by Tereza Tydrychová, Jana Erwerthová

In one village lived a poor widow who had a daughter. They lived in an old cottage with a damaged roof and they had only some hens.
The old woman used to go to the wood for firewood in winter, for strawberries in summer and to work in the field in autumn. Her daughter used to sell eggs of their hens.
Once in the summer the old woman felt sick and her daughter had to go to the wood for strawberries to prepare a pulp of it. She took a mug and went to the wood. When the mug was full of the strawberries, the young girl came to a spring. There she sat, took her bread and ate her lunch. It was twelve o’clock.
Suddenly came an old woman who looked like a beggar-woman. In her hands was a mug.
“Oh, my little girl,” said that beggar-woman. “I would like to eat! I haven’t eaten since yesterday. Could you give me a piece of your bread?”
“Why not?” said the girl. “I will give you all of it if you want. Now I am going home. Isn’t the bread too hard for you?”
And the girl gave to that beggar-woman all her lunch.
“Thank you very much, my little girl. You are so kind, I have to give you something. Take this mug. You will put it on the table and say: “Cook, mug!” And the mug will cook a pulp for you. When you will have enough pulp, say just: “Stop cooking!” And the mug will stop. But don’t forget what to say.”
And then the woman gave the mug to the girl and disappeared in the wood. When the girl came back to their cottage, said to the mother what had happened in the wood. They put the mug on the table and said: “Cook, mug!” She wanted to know if everything was true. It was the truth and after few minutes the mug was full of a pulp. She said: “Stop cooking!” And the mug stopped cooking.
They sat at the table and ate heartily. The pulp was very good. When they stopped eating, the daughter put few eggs into the basket and brought them to the town for selling. In the town she had to sell it for a long time. She didn’t get enough money and she sold the eggs only in the evening.
Her mother didn’t want to wait for her, she was too hungry and she looked forward to the pulp. She took the mug, put it on the table and said: ”Cook, mug!” The pulp was cooked in a while and the mug was full of it in a minute.
“I have to go for some plate and spoon,” said the mother to herself and went to the kitchen. But when she came back to the room, she was frightened – the pulp left the mug, flowed on the table, from the table on the bench and from the bench on the floor. She forgot the words for stopping the mug. She covered the mug with the plate – she thought, that it would stop the pulp. But the plate fell off the table on the floor and broke. And the pulp still flowed away – it was like a flood. The mother had to escape from the room to the hall and she was crying: “Oh, that unlucky girl! What did she bring? I thought it wouldn’t be anything good!”
In a while the pulp left the room and flowed to the hall. The mother had to escape to the loft and she was still crying. The mug was cooking – the pulp was leaving the house from the doors and windows and rushed on the village green and on the road. Fortunately the daughter came home and said: “Mug, stop cooking!”
On the village green there was a big hill of the pulp. When the farmers went back from their work, they weren’t able to cross it. They had to eat it all!