannot recollect exactly. He crams several fistfuls intq the teapot. He will have enough any way. .No one who drinks thereof sleeps that night. Nervouß.' He essays to make biscuits. He wonders how much saleratus they used in the mines to get a good rise on. He uses enough. He kneads his dough, and wandering vacantly about the house, leaves traces of flour at every step. It is in the parlour, on the door-knobs, on the bannisters. He can cook. He says he can cook better than any woman in the world if he "was only a-mind to give his mind to it." This conceit is never to be taken out of him. It is peculiar to all old Californians ; for he made bread in the mines. In was good bread, too—good to kill. They say two'' pardners'' who " cabined" with hiui died of heavybread indigestion. He was given twentyfour hdnra to leave that camp. Now we see him ravishing his wife's kitchen. He has burnt up all the choice newspapers lying about, which the folks wanted to read. He is using table-butter to cook with, and sets the cooking-butter on the table. Tilings fall into that dough—buttons, matches, and bits of coal. In the midst of all this culinary riot, chaos, smoke, grease, soot, rags, and flour, the wife comes home. She opens the hall-door, and is oppressed by the clouds of smoke. She knows then that the culinary fit is 0:1 her husband. She steps into the kitchen. There he stands, red-heated, flustered, caught iu the act, with a big spoon in one hand, a tormentor "in the other, a spot of black on his nose. The frying-pan is full of hot, smoking lard. It.sizzles and sputters all over him, as he stands there with his back to the stove, and all over everything for many feet around. There comes from the oven-door a suspicious smell of smoke •. .bis biscuits are burning. All sorts of. things in pots are boiling over. She rushes to, his assistance. Both burn their fingers. He lias mislaid half the stove covers, and cannot find them. One is discovered, a fortnight afterwards, up-stairs under the bed. How did it get there i He says he didn't know he was carrying it up at the time. Absent-mined. He was looking for a clean towel at the time. His wife, in despair, goes to her room, and cries, and thinks of her happy girlhood days. She does not come down to supper. No one eats much that evening. He has the whole table to himself. He hasn't much appetite, either. He gets up every half minute for some forgotten article—for the salt, for a cup, for a saucer. When he has entirely finished, ha finds the potatoes forgotten ; they are still on the stove boiling—boiling piecemeal, boiling furiously, like the driving of Jehu, the son of Nimshi, who drove rapidly. Next day his wife comes down stairs and hires a woman to clean up. Tilings get settled in about a week. It is his only fault. He sticks to it that he can cook better than any woman in the world, if he chooses " to give his mind to it." She says the mania never broke out in him until they had been two years married. Twice a year it rages, and the kitchen smokes. All California husbands have a touch of this disease. It was contracted iu the mines in the flush days of' 49.