Karen's Cooking Contest

  “Ah,” said Daddy. “Next?”

  “If you soundproof the walls, I could study in there,” said Charlie. “Then I would not have to listen to everyone’s racket all the time.”

  “Uh-huh,” said Daddy.

  “We could always use it for storage,” said Elizabeth.

  “Yes, that’s true,” said Daddy.

  “If you turn it into a second playroom,” said Andrew, “I would not have to go all the way upstairs to play. I could play down here too, and then I would be closer to the kitchen, for snacks.”

  “Good thinking,” said Daddy.

  Goody! It was my turn. I had been waiting for Daddy to ask us about the pantry. I had been thinking and thinking about it, and I had the perfect solution. “The Three Musketeers could use their own meeting place,” I said. “You know, like Kristy’s club. We could fix up the pantry and call it Karen’s Clubhouse. Then the Three Musketeers could meet there all the time.” I sat back, proud of my idea.

  “I see,” said Daddy. “Well, you have all given me ideas. I am not sure yet what I will do. But you have given me food for thought. Thank you.”

  “Daddy,” I said. “When will you decide? I want to tell Hannie and Nancy about our clubhouse.”

  “Do not tell them anything yet,” said Daddy. “I will try to decide within a few days.”

  I would just have to be patient. Boo.

  The Not-So-Secret Recipe

  On Thursday morning everyone in Ms. Colman’s class got to see the final version of Tasty Treats. It looked terrific.

  “See, there is an index, and a contents page,” said Addie.

  “There are different categories for the recipes,” said Ricky.

  “It looks so professional,” I said. I was happy. Ms. Colman had chosen my drawing of a chicken leg to go in the Main Courses chapter. Not only that, but my mushroom drawing was in the Soups chapter, and my doughnut was in the Desserts chapter. She had chosen more of my drawings than anyone else’s. It helped make up for my one recipe.

  “I gave this chili recipe to my dad to make at home,” said Chris. “It did not taste right.”

  “My mom made this carrot cake recipe,” said Sara. “It was delicious.”

  “Well, some of the recipes will probably turn out a little better than others,” said Ms. Colman. “We took out the really weird ones. I am pretty sure the ones that are left are okay.”

  “I wish one of our celebrities could see our cookbook,” said Audrey.

  “Here comes one now!” said Ms. Colman. “Hello, Mrs. Taylor. Welcome to our class.”

  I turned around and saw Nannie smiling at me. My stomach dropped. She held up my lunch. “You forgot this,” she said.

  “Oh, gee,” I said. “I do not know how I forgot it. Thank you, Nannie.” I swallowed hard.

  “We were just looking at our cookbook,” said Ms. Colman. “We feel it has come out very well. And I am glad to have the chance to thank you for your recipe.”

  Nannie raised her eyebrows. “My recipe?”

  Oh, no, I thought.

  “Yes,” said Ms. Colman. “Your prize-winning recipe for Chocolate Magic. We were so pleased to include it in our cookbook.” Ms. Colman turned the pages of the book and showed Nannie her recipe, in the Desserts chapter.

  Nannie looked at the recipe, then at me. “My goodness,” she said. She did not look at all flattered or proud. “Karen, will you walk me to the door, please?” she asked. Her voice was calm, but her eyes looked angry. “Good-bye, Ms. Colman.”

  At the door Nannie bent over to whisper to me. “Karen, I do not know what to say. I am very unhappy to see my recipe for Chocolate Magic in your school cookbook. I thought that recipe was our secret. I did not want to share it with anyone. And you did not even ask me if you could use it. I am so surprised that I do not know what to think. But I am very upset.”

  “I am sorry, Nannie,” I said. I had never seen Nannie so upset. “I thought you would not mind.”

  “You thought wrong,” said Nannie. “We will discuss this further at home.”

  “I am sorry,” I said again.

  “I will see you later.” Nannie turned and walked down the hall.

  I slunk back to my seat. I had not meant to make Nannie angry. Now Ms. Colman was going to take the cookbook to the copier. We would make two hundred copies of Nannie’s secret recipe. Nannie would probably be two hundred times as angry as she was now. What was I going to do?

  Nannie Is Disappointed

  All day long I felt bad about Nannie’s recipe. I did not want to go home after school, but I had to.

  When I am at the big house, I ride the school bus home with Hannie. (She lives across the street and one house down from the big house. Nancy lives next door to the little house.) On the way home, I told Hannie about my problem.

  “All you can do is apologize,” said Hannie. “She will understand.”

  I was not so sure.

  Inside the big house a snack was waiting for me in the kitchen. Andrew and Kristy were already there.

  “Where is Nannie?” I asked.

  “I think she is in her room,” said Kristy.

  Upstairs, I knocked on Nannie’s door. “May I come in?”

  “Yes,” said Nannie. She was sitting in her armchair by the window, sewing a button on one of Andrew’s overalls.

  “I came to apologize again,” I said. “I feel terrible about the recipe. But none of my celebrities wrote back to me. I was the only one in my class who did not have a single celebrity recipe in the cookbook. So I took your Chocolate Magic recipe. I should have asked first. But I thought you would be happy to be the only person in our cookbook who was not exactly a celebrity.”

  “I would have been happy to lend you some other recipe,” said Nannie. “If you had asked me, I would have helped you find a special one. But you took a recipe that did not belong to you. A recipe I thought you knew was secret.”

  “Well, I am very sorry,” I said. I could feel tears leaking into my eyes.

  “I know that, Karen,” said Nannie. She reached out and patted my shoulder. “But I still feel upset. And I think you need to learn not to take other people’s things without asking. I think maybe I should go to the last round of the Cocoa-Best contest alone.”

  “But the contest is on Sunday! And I always go with you to help you!” I started to cry.

  “I am sorry, Karen,” said Nannie. “But I feel that maybe I should go alone. You were a big help at the first two contests, but now you have let me down.”

  I could not say anything. I turned and ran down the hall to my own room. I slammed the door shut and threw myself on my bed. Then I cried until dinnertime.

  * * *

  I could not eat much dinner. I was too miserable. Everyone knew what had happened, and they felt sorry for me. But they did not blame Nannie for not wanting me to go to the contest.

  Nannie did not eat much either. She still looked upset.

  After dinner I sat in my room and thought hard about how I could fix this problem. Crying had not solved anything (though it had made me feel a little better). I had done something wrong, and had made Nannie angry. Now what should I do?

  Then I had an idea. I was not sure if it would work. But it was worth a try. I asked Elizabeth if I could use the phone to call Ms. Colman. She said yes.

  “Ms. Colman?” I asked when she answered the phone. “This is Karen Brewer. I wanted to ask you — have you taken the cookbook to the copy center yet?”

  “Yes, I have,” said Ms. Colman. “I dropped it off this afternoon. Is there a problem?”

  I told Ms. Colman everything — that I had taken the recipe without permission, and that Nannie was very upset.

  “I am sorry, Karen,” said Ms. Colman. “I know you have learned your lesson from this. But I cannot stop the copy center now — in fact, the cookbook has probably already been copied. I will try to think of a way to help you. I will see you tomorrow, all right?”

  “All right,” I said.
I sighed. I would just have to wait. In the meantime, I told Nannie that I had tried to stop the copy center, but it was too late.

  “Thank you for thinking of that,” said Nannie. “It is too bad it did not work.”

  “Yes,” I said unhappily. “Ms. Colman said she would try to help me tomorrow. Maybe she will have a good idea.”

  “I appreciate your trying to fix this problem,” said Nannie. “I know you are very sorry.”

  I nodded. There was nothing else I could say.

  Missing Page Eighty-eight

  On Friday morning I went to school still feeling sad. Nannie had forgiven me, but that did not make everything all right.

  Today our cookbook would go on sale in the library.

  I sat quietly on a bench until it was time to go inside. Hannie and Nancy sat quietly with me. (I had told Nancy all about my problem as soon as I had gotten to school.) That is because they are my best friends. If one of us feels sad, then we all feel sad. We are the Three Musketeers.

  Soon we went into Ms. Colman’s classroom.

  “Karen, could you come here, please?” said Ms. Colman. She beckoned me to the front of her desk.

  “I have been thinking about your problem,” she said, very softly so no one else would hear. “I think I have a solution. It is not a perfect solution, but I think, for your grandmother’s sake, we should do it.”

  “What is it?” I asked eagerly.

  * * *

  “All of them?” asked Hannie, wrinkling her nose.

  “Yup,” I said. “I better get started.”

  It was recess on Friday. Ms. Colman’s solution had been for me to rip out one page of each cookbook — the page with Nannie’s recipe on it. On the back of the page was only my drawing of a doughnut, so no other recipes would be lost. Then I had to go through all two hundred cookbooks and draw a black line through “Chocolate Magic” on the contents page in front, and in the index in back. It would be a big job. But it was the best thing to do.

  “I will help you,” said Nancy, pushing up her sleeves.

  “Thank you very much,” I said. “But I need to do this by myself, because it was my fault. If you want to stay here and talk to me, that would be a big help.”

  “Okay,” said Nancy.

  “I will stay too,” said Hannie. “I do not need to go play outside.”

  I opened the first book and turned to page eighty-eight. It said, “Chocolate Magic, by Janet Taylor” on it. I ripped the page out. I took the next book and turned to page eighty-eight.

  I did not finish during recess. Ms. Colman let me skip part of our art period so I could get all the books done.

  In the end, I had a stack of two hundred page eighty-eights. I ripped them all in half and put them in the trash. I sighed. Now I had absolutely no recipes in the cookbook, and only two drawings. I was the only person in my class with no recipes.

  I wanted to tell Nannie about Ms. Colman’s solution. But I would have to wait until I got home after school. I hoped Nannie would feel less upset.

  In the meantime our class had to get ready for the cookbook publishing party in the library.

  Buy Your Tasty Treats Here!

  As soon as I finished with the cookbooks, our school custodian Mr. Thompson helped us carry them to the library. We set up a large poster that said:

  Buy your Tasty Treats cookbook here.

  Only $10.

  All proceeds to go to the library fund.

  (Proceeds means money.)

  Ms. Colman had set up a long table with a paper tablecloth on it. It reminded me of all the contest tables I had seen with Nannie, and I felt sad again. But I could not sit around feeling sad. There was work to do.

  On one end of the table we stacked up some cookbooks.

  On the other end we put trays of refreshments. All the refreshments had been made using Tasty Treats recipes. (I had not made anything. You know why.)

  Addie had made Mexican wedding cookies. Her favorite singer, Serena Lopez, had sent the recipe. Chris Lamar had made Tough Tommy Blackcat’s bean dip. (I hoped Bobby would not sing that song again.) There were also cupcakes, chicken wings, punch, and a macaroni salad.

  Because I had not contributed any food, my job was to set up the paper plates and napkins. I tried to arrange them neatly. Sara Ford stacked paper cups at one end. Ian put plastic forks in a pile.

  When everything was ready our librarian opened the door of the library. We had invited the other second-graders, Mr. Berger’s class, to join us. Many kids had also invited family members.

  “Hi, Mommy!” said Nancy. Mrs. Dawes saw her and waved.

  “Hello, Karen,” said a voice. I turned around.

  “Daddy!” I said. “I did not expect to see you here.”

  “Nannie asked me to come buy her a Tasty Treats cookbook,” said Daddy. “She is busy getting ready for the contest on Sunday. But she would like to have a copy of the book you worked so hard on.”

  “They are right over here,” I said, pointing. “But you will see it is missing page eighty-eight. They all are. I took out all the page eighty-eights so that Nannie’s recipe would not be in the books.”

  “I am sure Nannie will be very glad to hear that,” said Daddy. He gave Ms. Colman the money and picked up a copy of Tasty Treats. He opened it and flipped through the pages. “This looks very nice, Karen,” he said. “Your class did a super job.”

  “Thank you,” I said. “I do not have any recipes in it, but that is my drawing of a chicken leg on page thirty-two. And there is my drawing of a mushroom.”

  Daddy found the drawings. “They are excellent, Karen. They look almost good enough to eat.”

  I giggled. I felt better. Nannie had wanted a cookbook anyway. I had gotten to see Daddy in the middle of the day. And Nannie’s prizewinning recipe was still a secret.

  The Pantry

  “Hello, hello, hello!” I called. “I am home!”

  I ran into the big-house kitchen. I was hoping Nannie would be there, waiting for me with a snack. Andrew and Kristy were there. So was Sam. They were all eating peanut-butter crackers.

  “Where is Nannie?” I asked. “I have something important to tell her.”

  “She went to the fancy baking shop downtown,” said Kristy. “She wanted to get some special foil papers to use for her chocolates at the contest on Sunday.”

  “Oh.” My good mood turned a tiny bit blue. I was thinking about the contest on Sunday — the one Nannie wanted me to stay home from.

  Bam! Bam! Bam! The sudden loud noise made me jump.

  “What is that?” I asked.

  Just then a workman came through the kitchen. His clothes were dusty. He was wearing a mask over part of his face. He pushed it down and smiled at me.

  “Hello,” he said. “Just passing through.”

  “Hello,” I said.

  “Watson has hired some people to work on the pantry,” Kristy explained. (Watson is what Elizabeth’s kids call Daddy.)

  Hooray! “Are they turning it into Karen’s Clubhouse?”

  “No.” Kristy laughed. “Watson has not decided what it will be yet. But he wanted to start clearing it out and fixing it up.”

  I took a peanut-butter cracker and went to the pantry to see what was going on.

  Daddy was standing in the doorway.

  “Yes, we should get rid of that sink. I will replace it,” he was saying.

  From inside the pantry I could hear pounding and scraping noises, and other voices.

  “Hi, Daddy,” I said. “What are you doing?”

  “I am figuring out how to fix up the pantry,” he said. “We have cleared out all the old junk that no one uses. Now the workmen are repairing the walls and the window. They will also put in a new sink and perhaps some cupboards.”

  I peered in through the open door. The pantry was all dirty and dusty. Two men were scraping paint off a wall by the window.

  “It would be a great clubhouse,” I said.

  Daddy scratched his chi
n. “It would be good for a lot of different things,” he said. “For example, I could keep all of my fishing equipment in here.”

  “Oh,” I said.

  “But I have not decided yet,” said Daddy. “I am still open to ideas.”

  “Okay. Thank you for coming to school today. It cheered me up,” I said.

  “You are welcome,” said Daddy. He turned to talk to the workmen. I headed back to the kitchen to finish my snack.

  The pantry would be the coolest club-house, I thought. But the Three Musketeers are not really a club. And we could always get together in my bedroom, or at Hannie’s house or Nancy’s house. I decided I would not be heartbroken if Daddy did not let me have the pantry as a clubhouse.

  In the meantime there was something I wanted to do for Nannie before she got home.

  Good Luck, Nannie

  I still wished Nannie would take me to the final round of her contest. But I understood why she did not want to. I had let her down.

  But even if I could not go, I wanted Nannie to win. At school I had tried to think of ways I could make up with Nannie. I decided that it would be nice to make her a good-luck charm to take to the contest. That way she would know that I was still thinking of her, even though I was not with her.

  I sat at my desk and pulled out my art supplies. A pin would be a good idea, I thought. Then Nannie could wear it.

  I found my modeling clay that hardens when you bake it. I shaped it into a smiling mouth. I made little teeth inside. Then I stuck a large safety pin to the back.

  I asked Kristy to bake it for me in the toaster oven. She did. (I am not allowed to use the toaster oven by myself.) It baked in just twenty minutes. Then it had to cool off for awhile.

  I painted the lips red and the teeth white. It looked like a nice big happy smile. I hoped Nannie would like it.

  * * *

  After dinner I found Nannie in the playroom. She was getting ready to play Candy-land with Andrew and Emily Michelle.