Leave Well Enough Alone by Rosemary Wells

adjusting them, to feel the stirrups hard against the heels of her loafers. She wished she had beautiful high-top boots like Baldy’s. Those weren’t even Baldy’s good boots. What was on her mind was houseboys and cooks and the Pennsylvania countryside in the summer.
    “You look sad again. Is it about... Baldy licked her lips, evidently not knowing how to go on.
    “You know something?” Dorothy broke in. “Do you know something funny? Before this summer I had never, except in a restaurant, eaten butter in my whole life? Even known what a filet-mignon steak was?”
    “You’ve never eaten butter!”
    “Margarine. My mother buys canned vegetables on special. We have franks and beans twice a week and codfish on Fridays.”
    “But why does that bother you so? Why are you so ashamed of that and the fact that your dad’s a policeman?” Baldy asked desperately.
    “Because...I don’t know.” Dorothy heard her voice tremble a little. “A few weeks ago Mrs. Hoade used seven pounds of butter in one recipe! My mother never would dream of making pie crust with butter. She uses lard. And then Mrs. Hoade gave all the pies to Dinna for her family. Gave them away.”
    “Well, that was nice of her,” said Baldy.
    “Yes, but... Oh, my. It’s too complicated. You don’t understand.”
    “I understand one thing. That lady’s lost a few marbles. Nobody makes ten pies.”
    “The point is that God is testing me,” Dorothy said. “He’s showing me how wasteful and sinful people who have lots of money are, and yet... Dorothy couldn’t finish. And yet, she knew very well, when she got her working papers in two years she’d probably have to have a summer job in a department store or waiting tables, and Baldy, who was neither sinful nor wasteful, would be back here again, giving riding lessons and cantering all over the countryside as if it belonged to her.
    “We’ll leave all of this for Dinna in the morning,” Mrs. Hoade announced with a sweeping gesture. Dorothy surveyed the scene in the kitchen for a moment. Thank heaven she was never asked to clean up. “Did you check what the girls were watching?”
    “George Gobel, I think. There’s nothing bad on anyway,” Dorothy said, shuffling the index cards before her, her pen in her teeth. Mrs. Hoade walked over to the counter and poured herself what appeared to be the fourth Scotch of the evening. She had used every pot and pan in the kitchen, as usual. “Do you want me to write this out on the legal pad?” Dorothy asked. “About not putting your nose very close to the risen dough before you punch it down or else you’ll sear the inside of your nostrils for hours?”
    “Don’t you think descriptions like that are useful?” Mrs. Hoade asked, sitting down across the kitchen table from Dorothy.
    “I’ve never seen things like that in a cookbook before,” Dorothy said.
    “Of course not,” said Mrs. Hoade with a very confident smile. “Of course you haven’t. And that’s what’s wrong with most cookbooks. They are not real. They’re just a collection of ingredients. I want to get the feel, to convey texture and experience of each of these recipes. I want the reader to be transported to my kitchen. Vita’s book, much as I admire it, and you needn’t say anything to her tomorrow night, but it’s just too organized. It’s cold. It hasn’t the rough edges of hard, loving work in it. That’s why, Dorothy,” Mrs. Hoade concluded in a near whisper, “this book is going to be something new!” She smiled at the ice clinking in her glass. “I could have just asked Dinna for the recipes, but I insist on trying them all myself. That’s reality. How many cookbooks have you seen, Dorothy, with recipes for more than six or eight people at the very most? The Pennsylvania Dutch have very large families. They cook, every day of the week, for all the men who work in the fields. The women get up at four A.M. to start their baking. This is real life, not some