THE _ PROOF OF THE PIE . . .. ... . .. .. Sofia Bona de Santos

The Proof of the Pie

by Sofia Bona de Santos

WHY the humorists of our time should pick on the well-meaning newlywed's culinary shortcomings to flaunt before an unsympathetic world will always remain 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 fancied 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 cook-

ing 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 grandchildren will be feeding 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

,to maintain your ground squarely on both legs. But once you are swallowed within the market's cavernous mouth, you are jostled and punched and shoved and deafened to a point where you feel like a badly battered jellyfiah.

You remain on your feet only by sheer force of habit.

You make a round of the meat stalls and thrust a timid experimental finger at huge chunks of beef and pork, only to have it almost chopped off by an evil-looking vendor. The butcher grins satanically and hurls onto the tab"'. more and more slabs of the gory stuff.

Literally seeing red, you stagger away blindly and almost get entangled in several hundred meters of entrails. For a minute you are confused and can't quite explain how ox.tongues and hoofs and kictneys got together in such intimate melange. It is Salvador Daliish. and you reel away just in time to prevent your own entrails from tangling up.

You manage at last to stumble into the fish section, and the fish vendors instantly have you spotted. They have

an unerring eye for a greenhorn, or

maybe it's because by the time you get there, you do look a bit green about the gills. They try to pass off to you all the stale and staling fish in their baskets, but you refuse to be duped. You go through the motions of examining

the eyes, gills, scales, )€tc., and with an

air of worldly wisdom that doesn't fool the vendor one bit, you finally make your purchase-only to discover later that it was the wrong kind you bought.

Thus a harrowing week for the novice, trying out simple dishes that look horrifyingly complicated in their newness, and all the While dreaming of

lavish and epicurean dinners. You are

smothered in recipe books which sooner or later you learn to distrust.

One day r attempted to make Arro% a la Valenciana. One book said to fry the chicken; another, to boil the chic. ken. Undecided, r tried the eeny-meeny-miney-no method and ended up by frying the chicken. Glowing with victory, r set my -piece d. resistance on the table and urged my husband to take a bite. He did take a bite-but that'. all he took, for the chicken remained on the bone. Very patiently he asked, did I boil the chicken 1 If not I should have done 80. As it was, the leg he took had enough muscular vitality to be able to run back to the chicken coop.

All is not woe in my story, however. A time came when my efforts seemed to be crowned with success-and most unexpectedly. Tired and hot on a particularly stifling day, r flopped into my chair and glared belligerently at my husband across the lunch table. Before us was a bOWl of chop·suey and a plat-

ter of Arroz a la Cubana--an incon .. gruous combination to start with. "Don't

you dare utter one disparaging word about the meal," I mutt.ered savagely,

withal inwardly, "not one word." And

what do you think! The dear man was really pleased with it! r was so surprised that r lost my appetite for the rest of the day and thenceforth went about the

house in a sort of daze.

Moral to newlyweds: Don't let cooking get you down. The trite old sayings still hold good. If at first you don't succeed, try, try again, and all that sort of stuff. If your man gets too critical and a bit on the ulll'easonable side, just quote to him, very sweetly, from Elizabeth Barrett Browning:

I require aU things that are good and true

All things that a man should be, 1/ you give this all, I will stake my Ii/_ And be all you demand 0/ me. 1/ you cannot do this, a laundress

or cook

You may hire with little pay,

But a woman's heO/T't an.d a woman's

love

Are not to be won that wall.