The I Hate to Cook Book (38 page)

Tiny Fruit Salad

Milk

Ice Cream

Birthday Cake

     TUNA-MUSHROOM CASSEROLE     

6 small servings

Mix together

6.5-ounce can chunk tuna

2 to 3 cups cooked noodles

1 can condensed mushroom soup diluted with ½ can milk

½ cup frozen or canned peas

salt, pepper

grated cheese

Put it in a greased casserole dish, sprinkle the cheese on top, and bake at 325˚ for half an hour.

Menu No. 2

(The younger they are, the better here.)

Scrambled Eggs

Green Peas

Potato Chips

Ice Cream

Birthday Cake

Menu No. 3

Broiled or Barbecued Hamburger Patties in Buns

Celery Stalks Stuffed with Sharp Cheese or Peanut Butter

A few Cherry Tomatoes

Ice Cream

Birthday Cake

Menu No. 4

Broiled Hot Dogs in Buttered Buns (let them apply their own mustard)

Orange-Carrot Salad

Ice Cream

Birthday Cake

     ORANGE-CARROT SALAD     

6 small servings

Prepare one package of orange Jell-O, using one and a half cups of liquid. Pare and shred a large carrot. When the Jell-O is semi-firm, avert your eyes and stir in the carrot shreds—also a small can of pineapple chunks, if you have some. Let it jell the rest of the way in the refrigerator.

Menu No. 5

Fried Chicken Drumsticks

Celery Stalks Stuffed with Peanut Butter

Bread-and-Butter Sandwiches

Ice Cream

Birthday Cake

(
Note:
Cut the crusts off the sandwiches, and cut the sandwiches into triangles.)

Menu No. 6

Cream of Chicken Soup

Sandwich Plate (3 triangles: 1 peanut butter, 1 egg salad, 1 tuna)

Carrot Sticks

Ice Cream

Birthday Cake

The Hobo Party
This is the best way out of the summer birthday party situation. You advise the mothers to send the children dressed in old clothes. Then you buy a dime-store bandanna for each little guest, put his lunch in it, and tie it to the end of a stick. His lunch could be: three different sandwich triangles, wrapped separately, an apple or a banana, a penny candy bar, a sealed container of milk, and two straws. You then lead the little bums, each carrying his bindle, to the park or the zoo for a picnic. (If there’s no park or zoo handy, or no car to ferry them in, let them parade around the block with their bindles and some noisemakers, then have the picnic in the back yard or on the porch.) Bring them into the house last, for the ice cream and cake.

Wee Wisdoms and Incidental Intelligence

• A big bed sheet makes a dandy tablecloth.

• Any drink tastes better with a straw in it.

• When you bake birthday party cupcakes, bake them in flat-
bottomed ice-cream cones. The cones don’t overbake, as you’d think they would, and little children find them quite exciting and easy to eat.

• When you frost the cupcakes, don’t use a spatula. You save time by dipping the top of each cupcake into the frosting bowl.

• If you’re serving individual cupcakes instead of a big birthday cake, put a candle on each one, so everybody can wish and blow.

• When you write names on balloons for chair markers or favors, do it after you’ve blown the balloons up, and use India ink and a little brush, or nail polish.

• If you’re ever stuck with having to
make
a children’s party cake, you make a ready-mix cake, of course, and decorate it like this: Make some uncooked confectioners’ frosting (
here
), color half of it pink, the other half green, frost animal crackers with it, and march the animals in a parade around the edge of the cake. (You can often find already-frosted animal crackers at the store, too.)

• A child’s sand pail makes a good centerpiece. Put a wrapped ten-cent gift for each child in it, then run paper streamers from the gifts to the children’s plates.

• You can make little party cups for hard candies at each plate by sawing off milk cartons and covering them with crepe paper. If you want to turn them into baskets, use pipe cleaners for handles.

• Two shiny red apples, cored, make good candlestick holders.

• Most children will eat peanut butter on anything or in anything. Should you ever fear your child will grow up without ever becoming intimate with a green vegetable, spread some peanut butter on a lettuce leaf and roll it up and give it to him. He will probably eat it. Equally successful, usually,
is the celery-stick-peanut-butter maneuver, as in Menus No. 3 and No. 5.

• You can also, if you feel up to it, spread peanut butter on rolled-out biscuit dough, spread jelly on top of it, then roll it up like a jelly roll, slice one inch thick, and bake as usual.

• In the summertime, you can freeze maraschino cherries inside ice cubes, for the lemonade. If there are some left over, they’re good in Old-Fashioneds, too. Or Manhattans.