by Hilary McKay
Caddy
Rose. Don’t get me started.
Saffron
I don’t know. Rose. I don’t know where you’d begin. Anyway, it’s private, what I think of Rose. She does OK.
Indigo
Rose’s Last Resort Recipes
(Warning from Indigo: If you can cook, or if anyone in your house can cook and can be induced to do it, skip this section. You won’t learn anything.)
We are not a fussy family about food. We eat almost anything. Almost. Not those trout (no thank you Daddy; they had faces. No amount of watercress garnish was going to help with that). Nor spaghetti and cheese with a raw egg in the middle which a long ago Italian boyfriend of someone’s once produced. (His name is forgotten but his Passion Killing Cheesy Spag is not. It was an all time low in family dinners, and that is saying quite a lot in this house.)
Equally inedible was the birthday cake Sarah once baked in our oven which fused to the baking tin and proved (said Saffy) that even carbon based life forms cannot enjoy the element in its natural state. And there were the American chocolate brownies that Caddy and I once tried to make for Tom. But never again. Because if you add hot melted chocolate to beaten egg the egg cooks, and you get chocolate flavoured scrambled egg which no amount of sugar or stirring or tears will ever turn into anything else.
Luckily, as well as the things we are bad at making, there are others at which we are quite good. Such as:
Apple Sandwiches!
Invented by me, Rose Casson, but now given to the world.
For apple sandwiches you need bread and butter and apples. Butter the bread. Slice the apples. Put the apple slices between the bread and butter. What can possibly go wrong?
(Take the pips out if you are making them for ultra fussy people like Saffy and Sarah. And the stalk. Ignore suggestions that you might add honey, or cinnamon or sugar. They’re perfectly edible without the need to open extra cupboard doors.)
Mysterious Birthday Pudding
Sarah’s mother made this for me on my last birthday. It was pretty and delicious. As far as I can tell all she did was mix up smashed meringues, pink rose petals, raspberries and cream. And then she put it in little glasses.
Her rose petals did not go brown, her raspberries did not sink and her meringue stayed crispy. None of these miracles happened when I made it. I don’t know why, and neither does Sarah’s mother.
A safer (yet strangely unpopular) pudding is:
Apple Slices with Marmite
Nb. only TWO ingredients!
Slice the apple.
Spread it with marmite.
Fantastic and delicious.
There is a version for wimps which is not as good called Apple Slices with Peanut Butter. I just can’t see the point myself, unless you have run out of marmite.
I could add more recipes, but these are the best.
Rose Casson
The Banana House
By the same author
CASSON FAMILY
(suggested reading order)
Saffy’s Angel
(Winner of the Whitbread Children’s Book Award )
Indigo’s Star
Permanent Rose
Caddy Ever After
Forever Rose
Caddy’s World
The Exiles
(Winner of the Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize)
The Exiles at Home
(Winner of the Nestlé Smarties Prize)
The Exiles in Love
Wishing for Tomorrow
Dog Friday
The Amber Cat
Dolphin Luck
For younger readers
Happy and Glorious
Practically Perfect
PARADISE HOUSE
The Treasure in the Garden
The Echo in the Chimney
The Zoo in the Attic
The Magic in the Mirror
The Surprise Party
Keeping Cotton Tail
PUDDING BAG SCHOOL
The Birthday Wish
Cold Enough for Snow
A Strong Smell of Magic
Copyright © 2005 Hilary McKay
First published in Great Britain in 2005
This ebook edition published in 2011
by Hodder Children’s Books
The right of Hilary McKay to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. Apart from any use permitted under UK copyright law, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form, or by any means with prior permission in writing from the publishers or in the case of reprographic production in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency and may not be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
A Catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978 1 444 90346 1
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