The Proof of the Pie by Sofia Bona de Santos HY the humorists of our time should pick on the well-meaning newlywed's culinary shortcomings to flaunt before an unsympathetic world will always r emain a mystery to me. In fact, I've reached the conclusion that even Adam, in the pre-apple days, must have looked upon his pet rib's f,eeble attempts at making steak Ii la Parad-ise with that supercilious lift of the eyebrows and derisive snigger which are peculiar to husbands. One day I found myself in the unen•viable predicament of either doing my . own cooking or starving to death. At the moment, I fan cied starvation the lesser of two evils, but there was my hushand and daughter to think of. As for my husband, to say that he was dismayed would be an understatement. He was speechless over the calamity of it, and I at first sought consolation in the belief that he did not relish seeing his mate subj ected to the rigors of cooking minus gas, water, electricity, and kitchen utensils. On closer observation I divined, with the unerring instinct of a wife, that he was haunted by bleak visions of future meals of burnt rice, steaks perfectly suited for patching the soles of GI boots, chicken meat that would look and act as if it had been stolen from a taxidermist's shop, and canned salmon, canned saJI'dines, and still more canned salmon. "Cooking!" scoffed my uncompassionate kinswomen. UN othing to it. And it's high time you learned it too. You won't wait till you're a grandmother, and by that time, your grand-
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children will be f eeding you anyway." I must have looked utterly woebegone because after a while they relented and started giving me pointers on this and that recipe, most of which went clear over my head. Anyway, armed with a desperate door-die attitude, and aided by a maid whose knowlelge of cuisine was just about on a par with mine, I plunged ·into a shopping nightmare of pots and .;stoves and pans and other kitchen paraphernalia. Thus equipped I set about fixing the tiny cubicle which only by a 'supreme effort of the imagination one could have called a kitchen. That first meal wasn't so bad. The rice wasn't burned, even if it was raw • .in spots. The fried fish, despite its dishevelled look, was edible; and the dehydrated egg looked exactly what it was-an omelette with thwarted ambitions. If the strain which the novice-cook has to undergo requires more than ordinary fortitude, it would take a very hardy soul indeed, and the physique of an amazon, to brave the terrors of Manila's public markets for the first time. It is bad enough to have the inevitable mud and filth splashed and smeared on your feet by thousands of marketers. While you do your buying outside, with a little of God's air and breathing space around you, you manage
