Phineas L. MacGuire...Gets Cooking!

by Frances O'Roark Dowell

  “And we’ll need to make buttermilk,” she told me. “So get out the milk and the lemon juice from the fridge.”

  “How about the butter?” I asked.

  “There’s no butter in buttermilk,” Sarah said. “Buttermilk is the sour milk left over after butter’s been churned.”

  “We’re putting sour milk in the biscuits?”

  Sarah nodded. “It’ll give your biscuits a little zing, Mac. Trust me.”

  I have never trusted Sarah Fortemeyer a day in my life.

  “The thing about buttermilk is that it’s not something you usually keep around,” Sarah said. “So it’s easier just to make a buttermilk substitute by putting a little lemon juice in your milk to curdle it.”

  “This is not sounding delicious,” I told her.

  “What did I say, Mac? You’ve got to trust me on this. I know what I’m talking about.”

  We added one tablespoon of lemon juice to a cup and a half of milk and let it sit for five minutes. The weird thing was, when we looked at the milk after five minutes, it was kind of clumpy.

  “That’s because it’s curdled,” Sarah explained. “The lemon juice separates the milk into curds.”

  “What does that mean exactly?” I asked, but Sarah shrugged, like she didn’t know.

  So of course I had to look it up.

  Remember how, on Saturday, we learned about colloids and emulsions? What I learned today was, curdling is like the opposite thing. When something is curdled, the emulsion or the colloid gets separated again. In this case, it’s the lemon juice that’s breaking stuff up.

  If only I could figure out how to curdle me and Evan Forbes.

  It didn’t take very long to make the biscuits. Sarah let me use the food processor to mix up the butter, flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt.

  “The trick to good biscuits is to not overhandle your dough,” she explained. “I’m sure there’s a scientific reason for that, but I don’t know what it is. What I know is, if you use a food processor to mix up your dry ingredients with your butter, it’s faster than doing it by hand, and your biscuits turn out softer.”

  After we were done mixing the butter and flour, we dumped it in a bowl, and then dumped the buttermilk into the flour. The buttermilk was all lumpy and bumpy, and I was doing some serious trusting that Sarah knew what she was talking about, because right now I was thinking these biscuits might taste pretty gross.

  Sarah showed me how to roll out the dough and use a glass to cut out the biscuits. We baked them for eight minutes and then brushed them with melted butter when they were done.

  Here is what I learned: Freshly baked biscuits smell better than anything in the world. They are the opposite of stinky. They are in an entirely different universe from stinky.

  I couldn’t believe I was going to be wasting them on Evan Forbes.

  Neither could my mom.

  “You invited someone to dinner?” she practically screeched when I told her that Evan would be here at six. She’d just walked in the door, and I thought I’d better break the news to her right away. “Mac, I’m exhausted! And the house is a mess. And who is this Evan Forbes, anyway? I’ve never heard of him.”

  “He’s this kid from school,” I explained. “And he thinks it’s kind of—uh—neat that I’m learning how to cook.”

  “I’ve got an idea,” my mom said, setting down her briefcase and looking through the day’s mail. “He can come over on Saturday. We could make homemade pizza. I’ve been wanting to try that, and it could be a lot of fun to do it with some friends.”

  “I think he’s really looking forward to biscuits.”

  My mom looked at me. “You made biscuits?” She sniffed the air. “You made biscuits!”

  It was like she morphed into an entirely new person.

  It turned out that freshly baked homemade biscuits held powers far beyond those of mortal men.

  My mom took a deep breath. “Okay, Mac, Evan can come over. It sounds like you’ve done a lot of work to make a nice dinner.”

  “And he doesn’t get a home-cooked meal very often,” I said. I thought it couldn’t hurt to soften my mom up a little more. “His parents aren’t ever home for dinner the way you and Lyle are. His nanny just heats him up chicken nuggets.”

  “Oh, that poor child,” my mom said. She came over to me and gave me a hug. “You’re very sweet for inviting him to eat with us.”

  I shrugged. “I like to be a good friend when I can.”

  What I liked was not getting clobbered. Maybe if Evan Forbes liked my biscuits, he wouldn’t feel like clobbering me so much.

  Or maybe he’d make me start bringing him biscuits every day instead of brownies.

  My stomach started hurting again. Do you know why your stomach hurts? Sometimes it’s from excess gas because you ate something like beans that have a lot of fiber and take longer to digest.

  And sometimes it’s because your stomach fills up with acid that your body has produced because your brain has told it to be afraid.

  To be really honest, I was tired of being afraid.

  Anyway, it was time to make the mashed potatoes.

  Mashed potatoes are super easy to make, by the way. You peel four or five potatoes and chop them into chunks. Then you boil the chunks for about fifteen minutes, until they’re nice and soft. All that’s left to do after that is pour in about half a cup of milk, and some butter and salt, and get mashing. I wanted to use the electric mixer, but my mom thought it would be safer to use the hand masher.

  I didn’t mind. It took my mind off the Evan Forbes problem.

  Actually, it kind of gave me an Evan Forbes solution. Mashing potatoes takes a while, and while I was mashing, I started thinking about other stuff, like what questions I was going to ask on my bullying research questionnaire.

  That’s when I had a genius thought—I was going to have my very own, live bully right there in my house.

  I could get Evan to help me come up with questions. I mean, who would know better what questions to ask about bullying than a genuine bully?

  Genius!

  Or crazy.

  I was pretty sure it was one or the other.

  chapter eleven

  Evan Forbes ate eleven biscuits.

  Eleven.

  He smeared the first two with butter, and the next nine he just sort of inhaled straight from the basket.

  It was actually pretty impressive.

  “So, Evan, Mac tells us you boys are in the same class?” my mom asked in her polite hostess voice. She was buttering up her third biscuit.

  Not that I was counting.

  Evan shook his head. “Not the same class—just the same grade,” he told her through a mouthful of crumbs. “I’m in Mr. Burch’s class. He’s a lot cooler than Mrs. Tuttle. She’s got this weird thing about frogs.”

  “She’s okay,” I said. Actually, I think Mrs. Tuttle is awesome, but I thought it would be rude to argue with my guest.

  Also, I didn’t want to get clobbered.

  It took Evan only about three minutes to eat. After he ate eleven biscuits, he chowed down the chicken in three bites and slurped up three servings of mashed potatoes in under sixty seconds.

  He spent the rest of dinner making silly faces at Margaret to make her laugh.

  And when dinner was over, he helped clear the table.

  It was almost like he was an actual human being.

  “You got an Xbox, Mac?” he asked when we were done taking the plates to the sink. “That’s how I like to wind down after dinner—playing a few hours of video games.”

  “What about homework?” I asked.

  Evan shrugged. “What about it? Some people do it, I don’t. Next subject.”

  “We don’t actually have an Xbox,” I told him. “Or any gaming systems. My mom is sort of against them.”

  I waited for Evan to explode. Amazingly, he just shrugged again and said, “So what do you want to do? My nanny—er, assistant—isn’t picking me up until seve
n thirty.”

  Here’s the funny thing: Evan Forbes looked smaller in my house than he did at school. Maybe that’s why I actually had the guts to ask him to help me with my survey.

  “Let me get this straight,” he said as he followed me up the stairs to my room. “You want me to help you come up with questions about bullies?”

  “Not just about bullies,” I told him. “But about kids who’ve been bullied.”

  He seemed to think about this for a second. “Yeah, I could help you. I mean, I got bullied a lot in second grade. Remember Jason Thedrow?”

  “Sort of. But he doesn’t go to our school anymore, does he?”

  “Nah, he moved. But he was, like, totally all over my case in first and second grade.”

  I had to use all my willpower not to turn around and stare at him. Evan Forbes used to get bullied?

  Totally weird.

  I opened the door to my room and waved Evan in. A person’s reaction to my room is a big test for whether or not we can be friends. If you are the sort of person who likes rooms that are neat and tidy, with all the clothes put away and all the books in the bookshelves, we’re probably not going to get along all that well. Because my room is the total opposite of that.

  In other words, if you can deal with chaos, we’ll get along just fine.

  “Awesome!” Evan exclaimed as he looked around. “I wish I could have my room like this.”

  That’s when I had a very strange thought. Question: Was it possible that Evan Forbes and I might become friends?

  “I mean, like, I never knew that a dweeb like you could have such a cool bedroom.”

  Answer: highly doubtful.

  Evan walked around, admiring my mold museum, which is two shelves of mold samples I’ve been growing for a few months now, and checking out my collection of the Mysteries of Planet Zindar books.

  “I have to keep my room totally neat,” he told me. “Like, not one thing out of place. My dad does an inspection every night when he gets home from work, whether I’m still awake or not.”

  “What happens if your room doesn’t pass inspection?”

  “Then I have to clean it up immediately. Even if it’s eleven at night and I’m asleep. My dad makes me wake up and make everything perfect.”

  I thought about my mom and dad and Lyle. None of them could care less whether or not my room is clean. Mostly all they care about is whether or not I’m happy and if I’m doing good at school.

  All of a sudden I felt totally lucky.

  “So, anyway, you want to work on that survey?” I asked as Evan dive-bombed onto my bed. “I kind of need to get it done.”

  Evan sat up and shrugged. “Not really, but I guess I owe you for the biscuits, so, like, whatever.”

  I thought he owed me for a whole lot more than the biscuits, but I decided not to mention it.

  We spent the next twenty minutes coming up with questions. We had two lists, questions for kids who had been bullied and questions for kids who had bullied other kids.

  “Maybe we ought to have questions for kids who’ve had both things happen,” I suggested. “Like, maybe one year you might have been really mean to somebody, and the next year somebody was really mean to you.”

  “I hope somebody’s jumping all over Jason Thedrow at his new school,” Evan said, nodding. “He totally deserves it.”

  I stared at him.

  He totally didn’t get it.

  Here’s the funny thing: All of a sudden I realized that my stomach didn’t hurt. It hadn’t hurt all night, even though Evan had been in my personal space the whole time.

  I had to wonder, scientifically speaking, what was going on.

  Scientifically speaking, I’m pretty sure what was happening was pretty simple.

  I wasn’t scared of Evan Forbes anymore.

  There were a lot of good explanations for this. One, the odds that Evan Forbes was going to clobber me in my own home were pretty small. Two, the odds that Evan Forbes was going to clobber me in my own home after eating eleven biscuits I’d made myself were even smaller.

  So, we’re talking minimal fear factor here.

  But there was another thing. Eating dinner with Evan, showing him my room, learning a little bit about his family—well, he was actually seeming sort of human to me. Like a real person.

  And sure, you can be afraid of a real person, but it’s hard to be afraid of a real person who spent half of dinner stuffing his face with biscuits and the other half making funny faces at your little sister.

  Thinking about how Evan made Margaret laugh, I came to a decision. Tomorrow, no brownies. No waiting by the Dumpsters, no stomachache, no nothing.

  Tomorrow I’d pretend me and Evan Forbes were friends.

  I mean, at least we weren’t enemies anymore, right? And scientifically speaking, there’s one thing I know for sure about friends, and that’s that friends don’t clobber each other.

  At least that’s what I was counting on. I’d have to look it up in The Big Book of Best Friend Rules.

  chapter twelve

  So that thing about me pretending to be Evan Forbes’s friend so he wouldn’t clobber me? Turns out I didn’t have to pretend. He was waiting for me when I got off the bus at school this morning.

  “Yo, Mac! Buddy!” he called when he saw me. “I had this great idea last night when I got home from your place. You and me can start a baking business! Brownies and biscuits, dude. We’ll make a killing! And I’ll help bake. I’ll meet you at your house this afternoon, and we can get started.”

  “Well, uh, I’m sort of supposed to go over to Ben’s house this afternoon,” I told him as we walked into the building together. Evan held the front door open for me, which was totally weird. “We’re doing this recipe contest, and we need to finalize our plans.”

  “Sounds great,” Evan said. “What time should I be there?”

  So that problem where Evan Forbes was my enemy? It was possible that my problem now was that he was my friend.

  • • •

  “Evan Forbes is coming over to my apartment this afternoon?” Ben asked when I told him at lunch. “Since when did Evan Forbes start hanging around with people like you and me?”

  I told him about asking Evan to come to dinner the night before. Aretha, who was sitting at her usual spot one table over, leaned toward us and said, “Brilliant plan, Mac! You ought to get the Nobel Peace Prize for that one.”

  “Yeah, but now he wants to go into business with me.”

  Aretha thought about this for a minute. “Just tell him you’re a scientist and you don’t have time to start a business.”

  “Yeah,” Ben said. “Tell him you could help him get started, though. I’ll do the PR.”

  I stared at him. “PR?”

  “Yeah, you know—public relations. Publicity, advertising.” Ben chomped on a pretzel stick. “If this recipe contest thing doesn’t pan out, I might need a new line of work.”

  “So how is the recipe contest coming along?” Aretha asked.

  “Oh, man! I can’t believe I haven’t told you guys this!” Ben’s face lit up. “I’ve got the best recipe idea ever: salted pizza brownies with bacon.”

  I stared at Ben over my tuna fish sandwich. “Salted brownies?”

  Ben nodded. “I’ve been reading all this stuff about food trends online? And salt is big. I mean, it’s huge, and when it comes to chocolate, it’s humongous.”

  “But won’t the bacon add salt to the brownies?” I asked. Not that I was committed to the idea of putting bacon into a perfectly good pizza brownies recipe. But I like to be logical.

  “The more salt the better, that’s my motto!” Ben exclaimed. “The thing is, last night I tried out the pizza brownie recipe the way we talked about—I used marshmallow fluff on top, which worked great, and sprinkled it with extra M&M’s just like Mrs. Klausenheimer said. And it was good, but it lacked a special something. So I made another batch, but this time I added an extra teaspoon of salt and half a cup of crumbled
bacon. What can I say, Mac? They were genius brownies.”

  “Too much salt’s bad for your heart.”

  Evan Forbes sat down in the seat next to me and opened up his lunchbox. “It’s bad because it elevates your blood pressure. At least that’s what my nanny—er, my assistant—says.”

  “But a little extra salt every once in a while is okay,” Ben argued. At the same time he was looking at me like, Really? Now we have to have lunch with him? “You only eat one brownie at a time, right?”

  “Not if you’re me,” Evan told him, taking a huge bite of a turkey sub. “I eat ’em by the dozens. But hey, me and Mac will give your brownies a try this afternoon, and if we like ’em, then we can definitely move forward with the recipe.”

  You know that cartoon thing where steam comes out of somebody’s ears?

  That’s how you should imagine Ben looking right at that very second.

  I glanced over at Aretha. You could tell she was finding this all very interesting. “You guys mind if I tag along this afternoon? I might be able to get something out of it for my food badge.” She turned to Evan. “I’m a Girl Scout.”

  “That’s cool,” Evan said. “Sure, you can come.”

  Then he crushed his milk carton and threw it at Mason Cutwelder’s head. Mason yelled when the carton hit him, and Evan called out, “Sorry, dude! I was aiming for the trash can.”

  Only the trash can was in the opposite direction.

  “Okay, I gotta go play some ball,” Evan said, standing up. “You wanna play, Mac?”

  I shook my head. “I, uh, have some homework I need to do.”

  “That’s cool. I’ll meet you on the bus after school.”

  Me, Ben, and Aretha all watched Evan walk out of the cafeteria. Then Ben turned to me and said, “You have got a serious problem on your hands, Mac. I don’t know what’s worse—having him for an enemy or having him for a friend.”

  Instead of going out to the playground for recess, I went to the library with my notebook. I needed to do some serious thinking.

  First, I made a list called Good Things Right Now. That list included stuff like: