Field trips to large kitchens of the community, and to food preserving plants promised interesting diversions to classroom activities.
“Tomorrow morning I’ve arranged for us to visit the Bayshore Bakery after class,” Miss Pearson told them. “There you’ll learn a little about mass production. You see we have to be prepared to cook large quantities of food in times of emergency.”
Kitty saw that there was going to be real work, also, in the course. At the bottom of their instruction sheets were some questions that must be answered next day in class.
“We can discuss these going and coming in the boat,” Kitty suggested to her friends as they were going out.
“I really think it’s going to be fun,” Lana said.
“I noticed a couple of women from over at the oyster cannery settlement,” said Vera. “Every woman over there ought to be taking this course for the good of her family. Miss Pearson is going to show us how to make a little bit go a long way.”
“That’s surely something we can all use,” said Kitty.
Their excursion to the bakery was followed by a visit to the oyster cannery, the community cannery, a near-by cafeteria kitchen, and to a school lunchroom, which was most efficiently organized.
“Every person in that lunchroom took our nutrition course when I first gave it,” explained Miss Pearson.
Kitty found it hard to believe at the end of the first week that half her nutrition course was already complete. She had enjoyed every minute of it. To be a part of a great scheme like this, in which everyone was cooperating for the general welfare gave her a glow of satisfaction. She didn’t mind at all that she had to work till bedtime to finish her home duties, to see about Billy’s clothes, and plan her own food program for the next day. In her carefree days at college she had not dreamed there was so much to be done in the world.
Classes were held in the evening during the second week of the course. This was a compromise to fit the needs of several housewives, who found it difficult to leave home in the morning. This arrangement made it necessary for Kitty, Vera and Lana to ride the island busses, as the girls could not go alone in the launch at night.
Palmetto Island was connected with the mainland by a long causeway across the marshes. This made the bus trip about three times the length of the boat ride.