It was a beautiful day in this little town, especially for a person who loves cooking like me, Chef Benny! When I woke up, I couldn’t contain my excitement and rushed to my kitchen.
As I entered, I stumbled upon a package lying on my table. Curiously, I opened it and discovered a shiny spoon wrapped in bright red paper. “Just what I needed,” I thought, admiring its deep bowl and splendid handle.
The moment I picked it up and continued with my cooking, some strange things began to happen. My food suddenly seemed to come to life, almost dancing out of the pot! It was as if they found a new rhythm and couldn’t resist shaking their bodies.
My first dish was a spaghetti for a lovely lady in our town, but before it reached her table, I realized the dish was not well. The poor lady complained bitterly about the ingredients, especially the spaghetti. So, I decided to pour the dish into my flower pot, planning to use only the vegetables for tomorrow’s meal. As soon as I did that, the spaghetti leapt out of the pot, performing the jiggliest dance I’ve ever seen!
“Oh dear!” I cried, running after it.
“What is wrong, my vroom vroom?” asked the lady, looking shocked and dropping the noodle that had jumped on her arm.
“Nothing is wrong with me, other than not being able to sit down!” replied the spaghetti, even tossing his head with indignation.
I didn’t know where to put my face! From that day onward, I realized I had to be extremely careful about what I cooked. Different meals reacted in different ways. When I prepared potato salad, for instance, the potatoes began to roll all over the floor, forming two lines and hopping merrily with shoulder-shrugging movements as if they were at a party. The peas, loving the joke, jumped up to hit the potatoes with rude sounds. The picnic party they were going to was, of course, canceled!
“Oh dear, oh dear!” I kept saying.
On another occasion, rice and currants hopped onto their own gangway and danced off into boxes where they had been born. My pots and pans marched off into the garden, self-washing under the garden hose. And then there were steaks and sausages singing and dancing, not to mention my cupboard medicines joining the feast.
My cooking journal filled rapidly with experiences. Sometimes the potlids wept over their dishes—especially a boy in my neighborhood was scalded one day by boiling water that someone falsely reported was “all right.” Now, I must own that some of these happenings were rather embarrassing, but I can’t say I didn’t enjoy the fun now and then!
“I wish you’d come here every day and watch for the pots to jump off the fire,” I often said to the folks who called. One day a rich dealer in gardening tools looked very gloomy while he was there. “What is wrong?” I asked sympathetically.
“Well,” he sighed, “I’m tired of newsboy novel-reading children coming to my shop on Saturdays, picking out the novelty goods and then refusing to pay for ‘em because they don’t like”—here he half-whispered, half shouted—“combs that don’t comb!”
I laughed. “Oh, oh!” I cried. “You should remedy the matter with combinations instead of combs!”
For, you see, this man dealt in tools like garden forks, but of course such articles as he sold are always printed with a word of instruction or explanation. All his tools had never actually been born—except the wooden-handled sawing machine when taken separately—and I mean the word tools as recognized by children today. These unhappy tools, in the mind of the boy, were expected to stand around on their head, or have something smart to say as people cooked with them.
However, when the nice old gentleman walked in one day just after my spoons, etc., had been giving their entertainment, and hoped to have a little chat before proceeding out to a long country journey, I soon saw by his face that he missed some of his relatives.
“My spoons were specially invited,” he whispered in reply to my inquiry, “and none of them have come back.”
“Oh dear! oh dear!” I said again. “Where did you leave them last?”
“On the broiler of the kitchen stove,” he replied, and we went off together to see if they were still there. But, looking back across the lawn, we saw a remarkable sight. “Benny’s Kitchen,” we read on a newspaper placard anchored to one of the singing kettles. Four tin spoons were executing a cutting and slashing dance in front of it, appearing to do double duty as pie Pullers. It was funny. Hundreds of people had gathered about the signboard talking about and admiring the dancing spoons. But the old gentleman said they might just as well have come back; I owed him that much of a treat when interested so intelligently in trimming my plants!
Now, you must know, my lovely audience that I’ve just been talking about, that not every spoon is suited for such astounding feats, but my clever brown spoon—spooned brown—that you see standing here, only laughed laughingly, when any particular rudeness was tossed at it from the lazy fellows that had no character to resent an insult. … will I promise it shall happen? For on one occasion, when that very dealer in garden tools had been telling me of his ambitions regarding my really clever spoon, the pippy lifting spoon expressed a wish to enter a basket and commit a peculiar act of agility known to you style-called children as a “jumping jack.”
So hereafter, if anyone addresses me kindly all correct on my lawn or patio, depending upon which side of the house I am standing, I may make an appointment to meet you there regularly, at an exorbitant fountain charge, of course, treat you (“the candle-feeding talents”) to small bits of a story, present you my celebrated pippy jumpsy” spoon, and ultimately introduce to you the “newest rage” in spoons, conceited fellows, who think it so “funny” to talk darky about their “jumping jacks.”
Thus Benny, the most self-made of all cook’s-kithkin, decided, musingly.