Cooking Camp Disaster

  CHAPTER ONE: OFF TO COOKING CAMP

  CHAPTER TWO: THE BROWNIE FIASCO

  CHAPTER THREE: TOO HOT TO HANDLE

  CHAPTER FOUR: A NEW CASE

  CHAPTER FIVE: THE FIRST SUSPECTS

  CHAPTER SIX: THE CLUELESS CREW?

  CHAPTER SEVEN: THE ALMOST-EXPLODING VOLCANO CAKE

  CHAPTER EIGHT: TOO MANY SUSPECTS

  CHAPTER NINE: THE MYSTERIOUS FORTUNE COOKIE

  CHAPTER TEN: BUON APPETITO!

  LET'S MAKE SOME BARK!

  Off to Cooking Camp

  “I’ve never been to a cooking camp before,” said eight-year-old Nancy Drew. She peered out the car window eagerly.

  “Me neither. I wonder what we’ll learn to cook,” her friend George Fayne added.

  “I hope it’s cupcakes. They’re my favorite!” George’s cousin Bess Marvin chimed in.

  “Well, if it’s cupcakes, make sure to save a couple for me,” Hannah Gruen called out cheerfully from the driver’s seat. The Drews’ longtime housekeeper, Hannah had helped take care of Nancy from the time she was three. This morning she was driving the girls to camp. “Okay, here we are! As soon as I find a place to park, we can get you ladies settled in.”

  Nancy, George, and Bess were spending a week at Kid Kuisine, a summer day camp just outside their hometown of River Heights. As Hannah pulled into the driveway, Nancy craned her neck to see outside. The main building reminded her of a gingerbread house, with candy-colored shutters and flowering window boxes. The sprawling yard was filled with apple trees, gardens, and a pond.

  A big sign near the front door read: WELCOME TO KID KUISINE! On it were hand-painted pictures of cookies, pizza, and fruits and vegetables.

  This is going to be so cool! Nancy thought excitedly.

  Hannah led Nancy, George, and Bess inside and handed their forms to an older girl sitting at the front desk. The girl had shoulder-length brown hair and chunky black glasses; her name tag said ROSEMARY.

  Rosemary squinted at their forms. “Okay, so, um, welcome, Nancy, Bess, and Georgia—”

  “George,” George corrected her.

  “Sorry. George. Everyone’s in the kitchen.” Rosemary lifted her arm to direct them and accidentally knocked down a container full of pens and pencils. “Oops! Why am I always doing that?”

  While Rosemary picked up the pens and pencils, Hannah gave Nancy a quick hug. “I’ll see you girls later. Have fun!”

  “Thanks, Hannah!” Nancy said, hugging her back.

  Nancy and her friends headed through an arched doorway into the kitchen. It was a large, sunny room that was way bigger than Nancy’s kitchen at home. Along the walls were several fancy-looking silver refrigerators as well as shelves filled with bottles, boxes, and jars of ingredients. In the middle of the room was an enormous island with sinks and counter space. Copper pots and pans hung from the ceilings, gleaming brightly.

  There were six kids—three boys, three girls—sitting on stools around the island. A tall, bald man was showing one of the girls how to hold a wooden spoon properly.

  The man beamed at Nancy, George, and Bess. “Magnifico! You must be our last three campers! I am Chef Giorgio, your instructor in the art of fine cooking!”

  “Chef Giorgio? That sounds like my name, George,” George said with a smile.

  “I will have to call you Little Giorgio, then,” Chef Giorgio said merrily. “Come in, please, and find some empty seats. Now that we’re all here, we can go around and introduce ourselves.”

  Nancy and her friends sat down. The girl from the front desk, Rosemary, wandered into the kitchen just then and began rearranging a rack of spices. Her eyes flicked anxiously in Chef Giorgio’s direction. Nancy wondered why she seemed nervous.

  “Okay, so why don’t we all go around the room, say our names, and tell us a little something about yourselves?” Chef Giorgio suggested. “You can go first,” he said to the girl with the wooden spoon.

  “Me? Oh!” The girl sat up very straight. She had long, curly red hair and freckles. “I’m Chloe O’Malley! I’m eight years old! My favorite food is pizza! I have a dog named Lola, and she loves pizza too!”

  “Lola is not your dog, she’s mine,” the girl next to her said in a snotty voice. “I’m Cristin O’Malley,” she said to everyone else. “I’m ten years old, and I can do a front and straddle split. Oh, and I have the biggest City Girls collection of anyone in my whole entire school.”

  “Grazie, Chloe and Cristin. That means ‘thank you’ in Italian. Okay, next? How about you?” Chef Giorgio gestured to a boy sitting across from the two sisters. He had scruffy blond hair and glasses and a T-shirt that said: GENIUS AT WORK.

  “My name is Jeremy Kline. I’m ten, and I already know how to cook perfectly,” he said matter-of-factly.

  “Magnifico! You’ll be a valuable addition to our little class, then,” Chef Giorgio said. “How about you? Have you done any cooking before?” he asked the boy next to Jeremy.

  “Uh, yeah. I like to mix ketchup and orange juice and feed it to my little sister. It gives her a wicked stomachache,” the boy said, grinning. “Oh, and I’m Dev Kapoor, by the way.”

  “Ketchup and orange juice? Ew,” Bess whispered to Nancy.

  The boy next to Dev gave him a high five. “Dude, I’m all over that recipe!”

  “And what’s your name?” Chef Giorgio asked him.

  “Dylan. Dylan Wong. You can all call me Mr. Wong,” he joked.

  Nancy, George, and Bess introduced themselves next. When they were done, Chef Giorgio pointed to a girl sitting to the right of Nancy. She was wearing a pretty red dress with flowers. “And you? Tell us about yourself.”

  The girl squirmed in her seat. “Who, me? I’m Talisha. Talisha Nadine Eggers. I’m eight, and I . . . well . . . I don’t know really know how to cook,” she said quietly.

  “Well, you will be an expert by the time this week is over!” Chef Giorgio said. “Okay, then. Let’s get started with our class. We have some basics to go over first. Rosemary, will you please hand out some aprons to our students?”

  While Rosemary did this, Chef Giorgio went over a bunch of safety rules, like how to handle the ovens, burners, and knives and other sharp utensils. He added that each camper would have his or her own workstation, with a sink, counter space, and so forth.

  “Every day, you will learn to make a delicious new recipe,” Chef Giorgio said. “And this Friday, which will be the last day of camp, there will be a very special event. We are going to—”

  Chef Giorgio was interrupted by a very loud whirring noise. A moment later, someone screamed, “Help!”

  The Brownie Fiasco

  Nancy glanced quickly around the kitchen. Who was in trouble?

  Across the island, Dev and Dylan were cracking up. They had turned on one of the blenders; it was causing the loud whirring noise. Dev was pushing buttons, making the blender go from low to medium to high. Dylan was dangling his hand over the top of the blender and pretend screaming, as though his fingers had gotten chopped off.

  “Boys! Stop that right this instant!” Chef Giorgio rushed across the kitchen and shut off the blender. “I will not tolerate shenanigans. Please behave, or you will be asked to leave this camp!”

  “We are super, super sorry,” Dev said with a straight face.

  “Yeah, we feel really, really bad about this,” Dylan added. Nancy wondered if they were serious or just faking—again.

  Bess turned to Nancy. “For a moment, I thought this was going to be a new case for the Clue Crew,” she said in a low voice.

  Talisha, who was sitting on the other side of Nancy, leaned over. “The Clue Crew? What’s that?” she asked curiously.

  “George, Bess, and I have a club called the Clue
Crew. We solve mysteries,” Nancy explained to Talisha.

  Talisha’s eyes grew big. “Oh! That sounds cool!”

  Chef Giorgio returned to his place in front of the group. “All right, let us move on. What was I saying? Oh, yes. We will have a special event on the last day of camp. First, you will all prepare a gourmet lunch and invite your parents and any other special guests you wish to include. And second, I will be awarding a prize for Best Chef!”

  “You mean like a contest?” Cristin said.

  “Yes, like a contest! I will decide who did the best job of making our recipes every day. And on Friday, I will announce the winner and give out a prize,” Chef Giorgio explained.

  “Maybe one of us will win,” George whispered excitedly to Nancy and Bess.

  “I wonder what the prize will be?” Bess whispered back.

  Chef Giorgio went over a few more details about the week’s activities. He added that there would be a second session of camp starting next Monday, for anyone who might want to come back for another week of cooking. “Now I will show you around the rest of our magnifico camp,” he announced. “After that, we will return here to the kitchen to make our first recipe: peppermint brownies!”

  Yum! Nancy thought. She and Hannah sometimes made brownies at home, but they’d never made peppermint brownies.

  Chef Giorgio began his tour. First he showed everyone the big dining hall where they would be having their final-day banquet. Then he showed them the grounds. There were several gardens, including an herb garden and a vegetable garden. The vegetable garden had tomatoes, peppers, and sugar snap peas, among others. Nancy loved sugar snap peas, especially when Hannah cooked them with lots of butter!

  After the tour, the group returned to the kitchen to make the peppermint brownies. Chef Giorgio listed the ingredients on a blackboard and demonstrated each step of the cooking process.

  Rosemary went around helping everyone melt bittersweet chocolate pieces and margarine on the stove. While the mixture cooled, the students mixed sugar, eggs, vanilla, and cocoa powder in big mixing bowls.

  “I’m definitely going to win Best Chef,” Jeremy, the boy with the GENIUS AT WORK T-shirt, said to no one in particular. He poured two cups of sugar into his bowl. “I know pretty much everything there is to know about cooking. I do it all the time at home.”

  “Well, my mom’s a caterer, so I know a lot about cooking too,” George said as she poured sugar into her bowl.

  “That’s nice. You’ll probably come in second place, then,” Jeremy said.

  “There is no second place,” George pointed out.

  Jeremy shrugged. “Too bad for you, then.”

  George turned and made a face at Nancy. She was obviously not happy about Mr. Show-Off. Nancy smiled sympathetically at her friend. So far the boys at the camp were turning out to be not very nice.

  • • •

  After a picnic lunch outside, everyone returned to the kitchen to put the finishing touches on their peppermint brownies. Then Chef Giorgio walked around tasting samples.

  “Mmm, magnifico!” he said to Chloe, who blushed and grinned with pleasure. “Yes, very good, but perhaps a touch less flour next time,” he said to Cristin.

  He reached George’s workstation. “Little Giorgio! Let’s see what you have created!” he said with a big smile.

  George cut into her pan of brownies and handed the chef a big piece. He popped it into his mouth . . .

  . . . and his smile instantly vanished. “Yuck! This is the worst peppermint brownie I have ever tasted!” he cried.

  Too Hot to Handle

  George’s face fell. “What do you mean, Chef Giorgio?” she said miserably.

  “Here, taste!” Chef Giorgio broke off a piece of his peppermint brownie and thrust it at her.

  George took a bite. “Yuck! You’re right! It’s supersalty!”

  “Supersalty?” Nancy repeated. That didn’t make sense. A teaspoon of salt was one of the ingredients in the recipe. But a teaspoon was hardly enough to make the brownies taste supersalty.

  “You try it,” George said, handing the brownie to Nancy.

  Nancy bit into it cautiously. “Ew, definitely salty,” she said, scrunching up her face.

  Puzzled, Nancy leaned over to George’s workstation and peered at the salt jar. It was tall and clear, and it had a masking-tape label that said “Salt” on it. There was a tiny red smudge next to the word “Salt.”

  Beside it was an identical jar containing sugar. It had a masking-tape label that said “Sugar” on it. This label had a tiny red smudge too.

  Then Nancy noticed something else. The labels were slightly crooked, as though they had been slapped on hastily. The labels on her own jars were not crooked. Neither were the labels on Bess’s jars.

  Acting on a hunch, Nancy opened George’s salt jar and dipped her finger inside for a taste. When she licked her finger, she realized that the salt jar contained sugar. She did the same thing with the jar marked “Sugar.” Likewise, the sugar jar contained salt.

  “Your sugar jar has salt in it, and your salt jar has sugar in it,” Nancy announced to George. “You must have put two cups of salt into your peppermint brownie batter instead of sugar!”

  “No way!” George exclaimed. “No wonder my brownies taste so gross.”

  Chef Giorgio pointed to Rosemary. “This is obviously your fault. You must have put the labels on wrong. You are always mixing things up!”

  Rosemary gasped. “What? No way! I didn’t do that, I swear!”

  “We’ll discuss this later. In the meantime, I must finish tasting everyone’s peppermint brownies,” Chef Giorgio said testily.

  Rosemary cheeks turned beet red. She looked nervous and embarrassed. Nancy wondered if Chef Giorgio was right. Did Rosemary simply make a mistake?

  Just then, Nancy saw that Jeremy was staring at George over the top of his glasses and smiling smugly. Could he have switched the labels to mess up George’s peppermint brownies? Or was he just gloating over her bad luck?

  • • •

  “Can I borrow some tomato sauce? I want to make my pizza extra tomato-y!” Bess called out to Nancy.

  “Sure! I’m going to make my pizza extra cheesy,” Nancy said, passing the tomato sauce to Bess.

  It was Tuesday morning. Today’s assignment was making pizzas to eat for lunch. It was great fun stretching the soft, pillowy pizza dough. Nancy also loved putting different ingredients on top. She even made a smiley-face design with a bunch of pepperoni pieces.

  But not everyone seemed to be having a good time. Across the island, Cristin and her sister Chloe were arguing.

  “Your pizza looks like Lola’s throw-up!” Cristin was saying.

  “My pizza does not look like Lola’s throw-up! I’m telling Mom!” Chloe protested.

  “Crybaby!”

  “You’re a crybaby!”

  “Girls, girls, let’s calm down,” Chef Giorgio called out. “I think we could all use a little break. Why don’t we go outside and pick some fresh herbs for our pizzas?”

  Nancy, George, Bess, Chloe, Dev, and Dylan stopped what they were doing and followed Chef Giorgio out the door. Talisha, Cristin, Rosemary, and Jeremy stayed behind to go to the restroom first.

  Outside in the herb garden, Nancy went up to Chloe. “Are you okay?” she asked her.

  Chloe sniffed. “I’m okay. My sister can be supermean. But I guess sisters are like that. Do you have a sister?”

  Nancy shook her head.

  “Well, you can have mine if you want,” Chloe said. “I’m just kidding! She can be nice sometimes. Like, she gave me a pink soccer ball for my birthday. Pink’s my favorite color!”

  “Did you say ‘soccer’?”

  Nancy turned around. Talisha was hovering nearby. She, Cristin, Jeremy, and Rosemary had caught up to the rest of the group and were picking herbs.

  “I love soccer,” Talisha went on, smiling shyly. “When I grow up, I want to be a soccer player.”

  “Th
at sounds cool,” Chloe said. “I want to be a fashion designer. Or a veterinarian. Or maybe a chef.”

  “Why, so everyone can eat your dog-vomit food?” Cristin said as she passed by with a bunch of basil leaves.

  Chloe gasped. “I am so telling Mom you said that! You’re going to be grounded forever!”

  “You’re going to be grounded forever!”

  “Girls!” Chef Giorgio rubbed his temples. “Am I going to have to separate you two again?”

  • • •

  Back in the kitchen, Chef Giorgio and Rosemary helped put everyone’s pizzas in the very hot ovens to bake. Nancy loved the smell of the pizzas cooking. It was like being in an Italian restaurant!

  Twenty minutes later, the pizzas were done, and the kids chopped fresh basil and oregano leaves from the herb garden to put on top. Then came the best part: lunchtime! Nancy couldn’t wait to sit down and taste her pizza.

  Rosemary passed out plates, napkins, forks, knives, and cups of water. Everyone sat down on their stools and prepared to chow down.

  Nancy picked up a gooey slice and bit into it. “Ow!” she cried. Her mouth was on fire. Her pizza was the spiciest thing she’d ever eaten!

  A New Case

  The other kids began crying out in pain too. Nancy grabbed her cup of water and downed it in one gulp.

  “I don’t understand. Is there something wrong with the pizzas?” Chef Giorgio said, sounding concerned.

  “Yes! Hot!” Bess said with a gasp, pointing to her mouth.

  “Superhot!” George agreed.

  While the kids guzzled water, Chef Giorgio went around the kitchen inspecting and tasting everyone’s pizzas. After a few minutes, he said, “There are red pepper flakes on all these pizzas. How could this be?”

  “Red pepper flakes?” Nancy repeated. She remembered that Hannah sometimes put red pepper flakes in her homemade salsa—but just a teeny-weeny amount, because it was so spicy.

  “We only keep one bottle of red pepper flakes in our kitchen because we hardly ever use it,” Chef Giorgio said. “Rosemary, please check the pantry to see if it’s there. Go, hurry!”