Never buy the ground coffee put up in packages, if you can get any other. The mere fact that after they have gone to the expense of the machinery and labor requisitefor grinding it, the manufacturers can sell it cheaper per pound than grocers can the whole grains, roasted or raw, should convince every sensible person that it is adulterated with other and less expensive substances. Be that as it may, coffee loses its aroma so rapidly after it is ground that it is worth your while to buy it whole, either in small quantities freshly roasted, or raw, and roast it yourself; or stand by and see your respectable grocer grind what you have just bought. You can roast in a pan in the oven, stirring every few minutes, or in the same upon the top of the range. Stir often and roast quickly to a bright brown—not a dull black. While still hot, beat up the white of an egg with a tablespoonful of melted butter and stir up well with it. This will tend to preserve the flavor. Grind just enough at a time for a single making.
Stir up the eggshell and the white (beaten) with the coffee, and a very little cold water, and mix gradually with the boiling water in the coffee-boiler. Stir from the sides and top as it boils up. Boil pretty fast twelve minutes; pour in the cold water and take from the fire, setting gently upon the hearth to settle. In five minutes, pour it off carefully into your silver, china, or Britannia coffee-pot, which should be previously well scalded.
Send to tablehot.
There are so many patent coffee-pots for this purpose,and the directions sold with these are so minute, that I need give only a few general rules here. Allow rather more coffee to a given quantity of water than if it were to be boiled, and have it groundveryfine. Put the coffee in the uppermost compartment, pour on the water very slowly until the fine coffee is saturated, then more rapidly. The water should be boiling. Shut down the top, and the coffee ought to be ready when it has gone through the double or treble set of strainers. Should it not be strong enough, run it through again.
The coffee should be poured off the grounds through a fine strainer (thin muslin is the best material) into the table coffee-pot. Add the milk, and set the pot where it will keep hot for five minutes before pouring it out.
Scald the teapot well, put in the tea, and, covering close, set it on the stove or range one minute to warm; pour on enough boiling water to cover it well, and let it stand ten minutes to “draw.” Keep the lid of the pot shut, and set in a warm place, but do not let it boil. Fill up with as much boiling water as you will need, and send hot to the table, after pouring into a heated china or silver pot.
The bane of tea in many households is unboiled water. It can never extract the flavor as it should, although it steep for hours. The kettle should not only steam, but bubble and puff in a hard boil before you add water from it to the tea-leaves.
Boiling after the tea is made, injures the flavor either by deadening or making it rank and “herby.”
The English custom of making tea upon the breakfast or tea-table is fast gaining ground in America. It is at once the best and prettiest way of preparing the beverage.
Put on the water boiling hot. Rub the chocolate smooth in a little cold water, and stir into the boiling water. Boil twenty minutes; add the milk and boil ten minutes more, stirring frequently. You can sweeten upon the fire or in the cups.
Wet the shells or nibs up with a little cold water; add to the boiling, and cook one hour and a half; strain, put in the milk, let it heat almost to boiling, and take from the fire.
This is excellent for invalids.
Make as you do chocolate—only boil nearly an hour before you add the milk, afterward heatingalmostto boiling. Sweeten to taste.
1 pint fresh milk and the same ofboilingwater. Sweeten to taste.
Put the berries in a stone jar, pour the vinegar over them, add the sugar, and pound the berries to a paste with a wooden pestle, or mash with a spoon. Let them stand in the sun four hours; strain and squeeze out all the juice, and put in the brandy. Seal up in bottles; lay them on their sides in the cellar, and cover with sawdust.
Stir two tablespoonfuls into a tumbler of ice-water when you wish to use it.
Put the raspberries into a stone vessel and mash them to a pulp. Add cider-vinegar—no specious imitation, but the genuine article—enough to cover it well. Stand in the sun twelve hours, and all night in the cellar. Stir up well occasionally during this time. Strain, and put as many fresh berries in the jar as you took out; pour the strained vinegar over them; mash and set in the sun all day. Strain a second time next day. To each quart of this juice allow
Place over a gentle fire and stir until the sugar is dissolved. Heat slowly to boiling, skimming off the scum, and as soon as it fairly boils take off and strain. Bottle while warm, and seal the corks with sealing wax, or bees’-wax and rosin.
A most refreshing and pleasant drink.
Is made in the same manner as raspberry, allowing 5½ lbs. sugar to 3 pints of juice and water.
Tie the spices in thin muslin bags; boil juice, sugar, and spices together fifteen minutes, skimming well; add the brandy; set aside in a closely covered vessel to cool. When perfectly cold, strain out the spices, and bottle, sealing the corks.
Let it stand twelve hours, stirring now and then. Strain well, pressing out all the juice. Add
Boil five minutes, and set away to ferment in a stone jar, with a cloth thrown lightly over it. When it has done fermenting, rack it off carefully, not to disturb the lees. Bottle and cork down well.
Stir well and let it stand two days. Strain through a double flannel bag; mash a second supply of berries, equal in quantity to the first, and cover with this liquid. Steep two days more; strain; add
and boil five minutes. Let it ferment in lightly covered jars; rack off and bottle.
This is said to be very good for scrofula.
3 quarts of strawberries, mashed and strained. To the juice (there should be about a quart, if the berries are ripe and fresh) add
Stir up well and ferment in a clean, sweet cask, leaving the bung out. When the working subsides close tightly, or rack off into bottles.
This is said by those who have tasted it to be very good.
Pick, stem, mash, and strain the currants, which should be very ripe.
Stir all together long and well; put into a clean cask, leaving out the bung, and covering the whole with a bit of lace or mosquito net. Let it ferment about four weeks—rack off when it is quite still, and bottle.
Stir until the sugar is melted, then put in the grated peel of a lemon, and heat until blood-warm. Add a tablespoonful of brewers’ yeast; stir well and bottle, wiring down the corks. It will be fit for use in four days.
This is a refreshing and healthful beverage mixed with pounded ice in hot weather.
Put all into a stone jar, and stir every day for a week. Strain, then, and bottle it. It will be fit for use in ten days.
Pare the yellow peel from the lemons, and, unless youmean to use the Sherbet immediately, leave it out. It gives a bitter taste to the sugar if left long in it. Slice and squeeze the lemons upon the sugar, add a very little water, and let them stand fifteen minutes. Then fill up with water; ice well, stir, and pour out.
Is made in the same manner, substituting oranges for lemons.
The strawberries should be fresh and ripe. Crush to a smooth paste; add the rest of the ingredients (except the sugar), and let it stand three hours. Strain over the sugar, squeezing the cloth hard; stir until the sugar is dissolved; strain again and set in ice for two hours or more before you use it.
This receipt was given me by a gentleman of the oldschool, a connoisseur in the matter of beverages as of cookery. “Tell your readers,” he writes, “that better punch was never brewed.” I give receipt and message together.
You must ice abundantly—or, if you prefer, freeze.
Take a wide-mouthed quart pitcher and lay the sliced fruit in order at the bottom, sprinkling sugar and pounded ice between the layers. Cover with sugar and ice, and let all stand together five minutes. Add then two tumblers of water and all the sugar, and stir well to dissolve this. Fill the pitcher nearly full of pounded ice, pour in the wine, and stir up from the bottom until the ingredients are thoroughly mixed. In pouring it out put a slice of each kind of fruit in each goblet before adding the liquid.
It is best sucked through a straw or glass tube.
Make as above, substituting a little rose-water for the pineapple, and squeezing out the juice of the orange and lemon, instead of putting in the slices. Sprinkle nutmeg on the top.
This forms a delicious and refreshing drink for invalids.
Cover the sliced lemon with sugar and let it stand ten minutes. Add the water; stir hard for a whole minute, and pour in the wine. Put pounded ice in each glass before filling with the mixture.
Stir the yolks into the milk with the sugar, which should first be beaten with the yolks. Next comes the brandy. Lastly whip in the whites of three eggs.
Crush the cherries to pieces by pounding in a deepwooden vessel with a smooth billet of wood. Beat hard enough to crack all the stones. Put into a deep stone jar, mix in the sugar well, and cover with the whiskey. Shake around briskly and turn into a demijohn. Cork tightly and let it stand a month, shaking it every day, and another month without touching it. Then strain off and bottle.
It is better a year than six months old.
If the Maltese cross appears but seldom in the section devoted to drinks, it is because most of my information respecting their manufacture is second-hand. In my own family they are so little used, except in sickness, that I should not dare to teach others, upon my own authority, how to prepare them. Indeed, the temptation I felt to omit many of them reminded me of a remark made, introductory of preserves, by one of the “Complete Housewives,” who, all five together, drove me to the verge of an attack of congestion of the brain, before I had been a housekeeper for a week. Said this judicious lady:—“Preserves of all kinds are expensive and indigestible, and therefore poisonous.Therefore”—again—“I shall not give directions for their manufacture, except to remark that barberries stewed in molasses are economical, and a degree less hurtful than most others of that class of compounds.”
Then I reflected that I might, upon the same principle, exclude all receipts in which cocoanut is used, because it is rank poison to me; while a dear friend of mine would as soon touch arsenic as an egg. A large majority of the beverages I have named are highly medicinal, and deserve a place in the housekeeper’s calendar on that account. Many, so far from being hurtful, are beneficial to a weak stomach or a system suffering under general debility.None which contain alcohol in any shape should be used daily, much less semi- or tri-daily by a well person.
This principle reduced to practice would prove the preventive ounce which would cure, all over the land, the need for Temperance Societies and Inebriate Asylums.
The sick-chamber should be the most quiet and cheerful in the house—a sacred isle past which the waves of domestic toil and solicitude glide silently. This is not an easy rule to obey. Whoever the invalid may be, whether the mother, father, or the sweet youngling of the flock, the foundations of the household seem thrown out of course while the sickness lasts. You may have good servants and kind friends to aid you, but the hitch in the machinery is not to be smoothed out by their efforts. The irregularity does not annoy you: you do not notice it if the attack be severe or dangerous. All other thoughts are swallowed up in the all-absorbing, ever-present alarm. You count nothing an inconvenience that can bring present relief, or possible healing to the beloved one; disdain for yourself rest or ease while the shadow hangs above the pillow crushed by the helpless head. But when it passes, when the first transport of thankfulness has subsided into an abiding sense of safety, the mind swings back to the accustomed pivot, and your eyes seem to be suddenly unbound. You find, with dismay, that the children have run wild, and the comfort of the whole family been neglected during your confinement to the post of most urgent duty; with displeasure, that the servants have, as you consider, taken advantage of your situation to omit this task, and to slur over that;—in fine, that nothing has been done well, and so many things left altogether undone,that you are “worried out of your senses”—a phrase that too often signifies, out of your temper.
And it is just at this juncture—when you are called to fifty points of attention and labor at once, and are on the verge of despair at the conglomeration worse conglomerated arising before you; fidgetting to pick up dropped stitches in the web you were wont to keep so even—that the invalid becomes most exacting. “Unreasonable,” you name it to yourself, even though it be John himself who calls upon you every third minute for some little office of loving-kindness; who wants to be amused and fed and petted, and made generally comfortable as if he were a six-months-old baby; who never remembers that you must be wearied out with watching and anxiety, and that everything below-stairs is going to destruction for the want of a balance-wheel. The better he loves you the more apt is he to fancy that nobody but you can do anything for him; the more certain to crave something which no one else knows how to prepare. And when you have strained muscle and patience alittlefurther to get it ready, and with prudent foresight made enough to last for several meals, it is more than probable that his fickle taste will suggest something entirely different for “next time.” “Just for a change, you know, dear. One gets so tired of eating the same thing so often!”
He might be more considerate—less childish—you think, turning away that he may not see your change of countenance. When you have taken so much pains to suit him exactly! It is harder yet when he refuses to do more than taste the delicacy you hoped would tempt him.
“It is very nice, I suppose, my love,” says the poor fellow, with the air of a martyr. “But it does not taste right, somehow. Maybe the children can dispose of it. IfI had a lemon ice, or some wine jelly such as my mother used to make, I am sure I could relish it. I always did detest sick peoples’ diet!”
If he is very much shaken as to nerves, he will be likely to say, “messes.”
“I am fairly wild!” said a loving wife and mother, and thrifty housekeeper, to me one day, when I called to see her.
She had just nursed her husband and three children through the influenza. All had been down with it at once. That form of demoniacal possession is generally conducted upon the wholesale principle. One of her servants had left in disgust at the increased pressure of work; the weather was rainy, blowy, raw; the streets were muddy, and there was no such thing as keeping steps and halls clean, while the four invalids were cross as only toothache or influenza can make human beings.
“I am fairly wild!” said the worthy creature, with tears in her eyes. “I cannot snatch a minute, from morning until night, to put things straight, and yet I am almost tired to death! I was saying to myself as you came in, that I wouldn’t try any longer. I would just sit still until the dirt was piled up to my chin, andthen I would get upon the table!”
How often I have thought of her odd speech since! sometimes with a smile—more frequently with a sigh. But with all my pity for the nurse and housekeeper, I cannot conceal from myself—I would not forget, or let you forget for a moment—the truth that the sick one is the greater sufferer. It is never pleasant to be laid upon the shelf. The resting-place—falsely so-called—is hard and narrow and uneven enough, even when the tramp of the outer world does not jar the sore and jaded frame; when there is no apparent need for the sick person to be uponhis feet, and for aught that others can see, or he can say, he might just as well stay where he is for a month or two. But when, the rack of pain having been removed, the dulled perceptions of the mind re-awaken to sensitiveness, and there comes to his ear the bugle-call of duty—sharp, imperative;—when every idle moment speaks to him of a slain opportunity, and the no longer strong man shakes his fetters with piteous cries against fate, do not despise, or be impatient with him. He is feverish and inconsiderate and capricious because he is not himself. You see only the poor wreck left by the demon as he tore his way out of him at the Divine command. Gather it up lovingly in your arms, and nurse it back to strength and comeliness. The sick should always be the chief object of thought and care with all in the household.’ If need be, let the dirt lie chin-deep everywhere else, so long as it is kept out of that one room. There be jealous in your care that nothing offends sight and smell.
There should benosmell in a sick-chamber. To avoid this, let in the air freely and often. Cologne-water will not dispel a foul odor, while disinfectants are noisome in themselves. Bathe the patient as frequently and thoroughly as prudence will allow, and change his clothing, with the bed-linen, every day. Do not keep the medicines where he can see them, nor ever let him witness the mixing of that which he is to swallow. So soon as his meals are over, remove every vestige of them from the room. Even a soiled spoon, lying on table or bureau, may offend his fastidious appetite. Cover the stand or waiter from which he eats with a spotless napkin, and serve his food in your daintiest ware.
My heart softens almost to tearfulness when I recall the hours, days, weeks, I have myself spent in the chamber of languishing, and the ingenuity of tenderness that, from mybabyhood, has striven to cheat the imprisonment of weariness, and make me forget pain and uselessness. The pretty surprises daily invented for my entertainment; the exceeding nicety with which they were set out before me; the loving words that nourished my spirit when the body was faint unto death,—these are events, not slight incidents, in the book of memory. When I cease to be grateful for them, or to learn from them how to minister unto others of the like consolation, may my heart forget to beat, my right hand lose her cunning!
Do not ask your charge what he would like to eat to-day. He will, of a surety, sicken with the effort at selection, and say, “Nothing!” But watch attentively for the slightest intimation of a desire for any particular delicacy, and if you are assured that it cannot hurt him, procure it, if you can, without letting him guess at your intention. Feed him lightly and often, never bringing more into his sight than he may safely eat. A big bowl of broth or jelly will either tempt him to imprudence, or discourage him. “Am I to be burdened with all that?” cries the affrighted stomach, and will have none of it. While he is very weak, feed him with your own hand, playfully, as you would a child, talking cheerily of something besides his food, and coaxing him into taking the needed nutriment as only a wife and mother can, or as nobody but John could beguile you to effort in the same direction.
Study all pleasant and soothing arts to while away the time, and keep worry of every kind away from him. A trifle at which you can laugh will be a burden to the enfeebled mind and body, and he has nothing to do but lie still and roll it over until it swells into a mountain. When he can be removed without danger, let him have his meals in another room, changing the air of each when he is not in it. Every one who has suffered from long sicknessknows the peculiar loathing attendant upon the idea that all food is tainted with the atmosphere of the chamber in which it is served, and if eaten in bed, tastes of the mattress and pillows. The room and all in it may be clean, fresh, and sweet, but the fancy cannot be dismissed. And it is wiser to humor than to reason with most sick fancies.
A hired nurse is a useful, often a necessary thing, but while you are upon your feet, and mistress of your own house, delegate to no one the precious task of catering for the dear sufferer. It is an art in itself. I hope a practical knowledge of it will be taught in Women’s Medical Colleges, when they are an established “institution” with us.
I wish it were proper to record here the name of one of the kindest and best family physicians I ever knew, who had charge of my not very firm health during my girlhood. He owed much—I suppose no one ever knew really how much—of his success in his practice to his tact and skill in devising palatable and suitable nourishment for his patients. I well remember the childish pleasure with which I would hear him say when the violence of the attack had passed—“Now, my dear child, we must begin with kitchen physic!” and the glow of amused expectation with which I used to watch him, as, with an arch show of mystery, he would beckon my mother from the room to receive his “prescription;” the impatience with which I awaited the result of the conference, and the zest with which I ate whatever he ordered.
If I could have persuaded him to manage this department of my work, it would win for me the degree of M.D. with a new meaning—Mistress of Dietetics.
Put into a jar without a drop of water; cover tightly, and set in a pot of cold water. Heat gradually to a boil, and continue this steadily for three or four hours, until the meat is like white rags, and the juice all drawn out. Season with salt to taste, and when cold, skim. The patient will often prefer this ice-cold to hot. Serve with Albert biscuit or thin “wafers,” unleavened, made by a receipt given under the head ofBread.
Boil the meat, unsalted, in the water, keeping it closely covered, until it falls to pieces. Strain it out, skim, add the soaked barley or rice; simmer half an hour, stirring often; stir in the seasoning and the milk, and simmer five minutes after it heats up well, taking care it does not burn.
Serve hot with cream crackers.
Is excellent made in the same manner as mutton, cracking the bones well before you put in the fowl.
Boil the veal and water in a covered saucepan very slowly until reduced to one quart of liquid; strain, skim, season with salt, and stir in the soaked sago (having previously warmed it by setting for half an hour in a saucepan of boiling water, and stirring from time to time.) Simmer half an hour, taking care it does not burn; beat in the cream and eggs; give one good boil up, and turn out.
This is excellent for consumptives.
Stew the beef until it falls to pieces; strain it out, salt the liquid and stir in the sago. Simmer gently one hour, stirring often. Add the beaten yolks: boil up once and serve.
This is a strengthening and nice soup. Eat with dry toast.
Wet the arrowroot in a little cold water, and rub smooth. Then stir into the hot, which should be on the fire and actually boiling at the time, with the sugar already melted in it. Stir until clear, boiling steadily all the while, and add the lemon. Wet a cup in cold water, and pour in the jelly to form. Eat cold with sugar and cream flavored with rose-water.
An invaluable preparation in cases where wine is forbidden.
An excellent corrective to weak bowels.
Boil until it thickens well, stirring all the while. Eat cold with cream, flavored with rose-water, and sweetened to taste.
May be substituted for arrowroot in any of the foregoingreceipts, when you have soaked it an hour in water poured over it cold, and gradually warmed by setting the cup containing it in hot water. Boil rather longer than you do the arrowroot.
Put the sago in the water while cold, and warm by setting in a saucepan of boiling water. Stir often, and let it soften and heat for one hour. Thenboilten minutes, stirring all the while; add the sugar, wine, and lemon, and pour into a bowl or mould to cool. Eat warm, if preferred. The wine and nutmeg should be omitted if the patient be feverish.
Wet the meal and flour to a smooth paste, and stir into the water while it is actually boiling. Boil slowly one hour, stirring up well from the bottom. Season with salt to taste. Some sweeten it, but I like it better with a little pepper added to the salt.
If a cathartic is desired, omit the wheat flour altogether.
Is made in the same way.
Stir in the rice-paste and boil ten minutes, stirring all the while. Season with sugar and nutmeg, and eat warm with cream.
You may use Indian meal instead of rice-flour, which is an astringent. In this case, boil an hour.
Boilthree hours steadily. Turn out the flour ball and dry in the hot sun all day; or, if you need it at once, dry in a moderate oven without shutting the door.
Grate a tablespoonful for a cupful of boiling milk and water (half and half). Wet up the flour with a very little cold water, stir in and boil five minutes. Put in a little salt.
Soak the tapioca in the water four hours. Set withina saucepan of boiling water; pour more lukewarm water over the tapioca if it has absorbed too much of the liquid, and heat, stirring frequently. If too thick after it begins to clear, put in a very little boiling water. When quite clear, put in the sugar and lemon. Pour into moulds. Eat cold, with cream flavored with rose-water and sweetened.
Soak the tapioca four hours, and stir, with the water in which it was soaked, into the boiling milk. Sweeten and boil slowly, stirring all the while, fifteen minutes. Take off, flavor and pour into moulds.
Eat cold with cream. Wash tapioca well before soaking.
Mix the arrowroot paste with the boiling milk; stir three minutes; take from the fire and whip in the egg and sugar. Boil two minutes longer, flavor with vanilla or rose-water, and pour into moulds.
Boil ten minutes, stirring all the while, and flavor to taste. Eat warm with cream.
Simmer slowly half an hour. Eat warm.
Is made in the same way.
When the rice is nearly done, turn off the water, add the milk and simmer—taking care it does not scorch—until the milk boils up well. Salt, and beat in the egg.
Eat warm with cream, sugar, and nutmeg.
Split the crackers, and pile in a bowl in layers, salt and sugar scattered among them. Cover with boiling water and set on the hearth, with a close top over the bowl, for at least one hour. The crackers should be almost clear and soft as jelly, but not broken.
Eat from the bowl, with more sugar sprinkled in if you wish it. If properly made, this panada is very nice.
Pare some slices of stale baker’s bread and toast nicely, without burning. Pile in a bowl, sprinkling sugar and a very little salt between; cover well withboilingwater, and set, with a tight lid upon the top, in a pan of boiling water. Simmer gently, until the contents of the bowl are like jelly. Eat warm with powdered sugar and nutmeg.
Heat slowly in a covered vessel, and let it simmer until the meat is in white rags and the liquid reduced one half. Strain and press, first through a cullender, then through a coarse cloth. Salt to taste, and pepper, if you think best; return to the fire, and simmer five minutes longer. Skim when cool. Give to the patient cold—just from the ice—with unleavened wafers. Keep on the ice. You can make into sandwiches by putting the jelly between thin slices of bread spread lightly with butter.
Boil the feet to shreds; strain the liquor through adouble muslin bag; season to taste, and set by for use, as you need it. Warm by the small quantity, allowing to each cupful a beaten egg and two tablespoonfuls of milk. Give a good boil up to cook these, and serve “with thin, crisp toast. If the patient can take it, a dash of lemon-juice improves the broth.
Cover closely, and let them steep until cold. Strain the water, sweeten to taste, and put a piece of ice in each glassful. If the physician thinks it safe, add a little lemon-juice.
Pare and quarter the apple, but do not core it. Put it on the fire in a tin or porcelain saucepan with the water, and boil, closely covered, until the apple stews to pieces. Strain the liquorat once, pressing the apple hard in the cloth. Strain this again through a finer bag, and set away to cool. Sweeten with white sugar, and ice for drinking.
It is a refreshing and palatable drink.
Beat up well for a fever-patient.
Wild cherry or blackberry jelly is excellent, prepared in like manner for those suffering with summer complaint.
Steep three hours in a covered pitcher. If too thick, put in cold water with the lemon-juice and sugar. Ice for drinking.
It is admirable for colds.
Break the bark into bits, pour boiling water over it, cover and let it infuse until cold. Sweeten, ice, and take for summer disorders, or add lemon-juice and drink for a bad cold.
Boil a large juicy pippin in a quart of water, and when it has broken to pieces strain off the water. While it is still boiling-hot, add a glass of fine old whiskey, a little lemon-juice, and sweeten to taste.
Take hot at bed-time for influenza.
I have known very sick patients to be kept alive for days at a time by this mixture, and nothing else, until Nature could rally her forces. Give very cold with ice.
Is made by the preceding receipt, with an egg beaten very light with the sugar, and stirred in before the brandy is added.
Do not strain, and if it thicken too much, add cold water.
Excellent for feverish colds and all pulmonary troubles.
Soak the washed moss in a very little cold water; stir into the boiling, and simmer until it is dissolved. Sweeten, flavor, and strain into moulds. You may use two glasses of cider instead of one of wine for a fever-patient, putting in a little less water.
Good for colds, and very nourishing.
Is made in the same way, using boiling milk instead of water, and leaving out the lemons and wine. Flavor with vanilla or rose-water.
Pare off the crust from stale light bread; slice half an inch thick and toastquickly. Graham bread is very nice toasted.
Butter lightly if the patient can eat butter.
Toast as just directed; dip each slice, as it comes from the toaster, in boiling water; butter, salt slightly, and lay in a deep covered dish. Have ready in a saucepan enough boiling milk to cover all well. When your slices are packed, salt this very slightly; melt in it a bit of butter and pour over them. Cover closely and let it stand five minutes before using it. It is excellent when made of Graham bread.
This is a good dish for a family tea as well as for invalids.
Mix good, dry flour to a stiff dough with milk; salt, and roll out thin. Cut into round cakes and roll these again almost as thin as letter-paper. Bake very quickly.
They may also be mixed with water. These are very simple and palatable, and go well with all kinds of broth, especially oyster-soup.
Choose the tenderest cuts and broil over a clear hot fire with your wisest skill. Let the steak be rare—the chops well-done. Salt and pepper, lay between twohotplates three minutes, and serve to your patient. If he is veryweak, do not let him swallow anything except the juice, when he has chewed the meat well.
The essence of rare beef—roast or broiled—thus expressed, is considered by some physicians to be more strengthening than beef-tea, prepared in the usual manner.
One-third wine or porter mixed with two-thirds cold water. Sweeten, grate nutmeg on the top, and ice.
Serve dry toast with it. Taken hot, it is good for a sudden cold.
1 large glass pale wine, poured in when the milk is scalding hot. Boil up once, remove from the fire and let it cool. Do not stir it after the wine is put in. When the curd forms, draw off the whey and sweeten.
Are made by infusing the dried or green leaves and stalks in boiling water, and letting them stand until cold. Sweeten to taste.
Sage tea, sweetened with honey, is good for a sore throat, used as a gargle, with a small bit of alum dissolved in it.
Catnip tea is the best panacea for infant ills, in the way of cold and colic, known to nurses.
Pennyroyal tea will often avert the unpleasant consequences of a sudden check of perspiration, or the evils induced by ladies’ thin shoes.
Chamomile and gentian teas are excellent tonics taken either cold or hot.
The tea made from blackberry-root is said to be goodfor summer disorders. That from green strawberry leaves is an admirable and soothing wash for a cankered mouth.
Tea of parsley-root scraped and steeped in boiling water, taken warm, will often cure strangury and kindred affections, as will that made from dried pumpkin-seed.
Tansy and rue teas are useful in cases of colic, as are fennel seeds steeped in brandy.
A tea of damask-rose leaves, dry or fresh, will usually subdue any simple case of summer complaint in infants.
Mint tea, made from the green leaves, crushed in cold or hot water and sweetened, is palatable and healing to the stomach and bowels.
Some sprigs of green mint, slightly bruised in a tumbler with a teaspoon. Put in a generous teaspoonful of white sugar; add gradually, stirring and rubbing lightly, enough water to fill the glass three-quarters of the way to the top. Fill up with pounded ice; stir hard; pour into a larger glass that you may shake up well, and put in two tablespoonfuls fine brandy.
This is called a “hail-storm julep.”
Dissolve three or four lumps of loaf sugar in a glass of ice-water, and take a teaspoonful every few minutes for a “tickling in the throat,” or a hacking cough. Keep it ice-cold.
A simple, but often an efficacious remedy.
All food intended for infants should be very thoroughly cooked. The numerous varieties of farinaceous substances—biscotine,farina, rice-flour, arrowroot, etc., however nourishing may be their properties when rightly prepared, are harsh and drastic when underdone. Unless you have a nurse whom you know for yourself to be faithful and experienced, always superintend the cooking of baby’s food. It can do no harm—it may prevent much—if you examine it every day to see that it is right as to quality and quantity. Do not aim at variety in this branch of your profession. Confine a child under three years of age to a very limited bill of fare. His stomach is too delicate an organ to be tampered with. Let milk—scalded or boiled, as a rule—be the staple, mixed with farina, barley, or something of the sort. Let him munch Graham bread and light crackers freely. Remove far from him hot bread and griddle-cakes. When he has cut his carnivorous teeth, Nature says—“This creature wants meat.” And Nature’s supply is seldom in advance of the demand. If he did not need what the teeth are designed to chew, you may be sure they would not be given him. Grant him the novel food sparingly and with discretion as to kind. Rare beef and well-boiled mutton, tender roast or boiled chicken and turkey are safe. Withhold fried meats of every description. Do not let him touch veal or pork in any shape. Mince the meat very finely to save his digestive apparatus all unnecessary work. Mealy old potatoes—nevernew or waxy—young onions, boiled in two waters; fresh asparagus, green peas, and dry sweet potatoes should suffice for vegetables, with, of course, rice and hominy. For dessert, once in a while, a simple custard, a taste of home-made ice-cream, rice and farina puddings, Graham hasty pudding; the inner part of a well-roasted apple, and, in their season, ripe peaches and apples, will not harm him, taken in moderation, if he be well and strong.
Pare the fruit always.The skin of an apple is as bad for him as a bit of your kid gloves would be; that of a grape more indigestible than sole-leather. Raisins—“skins and all”—are unfit for anybody to eat. Pulp and pits, they are poisonous for baby. Ditto, pickles, pastry, and preserves. Ditto, most kinds of cake and all sorts of fruit puddings.
Give him light suppers, and put him to bed early in a dark room. He will not grow better in a glare of artificial light than will your camellias and azalias.
Always see for yourself that his last waking thoughts are pleasant; that he shuts his eyes at peace with the world and in love with you; that his feet are warm, his stomach easy, and his body not overloaded with blankets and quilts; also, that the nursery is clean and freshly aired. These are better prescriptions for sound slumber than all the old wives’ fables of the excellent properties of that pernicious drug—Soothing Syrup.
Stir the farina into the boiling water (slightlysalted) in the farina kettle (i. e., one boiler set within another, the latter filled with hot water). Boil fifteen minutes, stirring constantly until it is well-thickened. Then add the milk, stirring it in gradually, and boil fifteen minutes longer. Sweeten, and give to the child so soon as it is cool enough.
You may make enough in the morning to last all day;warming it up with a little hot milk as you want it. Keep in a cold place. Some of the finest children I have ever seen were reared upon this diet. Do not get it too sweet, and cook it well. Be sure the farina is sweet and dry.
It sometimes happens that milk disagrees with a delicate infant so seriously that it is necessary to substitute some other article of diet for a few days. I have known barley water to be used, in such cases, with great success.
Soak the barley half an hour in a very little lukewarm water, and stir, without draining, into the boiling water, salted very slightly. Simmer one hour, stirring often, and strain before sweetening.
Stir the arrowroot paste into the salted boiling water; stir and boil five minutes or until it is clear; add the sweetened milk, and boil ten minutes, slowly, still stirring.
If the child has fever, or cannot digest milk, substitute hot water for it. It is, however, a dangerous experiment to forbid milk altogether for an infant. I should ratherdiminish the quantity, putting in, say, one-third or one-fourth as much as the receipt names, and filling up with boiling water.
Simmer the rice half an hour; then boil it until it is a smooth paste, and the water is reduced one-half. Strain through double tarlatan, sweeten, and give to the child.
This is an admirable preparation for an infant suffering with weakness of the bowels. If there is no fever, you may put one-third part milk, boiled with the rice. Give a few spoonfuls every hour or half hour.
Crumble the bread into the boiled milk, sweeten, and when cool enough, feed to the child with a spoon.
Boil the soaked grits in the quart of water one hour, stirring up often; add the milk and boil half an hour longer. Sweeten to taste, and if the child is well, pour cream over it. This is designed for children over a year old. It is slightly cathartic; especially if the milk be omitted, and is most useful in regulating the bowels. When this can be done without drugs, it is far better.
Boil one hour, stirring often. While hot, mix some soft with new milk, sweeten to taste and feed to baby with a spoon.
This is also relaxing to the bowels, and should not be given if the child is disposed to summer complaint.
Stir the wet flour into the boiling water, slightly salted. Boil fifteen minutes, stirring almost constantly. Add the milk and cook, after it has come again to a boil, ten minutes longer. Give with sugar and milk for breakfast.
Eaten with cream, nutmeg, and powdered sugar, this is a good plain dessert for grown people as well as children.
Is made as above, substituting two heaping tablespoonfuls rice flour for the Graham.
Boil the paste in the hot water twenty minutes; add the milk and cook ten minutes more, stirring often.
Eat with sugar and milk, stirred in while hot.
Boil two hours; stirring often with a wooden spoon or a stick.
To be eaten hot with milk and sugar.
This is perhaps the safest substitute for the “good milk from one cow,” which few mothers in town can procure. Keep the can in a cool place and mix according to directions.