After school, Camille and I rushed over to wait for Mom in the cafeteria. We were the first ones there. We sat down, and I couldn’t stop tapping my fingers on the table.
“Why are you so jumpy? Are you excited about your mom coming to our club?” Camille asked.
“Yes, I am. I’ve very excited, but also calm and not jumpy at all,” I said, making a very calm smile at her.
“Okay, because you seem a little bit jumpy,” said Camille in her calm French voice.
Then I saw Mom come in with Mrs. B.
“Hi, Mom,” I called as I jumped up and down, waving. “Do you have all the ingredients?”
“Wow, Phoebe, you’re especially excited today,” Mrs. B said.
“I’m very excited and calm, and not jumpy at all,” I said, sitting down, looking at Camille.
Camille smiled, but it wasn’t her agreeing-with-me smile. It was a different kind.
“It’s all here.” Mom handed me a bag. She also had two pots. “Why don’t you girls bring this stuff into the kitchen and start unpacking?”
I took the bag and Camille followed me.
“All right, I’m jumpy because this is our last chance for the plan to work,” I said to Camille now that we were alone. “And to tell you the extra truth, my Mom doesn’t cook that much.”
“I know,” she said. “But even if the plan doesn’t work, I’m still excited to make matzo balls.”
I didn’t want to sigh at Camille. But I had to a tiny bit. I started to take stuff out of the bag.
“Phoebe, remember how we decided in France that it was okay for us to be different and still be friends?”
“Yeah?” I said, stopping what I was doing.
“Well, isn’t it the same with Sage?” she asked.
I thought about that for a second. “I guess so, but what if we mess up the matzo balls, and Sage decides that he hates cooking and only wants to eat one thing forever? What if that thing is popcorn or something? You can’t live on popcorn. This is a food emergency!”
“Gosh,” Camille said with her big eyes looking extra worried now. “Do you think that could really happen?”
“It’s possible,” I said, picturing Sage eating a big plate of popcorn at the dinner table, everyone around him trying to get him to taste other stuff.
Camille’s face started to turn a little pink. “We can’t let that happen!” she said, her French voice getting high-sounding.
“All I can say is that the soup had better be good,” I said. She nodded very seriously.
Mrs. B, Mom, and the other kids came in. Mrs. B introduced Mom and explained what we were going to cook. Camille and I went back to unpacking the ingredients on one of the big metal counters. This is what was in the bag:
Two boxes of matzo meal
A carton of eggs
A bottle of oil
That’s it.
“Mom!” I said very loudly. “I think you forgot the rest of the soup!”
“Phoebe, I told you I made the soup earlier.” She put the pots down on the table. “One pot is the soup. The other is to boil water for the matzo balls.”
“Oh, okay,” I said, letting out a big breath I didn’t know I was holding in. I still wasn’t sure Mom could really do this.
“Okay, kids, so let’s see,” Mom said, putting her glasses on. “First we put the eggs in. Wait, is that right?” she asked, squinting at the matzo-meal box. I thought she could make the matzo balls while she was sleeping, but it looked like she was having trouble making them while she was wide awake. The butterflies in my stomach started flying around again.
All the kids crowded around the table. I chewed a little at my pinkie nail.
“You know what? Let’s measure the matzo meal first,” Mom said, nodding. “Who wants to measure?” Everyone shot their hands up in the air.
“Oh my. You all like measuring,” she said, smiling at Mrs. B. “Sage, want to give it a try?”
That was good, having Sage do the first thing. Sage stepped up and measured out the cups of matzo meal. Then Mom let Grace crack the eggs. After that, she asked Camille to put in the water.
“Does Sage want to do it?” Camille asked, looking nervously at me. “He’s better at it than I am.”
“Yeah, Sage is really good at putting water in things,” I said, nodding hard.
Sage stared at me. “Uh, that’s okay,” he said, looking confused.
“I want to give everyone a chance to help, Pheebs,” Mom said and wiped a stray hair out of her eyes. So Camille poured in the water. Then she asked Miguel to put in the oil, and she picked Will and Charlotte to stir.
I gave her a big frowny face. Mrs. B came over and bent down toward me. “I think the best way you can help your mom is to cheer her on, okay?”
I nodded. I knew how to cheer. When we used to watch Molly at her soccer games, I always cheered the loudest.
Mom started to show everyone how to shape the matzo balls.
“Go, Mom, go!” I yelled. “Go, Mom, go!”
Camille, who was standing next to me, jumped a little. I guess she was feeling a little jumpy too, after all.
“Thank you, Phoebe,” Mom said. “But could you be a little quieter, please?”
So I had to whisper-cheer, which doesn’t work as well.
“Just roll it into a little ball and drop it into the water,” she instructed. Then she gave everyone some batter. I remembered what Molly said about not rolling the matzo balls too much. Grace Wong had been rolling hers for a long time. So had Mom, since she kept showing people with the same matzo ball. Camille was also rolling and rolling.
“Mom.” I went over, still whispering. “You have to stop everyone from rolling. The matzo balls won’t be fluffy.”
“Phoebe, they’ll be fine, and it doesn’t matter how they come out. It’s the experience of making them that counts,” Mom whispered back.
“But—” I started to say.
“Honey, I have to work with everyone here,” she said. “Go make your matzo balls.”
So I watched sadly as all the kids dropped their very rolled matzo balls into the pot of water. As they cooked, Mom explained how she made the soup.
“You put a whole raw chicken in a pot of boiling water,” Mom started to explain.
“Poor chicken,” Sage said sadly.
Camille and I looked at each other.
“The chicken doesn’t know what’s happening, Sage,” I said.
Camille nodded.
Mom cleared her throat. “Right, um, then you add fresh dill, carrots, onions, celery, and parsnips and simmer for three to four hours,” Mom continued.
“Four hours—that’s a really long time,” Grace said and crossed her arms over her chest.
Mom wiped her brow and looked at Mrs. B, who gave her a big smile. “Well, after that you take the meat and veggies out and save the chicken broth,” she continued slowly.
“Sounds like a lot of work,” Will said.
“Yeah,” said Sage.
“It’s not hard. You just do other things while you wait. My mom makes soup all the time and the house smells so good,” Camille said, smiling her sparkly smile. I gave her a thumbs-up.
“I agree. It isn’t really that hard,” Mom said, but she was kind of making it seem hard.
As it was cooking, the soup started to smell delicious, like I was at my grandma’s dining room table. I began to relax a little.
“That does smell good,” Sage said.
“It does,” Mrs. B said.
“I can’t wait to taste it,” Grace said.
“Me too,” Charlotte said, clasping her hands together.
Camille and I smiled at each other. Maybe it would turn out well after all.
When the matzo balls were done, we all helped spoon some into the bowls of chicken
soup.
“The soup’s a little hot, so be careful,” Mom said.
I blew and blew on my soup to cool it off. I tried to spoon up a bite of my matzo ball, but the spoon would barely go through. I finally got a piece off and put it in my mouth. It was like biting through a pencil eraser. It was not fluffy at all.
I looked around. Other people were also trying to take spoonfuls.
“This is weird,” Grace said, holding up a ball stuck on her spoon.
“Is it supposed to be like this?” Miguel said, also with his spoon stuck. Camille just sipped the soup part in her French movie-star way. I glanced at Mom. Her hair was a little messy, her apron was untied, and her face seemed a bit sweaty. Her eyes caught mine.
“How is it, Phoebe?” she said, wiping the top of her lip with the corner of her apron.
My face felt hot and the tears were starting to come, but I didn’t want to make Mom feel bad. I rubbed my eyes a little and took a deep breath. “Well, if the matzo balls were pencil erasers, they’d be really good,” I said quietly.
Everyone started to laugh. Mom’s face fell.
“Don’t laugh at my mom!” I stood up and yelled. That got everyone real quiet.
“Phoebe,” Mrs. B said, “please don’t yell. But you’re right, no one should be laughing.”
“Pencil erasers?” Mom said with her worried face on and tried to take a bite, but her spoon got stuck, too. “Oh no.”
“Maybe people rolled them too much. But it’s okay.” My voice cracked. I didn’t want Mom to feel bad.
“The soup part is really good!” Camille said extra cheerfully, taking a break from sipping.
“Thanks, Camille,” Mom said. “Well, it’s the experience, remember?” she said to everyone and reached out to squeeze my shoulder. Except she knocked over the bowl of the leftover matzo balls instead. They went rolling across the table and onto the floor. A few even bounced.
“Oh no!” Mom said.
Everyone jumped up to move away from the matzo balls, and Sage knocked over his soup by accident, which then bumped into Will’s bowl and his soup also went splashing onto the floor.
“Uh-oh,” said Sage and Will together. Thankfully, the soup wasn’t that hot—more like lukewarm.
“I’ll get paper towels!” Mrs. B said, running over to the sink. “Let’s all help, guys.”
Suddenly everyone was running around with pieces of paper towel trying to clean up the mess. I knelt down and picked up a rubbery matzo ball. Camille was next to me sopping up some chicken broth. I looked over at Sage. He was also kneeling on the floor trying to clean up his soup and looking a little mad. This time I didn’t blame him. I guess he was doomed to eat nothing but popcorn for the rest of his whole life and it was all my fault.
“That was our last chance,” I murmured to Camille.
“Your last chance at what?” Mom asked. I looked up. She was standing near me.
Camille looked at me with wide eyes.
Before I could say anything, Grace Wong spoke to me and Mom.
“Don’t feel bad. My mom makes dumplings, like, every week. That’s why she’s really good at them,” she said. Sometimes Grace had a way of saying something not that nice in a really nice way.
“Nothing could ever be as good as that chocolate mousse!” Will said and rubbed his stomach. Camille started to turn red, but a happy red.
“No way,” said Miguel. “Enchiladas rule!”
“You’re all wrong. The samosas were the best,” Sage said.
I didn’t say anything. I just went and threw my wet paper towels away.
“Cooking Clubbers!” Mrs. B said in a louder voice than she usually uses. “This is not a cooking contest. It’s a cooking club, where all foods should be celebrated. Now we’ve also learned that sometimes cooking gets a little messy, so let’s get this mess cleaned up like the good chefs we are.”
I glanced around. Everyone was on their knees wiping up cold soup and rubbery matzo balls. No one looked like they were celebrating anything. Now Sage would never like anything new, especially not matzo ball soup. This was turning out to be the worst plan I ever thought of in my life.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Mom and I drove back home quietly.
“I’m sorry the soup didn’t work out,” Mom said after a minute. “I never thought it would be such a disaster. I guess I’m not cut out to teach cooking.”
“Even if it went perfectly, I don’t know if it would have made a difference,” I replied softly.
“Made a difference for what?” Mom asked in her super-calm voice that she uses when she wants me to tell her the whole story. It all came tumbling out.
“I really wanted Sage to like new foods. Camille and I thought if he learned to cook new things, he’d be all better,” I said sadly.
“Better?” Mom asked.
“Remember I told you he has that lunch problem? It’s very serious.”
“Is that why you wanted to start the club? I thought we talked about this,” Mom said in her starting-to-get-angry voice.
“Kind of,” I told her in a small voice.
She was quiet for a bit. I could tell she was thinking. “You know that when you were little you really didn’t like peas?” she finally said.
“I didn’t?” I said. I liked peas now.
“When we gave them to you, you dumped them right on the floor. You liked lots of things, but not peas.”
“Really?” I said.
Mom laughed. “Yes, but I kept making them for you anyway. After a year or two, you would eat a few. And now you like them. It just took time.”
“So are you saying that it might be years before Sage wants to eat anything else?” I wailed. “I don’t think I can wait that long.”
“Just be patient. I was patient with you.”
“I’m always patient,” I said. Mom looked at me and narrowed her eyes.
“Always?”
“The thing is Camille and I have so much fun at lunch. I’m worried Sage will feel left out.”
“Phoebe, you and Sage have been friends for a long time. Sage having different tastes from you won’t change that.”
“I hope so,” I said. “I just think Sage would like having my tastes even better.”
Mom took an extra-deep breath and ran her hand through her messy hair.
Finally, it was lunchtime on the day of the cooking club party. Our parents were bringing another batch of the dishes they made for the class. I was worried that everyone would start arguing again over whose food was the best. I sat back and watched Sage eat his lunch while I ate my cream cheese and smoked salmon sandwich. This is how he ate his lunch:
First he took the crusts off his turkey sandwich.
Then he took six bites of it.
After that, he unwrapped his cheese stick very slowly and peeled off little strips of it, tilted his head back, and dropped them in his mouth.
He ate his popcorn piece by piece, sometimes throwing a piece up in the air and catching it in his mouth.
Then he took out the apple he never eats, looked at it, and put it back in his lunch box.
When all the eating was done, he opened his juice, spilled a little on his shirt, and drank it.
“Look at Sage,” I whispered to Camille as I watched him.
She looked at him and then back at me. “Yeah?” she said.
“He really likes his lunch,” I told her. “I’ve never seen anyone look so happy to eat their lunch. I guess I never realized that before.”
Camille nodded.
“It looks like he likes his lunch as much as we like ours.”
“Yeah, I guess so,” Camille said.
“Could that even be possible?” I asked.
“Maybe,” she said.
I felt like I was understanding something im
portant. “I guess we should have left him alone about his lunch,” I said, looking down.
“Maybe,” Camille answered. “I still think he had fun in the club, though.”
“I don’t know,” I said quietly. I wondered if I did something to Sage that I couldn’t undo. I suddenly didn’t care at all about Sage’s tastes. I just wanted to make sure he wasn’t mad at me.
Everyone’s parents came to the party. Mom had saved the leftover chicken broth in the freezer from the cooking club so she didn’t have to make a whole new pot, and the night before the party she let me and Molly make the matzo balls. This time we barely rolled them and hoped for the best.
When Camille, Sage, and I walked into the cafeteria, I stopped and stared. There was a big table in the middle with a white tablecloth on it and little cups of chocolate mousse, a big platter of enchiladas, a tray of dumplings, a tray of samosas, and bowls of soup. “Hold all those horses!” I exclaimed.
Mrs. B and all the parents stopped what they were doing and stared at me.
“Phoebe, what’s wrong?” Mom asked.
“Nothing,” I said. “All that food just looks so good. It’s like a super-fancy party!”
“It is,” agreed Mrs. B.
“And it’s going a little more smoothly than my cooking class!” Mom said, laughing, and we all laughed.
“Good thing Sage is a picky eater or we would have never come up with this class,” Camille whispered in my ear.
I hadn’t thought of it like that. Sometimes Camille really did know the best things to say.
I looked across the room and I couldn’t believe what I saw. Sage was holding a bowl of matzo ball soup and actually eating it.
“Sage!” I said as Camille and I ran over to him. He jumped, almost spilling his soup. “Are you really eating that?”
“I tasted the soup again and I like it better this time. The matzo balls are soft and fluffy. It’s not that bad after all.”
“Cool!” I said, beaming, glancing at Camille. Then I looked back at Sage. “I’m sorry I was upset about your lunches. I won’t be anymore.”
“Me neither,” said Camille.
Cooking Club Chaos! Page 3
