Anastasia on Her Own by Lois Lowry

oatmeal?"
    Sure.
    Sam went to the cupboard and gazed at the contents. Then he removed some raisins, some peanuts, some brown sugar, some shredded coconut, a crumbled Ginger Snap, and some instant coffee. Carefully he added each ingredient to his oatmeal, picked up his spoon, and began to eat.

    "Okay," Anastasia said aloud to herself after she had added the breakfast dishes to the pile of dirty things in the sink, "now I have to get organized.
    "First I'll do the tablecloth." She glanced again at the directions on the bottle of dye. She turned the water on in the washing machine, opened the bottle, and dumped the contents in.
    "Yuck," she said, peering in after it. "It looks
black.
" Cautiously she reached in, dipped one fingertip into the water, and examined the color when she took it out. "Good. It's purple." She unfolded the white tablecloth, added it to the machine, and closed the lid.
    "Next, the Ragout de Veau aux Champignons." She opened the cookbook to the correct page and reread the beginning of the recipe to confirm what she had read before: that it was okay to make it a day in advance.
    "'Dry the veal on paper towels,' " she read. "Okay." She took the package of veal which Mr. Fortunato had sent, opened it, and made a face. "I didn't know it would be
pink
" she muttered.
    Sam looked up from the kitchen table where he was coloring a picture. "Pink's a good color," he said. "I think I might color this elephant pink."
    Anastasia ignored him. Pink was a good color, she thought, maybe for underwear or something, but it looked kind of gross when it was raw meat. It looked suspiciously like newborn gerbils. She pulled some paper towels from the roller and dried the veal.
    "'Salt and pepper,' " she read, and sprinkled the meat . with salt and pepper. "Some people think gourmet cooking is hard," she confided to Sam, "but that's just because they haven't tried it. If you follow the directions, it's easy.
    "Now," she said, and read some more from the recipe, "'roll it in flour.' How on earth do you roll it in flour?"
    Sam didn't answer. His tongue was between his teeth, and he was busily coloring a picture of an elephant.
    Anastasia shrugged. She dumped some flour into a bowl, and rolled the pieces of veal, one at a time. In a corner of the kitchen, the washing machine was churning away.
    "There," said Anastasia when all of the pieces of veal were covered with flour. "Now. 'Heat oil in a pan until hot but not smoking.' Simple."
    She opened the bottle of olive oil, but couldn't find a pan.
    "Rats," she said when she realized that all of the pans were in the sink. She fished one out, examined it, and decided that it needed washing. It would have been okay for another batch of hamburgers; but for a gourmet dinner, it needed washing. Hastily she washed it, added oil, and put it on the stove to heat.
    "Timing is the secret to good cooking," Anastasia told Sam. "Like right now, while the veal is browning in that pan, I have to cook the onions in a different pan, at the same time. Rats. I don't
have
another pan." She sighed, and went to the sink to wash a second pan.
    The first pan began to smoke. Hastily, Anastasia turned the heat down and added the veal. She went back to the sink and finished washing the second pan.
    "Do you think it's okay for an elephant to have one orange ear and one blue ear?" asked Sam.
    "Sure." Anastasia added oil to the second pan and put it on the stove.
    "Whoops," she said, "I forgot to chop the onion." Quickly she found a knife in the sink, examined it, decided it could survive without being washed, and began to chop an onion. "People who wear glasses, like me, Sam," she said, "are really lucky because they can chop onions without crying. The glasses protect their eyes."
    "That other pan is smoking," Sam said.
    Anastasia ran to the stove, turned the heat down, and finished chopping the onion. She put it into the second pan.
    "Timing is the key," she said again.
    The telephone rang.
    "This is Ralph at the