Stirring It Up!

by Diane Muldrow

  “Wait!” said Amanda. “What else are we having besides the chicken?” “Oops,” said Molly. “I don’t have a clue! Maybe rice, or something like that.” “Oh my gosh! whispered Amanda. there’s Justin.”

  “Where?”

  “Don’t turn around! He’s right over there. He’s looking at us!”

  Justin McElroy nodded to the twins. He was with his mom, who waved to the girls.

  “Hi. Justin!” called Molly.

  “You don’t have to shout!” whispered Amanda, jabbing Molly with her elbow.

  Justin was a new neighbor of the Moores. A tall, cute new neighbor who was wearing board shorts with a wild green-and-yellow floral print, and a black T-shirt that said NO FEAR. He was eleven, too, and would be attending Windsor Middle School with the girls in the fall. His reddish-brown hair was short and gelled, his brown eyes were big, and he had that kind of face that always looked like he was smiling, even when he wasn’t.

  “What are ya doing?” asked Justin, as his mom paid for her groceries.

  “Oh, I’m cooking dinner tonight,” said Amanda casually. Molly shot her a look that said, what’s this I’m-cooking-dinner stuff? “I mean, Molly and I are cooking dinner tonight,” she added.

  “Cool. I like to cook, too;” said Justin. “Sometimes. Like on the grill and stuff.” He picked up two grocery bags and said, “See you later.”

  “Bye, girls!” said Mrs. McElroy. hoisting a grocery bag.

  She flashed them a knowing smile that meant, Isn’t my son just thecutest thing you’ve ever seen in your lives?

  “Wow! A guy who cooks,” said Amanda.

  “Maybe he’d better come over and teach us,” joked Molly, as the girls walked back to aisle seven. There they found a package of long grain and wild rice that looked idiot-proof.

  “You just throw the rice and the bag of spices in a pot of boiling water”, Molly read off the back of the box. “Even Matthew could do that!”

  Amanda snorted. “Don’t count on it.”

  Molly laughed. “What else should we make?”

  “Salad?” Amanda suggested.

  Molly shrugged. “Sounds good. I think we can handle that.”

  Molly and Amanda walked over to the produce department where they found some fresh lettuce and deep red tomatoes.

  “Mmmm, an avocado,” said Amanda. “This one is ripe—not too hard.”

  “Great,” said Molly. “Throw it in the basket.” Soon the twins had paid for everything and were on their way home.

  “Here we go!” said Molly as they left the supermarket. “Okay—so you ready to surprise Mom and Dad with the best meal of their lives?”

  “It’ll be a surprise all right!” said Amanda, laughing. “But what if this turns out to be something that even a dog wouldn’t eat?”

  Molly’s ponytail swung as she laughed and said, “No problem-there’s always takeout!”

  chapter 2

  Molly and Amanda unlocked the door 10 the house. They carried their groceries into the kitchen, where their fat tiger cat, Kitty, was zonked out as usual on one of the chairs.

  A neighbor had given the kitten to Matthew when Matthew turned four. Matthew named her Kitty.

  “Don’t call her ‘Kitty,’” Molly had told him.

  “You can name her anything you want!” Amanda had added. “So why would you just call her ‘Kitty?”’

  “It’s his kitten, girls,” Mom had told the twins. “That’s what most cats end up being called anyway—Kitty.”’

  Thud! Amanda put a heavy bag down on the floor, and Kitty tore out of the kitchen like a shot. She hated loud noises.

  “It’s okay, Kitty,” called Amanda. “Come back, scaredycat!”

  Kitty peeked around the corner, then creeped back in and sniffed the grocery bag. There was something in there that she liked.

  “There’s nothing for you in there,” Molly told Kitty, shooing her away.

  Molly’s eyes wandered over to the kitchen clock. “Wow, it’s five o’clock already. I guess we’d better get started!” The twins began to take the food out of the bags.

  “So—what do we do first? asked Amanda, looking at the recipe. This looks so hard, she thought to herself. We are NEVER gonna pull this off!

  Molly’s eyes moved from the tomatoes to the chicken to the rice. “You know what’s gonna be the hard part?” she asked. “Getting all the food to be ready at the same time. How do people do that? Like, how does Mom’s big Thanksgiving dinner just—appear?”

  “Magic,” joked Amanda. “No. seriously, it’s a mom thing! Moms can just do that.” “Well, we’re not magicians,” said Molly, putting her hands on her hips and looking up at the pots and pans. “And we’re not moms.”

  “Hey, you got us into this mess, you figure it out,” chuckled Amanda, turning on the shiny kitchen faucet. “But I think the first thing we should do is wash our hands with antibacterial soap!”

  “Oh! We have to wash the chicken, too,” said Molly as she joined Amanda at the sink. “Remember when we saw that on the news?”

  “Yeah-otherwise, we might get salmonella poisoning! And the whole family will get sick and throw up! Gross!” exclaimed Amanda. She took out the chicken cutlets and ran cold water over them. “Molly,” she said, “Can you put some paper towels down on the counter? That’s what Mom does.”

  Molly tore off big sections of the paper towels and laid them on the counter. Amanda carefully put the cutlets on them to drain. Molly then blotted them dry with more paper towels.

  “I guess we’d better wash our hands again,” suggested Molly.

  “Abso-lute-ly.” agreed Amanda, reaching for the soap.

  “Cool! One thing done,” said Molly, walking across the kitchen to turn on the radio. She smiled as she looked at the neat rows of chicken breasts. “Maybe we should make the salad now, and get it out of the way.”

  So as the girls sang along as loud as they could to their favorite song, they washed the tomatoes with a special liquid to get rid of the chemicals from pesticides. And they rinsed the lettuce and the parsley and dried them off in the salad spinner.

  Molly reached for a sharp knife to cut up the tomatoes with. “Whoa,” she said. “I hope I don’t chop my finger off.”

  “Don’t let it fall into the salad if you do,” teased Amanda. She had a knife, too, for taking the skin off the avocado. The girls worked slowly, because they didn’t want to hurt themselves, and because they didn’t have a clue about how to properly use a knife.

  “How do the chefs on those cooking shows chop everything so fast? muttered Amanda. The avocado was soft, and seemed to be ending up all over her hands instead of in neat pieces.

  Molly picked up the bag of wild rice and read the directions. “This takes only about twenty-five minutes. So we don’t have to make this until the chicken is almost ready.”

  “Then we better start making the chicken now,” said Amanda.

  “Yeah! Look—it’s almost six o’clock! How did that happen?” exclaimed Molly. “Mom and Dad will be home soon.

  Amanda slapped her forehead. “Oh, wow!” she cried. “We have to call Mom to tell her not to bring home any takeout!”

  Molly frowned. “You’re right,” she said. “But we wanted to surprise her. How are we gonna tell her not to get any food without spilling the beans? Think fasf!”

  Amanda picked up the phone. “We-e-ell,” she said, staring out the window, “I guess we’ll have to tell her we’ll get the takeout for her. But she might not want to let us do that.”

  Molly’s face brightened. “I know!” she shouted. “This’ll be a good trick: we’ll call Mom. We’ll tell her that Dad called us to say that he’s bringing home the takeout!

  Dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee! The phone was making that off-the-hook noise that sounded like a UFO. Amanda quickly hung up the receiver. “But what if Dad calls Mom after we talk to her?” she asked Molly. “She’ll probably thank him for getting the food, and he won’t know what she’s talking
about.”

  Molly shrugged impatiently. “Whatever! We’ll have to take a risk!” she said. “I mean, we’ve got to call her right now before she leaves her office. Hurry up! We’ve got a lot to do here!”

  “Okay!” said Amanda, nodding her head slowly. “But how do I let you get me into these things?” She picked up the phone and hit the speed dial, saying, “I guess you’re right. Let’s just hope that Mom and Dad don’t talk again after we call Mom...Hello? Hi, Mom!...fine...um, Dad just called. Yeah, uh, he really did! He‘s, uh, bringing home some takeout, so you don’t have to, okay? What’s he getting? Um, something—fancy! So-okay-we’ll-see-you-later—bye!” Amanda quickly hung up the phone. “It’s so hard to lie,” she said.

  “You weren’t really lying. Just fibbing a little. She’ll understand when she gets her big surprise! Now, let’s start the chicken,” Molly said.

  “Okay,” sighed Amanda, turning on the oven. But she still felt guilty.

  Making the chicken piccata began easily enough. Molly and Amanda were a good team. Amanda sprinkled each chicken cutlet with salt and pepper, and Molly coated them with flour that she had poured into a dish. Then they heated some olive oil in a skillet, and put several pieces of the chicken in the skillet.

  “We have to turn the skillet handle around to the back,” said Molly, “so that it’s out of the way.”

  “Now what?” asked Amanda, as the chicken began to crackle and sizzle.

  “We have to let the chicken brown,” said Molly. “Then we’ll turn it over, and brown it on the other side.

  “Turn down the heat, Molly,” said Amanda. “We don’t want to burn the chicken!”

  “Or ourselves,” added Molly, as she lowered the flame.

  After a few minutes, Amanda lifted up one piece of chicken with a pair of tongs and checked it underneath. “Hey, it’s brown!” she said. “I’m turning it over.”

  “Cool!” said Molly. Picking up another pair of tongs, she helped Amanda turn all the pieces over. The chicken sizzled. It smelled good!

  “Mrow?” cried Kitty, who’d been pacing back and forth. Kitty was absolutely bonkers for chicken. “Mrow! Mrow!’

  Finally the chicken was nice and brown on both sides. The girls put the chicken on a plate and carefully put it in the oven at a low temperature to keep warm. Then they added the rest of the chicken cutlets to the skillet.

  But this time, the chicken didn’t smell so good.

  “Uh-oh! It’s smoking,” said Molly. Thinking fast, she put on a thick oven mitt and lifted the pan off the burner. She placed it on a cooler part of the stove.

  “I know what we did wrong,” said Amanda. “We should’ve put more olive oil in the pan. There wasn’t enough to cook the chicken, so it started to stick to the pan.

  Molly took a deep breath. Don’tpanic! she told herself. “Okay,” she said. “Let’s take the chicken out and heat some more oil.” She carefully lifted one piece of chicken out of the pan.

  “Please don’t be black on the bottom,” Amanda pleaded, as if the chicken breast could hear her.

  “It isn’t!” exclaimed Molly. “Good.”

  The girls started over. When the oil was hot, Amanda began to put the chicken back in the pan, using a the tongs.

  “Ooops!” cried Amanda, as a cutlet slid out of the tongs. It hit the floor with a slapping sound. Molly jumped back, and—“Whoa!” she shouted, as her elbow knocked the bag of flour onto the floor.

  “Ow!” cried the twins at the same time. They’d bumped heads as they bent down to pick the chicken off the floor.

  “Look at you!” Amanda cried. “You’ve got flour all over you!”

  Molly looked down. The flour was everywhere, all over her rear end and all over the floor. She looked at Amanda, who was still holding the chicken that had fallen onto the floor. Stuck to it was cat hair.

  “Oooh, sick!” cried Amanda.

  That’s when Molly cracked up. She couldn’t stop laughing.

  “What’s so funny? asked Amanda, but then she looked down at the furry chicken and began to laugh, too. Then she rinsed the chicken, dried it off, and salted and peppered and floured it again. “Don’t tell anyone I did that,” she said, poking Molly with a fork. “Good as new!” she added, as she put it in the skillet with the rest of the chicken.

  “Thal’ll be your piece.” Molly teased her.

  Soon all of the chicken was browned. Now it was time to make the lemony sauce that Molly had liked so much. And Mom and Dad would be home soon!

  “Yipes!” said Molly. “We’d better start the rice.” She took out a pot and measured the water that she needed to boil. Then she poured the rice, and spices that were in a separate packet, into the water along with some olive oil.

  Meanwhile, Amanda poured a cup of chicken stock into a measuring cup, then poured it into the pan that they’d browned the chicken in. The next step was to turn the heat back on, add lemon slices, and scrape the skillet with a wooden spoon to loosen the browned bits of chicken that had stuck to the pan. Those little chicken bits would add flavor to the sauce, the recipe explained.

  “Now turn the heat back down,” said Molly, reading from the recipe. “We have to simmer it now. That means let it cook on a low flame. It’s supposed to slowly get thicker. Mmmm. This sauce is beginning to smell good!”

  Sure enough, after nearly five minutes on a low flame, the liquid began to thicken and look more like a sauce. As Amanda stirred it, Molly squeezed a lemon and then poured the juice into the sauce.

  That’s when they heard the front door opening. Mom’s and Matthew’s voices echoed in the hallway. The twins heard quick footsteps and Mom’s jangling bracelets as she rushed down the hallway.

  “What’s going on?” cried Mom. Her tall frame filled the doorway, and her dark brown eyes were open wide. “What’s burning?” Her darting eyes followed the trail of flour.

  “Nothing’s burning! Surprise!” shouted Amanda and Molly.

  “Wow! You’re—cooking! Uh, wow!”

  “It’ll be ready really soon,” said Amanda. “Oh! We have to set the table!”

  “They’re trying to poison us, Mom,” snickered Matthew. But he came over to the pan and took a deep breath anyway.

  “Get out of there, Matthew,” Amanda scolded. Matthew must have liked how it smelled, because this time he forgot to act sick.

  “It smells great, girls! What is it?” asked Mom. She took her big leather bag off her shoulder and hung it on the back of a kitchen chair, but her eyes never left the skillet that Amanda was using.

  “Broiled monkey brains,” cracked Matthew.

  “Chicken piccata!” cried the twins.

  “And wild rice!” added Molly.

  “And salad,” said Amanda, adding the capers to the sauce.

  “Well! I can’t believe you did all this! But you could have set the place on fire!” said Mom, unbuttoning the jacket of her brown linen suit. “I’m sorry, but I mean, I hope you were careful. Oh, it smells so good!” She began to laugh. Mom had such a loud laugh that everyone else always started laughing, too.

  That’s when Dad came home.

  “Hel-lo, everybody!” he bellowed. Dad was tall and his voice was loud and deep, especially when he came home and greeted everyone. He ran his hand through his graying black hair to mess it up, which he did every night when he got home from work. He didn’t seem to know he was doing it, but the twins knew he must have been thinking, I’m home from work and it doesn’t matter what my hair looks like!

  “Mike, the girls cooked dinner!” said Mom.

  “It smells great!” said Dad as he kissed Mom and the girls. He hugged Matthew and said, “Hey, champ, how’s the new bike working out?” Then he adjusted his wire-rimmed glasses and looked around the kitchen as if he’d never seen it before. That’s how Dad tended to look at everything. He always seemed sort of—surprised. “So, when do we eat?” he asked.

  “Just—about—now,” said Molly, as she rushed from Dad back to the stove. S
he put the oven mitt back on and lifted the skillet off the heat. She stirred some soft butter into the thickening sauce, then looked frantically at the recipe again. “Oh! We forgot to chop up the parsley! I need to add it right now!”

  “I’ll do it,” said Mom calmly, reaching for a knife.

  “Oh! The rice!” cried Amanda. “Is it burning?”

  Amanda rushed over to the pot and turned off the flame. She lifted the lid and stirred the rice with a wooden spoon. “I almost forgot about it,” she admitted. “Uh-oh—there’s a lot stuck to the bottom of the pan!”

  Mom stood over Amanda. “It’s okay, sweetie,” she assured her. “It’s a little overcooked on the bottom, that’s all. The rest is perfect. Smell all those spices! I’ll get you a bowl. Matthew, get the silverware, please. Molly, here’s a big platter for the chicken. Now just give me a second to chop the parsley and add it to your sauce.

  Molly and Amanda sighed with relief. They were glad Mom was home and taking charge now. Mom was a good cook. She usually cooked big breakfasts and dinners on the weekends. And she’d cook food on Sundays that the family could eat for at least part of the week. But lately, Mom had been working really hard, especially on the weekends. The twins knew Mom felt guilty about it, so they tried not to complain when they couldn’t hang out with her as much.

  Meanwhile, Dad had gone upstairs to the linen closet and found two silver candlesticks and a deep blue tablecloth with a gold-and-red design. In just a minute, Dad and Matthew made the table look like it belonged in a fancy restaurant.

  “MROW!’ howled Kitty desperately, running back and forth. Everyone laughed.

  “Don’t worry, Kitty,” said Mom. “We’ll let you have a piece, but I don’t think you’ll want it with the lemon sauce.” She cut off a piece of chicken and put it on a saucer. “Here. Matthew, give this to Kitty.”