"To-day we will begin on the smaller meals," said Mrs. Thorne, one morning. "Those seem trifles light as air after the heavy work we have put on dinners, and as the meals themselves are far from being substantial, we ought not to have to spend very much time or thought on any of them.
"Breakfast comes first, of course. For that you will need to plan for plain, simple dishes only. It would be nice always to have a first course of fruit, but in winter that is really impossible on our tiny income, since it has grown so expensive. In summer I do try and have it, if not every day, at least every other day. Ordinarily I can find some sort of berries in market within my means; and if we lived in the country, Dolly, we could have something from our garden, surely. But in cold weather we either do without or have something twice a week only. Often I find bananas costing only a trifle, perhaps even ten cents a dozen at times, and then I get half a dozen; not more, because probably they are rather too ripe tokeep long or they would not sell for the price. Oranges, too, sometimes come into market in quantities, and then small ones are cheap for a few days. In the autumn I have baked apples frequently. We could have dried fruits, prunes, and peaches, and so on, but neither Dick nor I care for those for breakfast, so I do not get them. But I do get figs, a half-pound at a time, and dates in the same quantity, and stew those and cut them up in a hot cereal; they are a great addition to it. And often we have neither fruit nor cereal, but instead a second course of hot dry toast and home-made orange marmalade.
"The days we do not have fruit we often have cereal first; not always, mind, for we tire of it. Probably we have it three times a week. And here, Dolly, let me give you some advice: look out for the cost of cereals; there is one place where economy counts more than you would believe. Many of the cereals that come in boxes cost fifteen cents or more and do not last any time because they are loose and light; those are what I call extravagant breakfast foods. You must use the plainer things; old-fashioned oatmeal and cracked wheat, bought in bulk, and rice and corn-meal. They go twice, no, three times as far as the things you buy in packages. If you cook the oatmeal and wheat all night they will be really very good and far more wholesome and digestiblethan the same things bought in small amounts and cooked up in twenty minutes. Never fail to cook your cereals a long time, Dolly, no matter how 'instantaneous' they are said to be. As for the corn-meal, that you can have as a second course in fried mush, or you can make up a well salted mush with raisins in it."
"What we had when we were children, plum porridge!" interrupted Dolly, smiling, "and didn't we love it!"
Mary nodded, but went on without pausing. "The rice you can have boiled, with or without raisins in it, for one morning, and another you can have it in little brown cakes or croquettes; or you can make griddle-cakes out of what is left over."
"Do you buy extra cream for these cereals?"
"No, unfortunately we can't do that, though I wish we could. Here again is where I long to keep a cow. But as it is, I take off just a little of the very top of the milk for coffee and the next best I put on for the cereal."
"And do you have muffins and cakes and those hot breads?"
"I think I had better tell you in order just what we have, because you will understand it all better. I arrange breakfast this way:
"First, if it is a day when we are to have fruit,a course of that; afterward a hot dish, a little bacon, an egg apiece, milk toast, or creamed codfish, or some simple thing warmed over that I have in the house; often in summer fried tomatoes on toast. And I have coffee and hot rolls or biscuits or muffins or toast, too.
"That is one sort of breakfast. When we do not have fruit I have cereal, let us say; after that we do not care for anything hot and substantial, as when the first course was an orange, perhaps, so we have the coffee and muffins alone. Or, for a third breakfast, one for cold weather, we begin with a hot dish and coffee and have cakes afterward."
"I am astonished to hear you speak of having eggs as though they were to be bought for nothing. I thought in town they cost too much to eat them up recklessly."
"So they do, in winter; they are often four cents apiece. But you see then I do not use them in cooking, or only occasionally, so even at that price I can afford to have them for breakfast twice a week, and that is the extent of my recklessness."
"But one apiece! My dear Mary, I am positively certain Fred will demand two eggs for his breakfast, if that is all he is to have."
"Then you must scramble the one-apiece with milk and serve them on toast, and he will think he ishaving any number of them. Or, make a parsley omelette of two with a little milk; or have them hard-boiled, chopped, and creamed, on toast or in individual dishes, with crumbs on top; that is an easy way out of the difficulty. He can't count how many eggs there are on the table when they are served mixed up."
"I only hope he won't ask, that's all. Now before you leave Breakfasts tell me whether you ever have waffles."
"Yes, when I have time enough to make them. On Sundays, when Dick does not have to hurry away, we often have them, but not when I have to rush; then I have easy things."
"And don't you have to rise with the lark to get a breakfast of two courses?"
"No, indeed; I put on the things to heat, such as the cooked cereal out of the tireless stove; or I start the corn-meal mush in the kettle and put the muffins in the oven. While they are getting themselves ready I lay the table and make the coffee and put on the butter and set out the fruit, or whatever else I am to have. I pride myself on having everything ready in a very little while."
"So breakfast is just fruit or cereal; muffins or toast; eggs or bacon or codfish, and coffee," said Dolly, as she wrote these down.
"Not quite, for there are a number of small dishes I make out of scraps of this or that, but those will come later on. Many of them will be under luncheon dishes; that is, easy things to make up for any informal meal. But this will do for the present. Now we will begin on Luncheons."
"I think those are so interesting, too; we can have all sorts of good things creamed and in croquettes and salads. Luncheon is such a dainty meal."
"Unfortunately you cannot have exactly everything you can think of, for your luncheons must be made up of odds and ends, usually what is to be found in the refrigerator. Still I agree with you in thinking this an interesting meal, but partly, I am afraid, because I enjoy the fun of getting something out of nothing. You must remember that you cannot use up anything at noon that will do for dinner; the meat and vegetables left over from one night, you know—"
"Yes, of course; you must use them up the next night. But if you cannot have those and cannot buy on purpose, what can you have?"
"There is where the fun comes in; you must study up possible dishes made out of odds and ends. I am not going to try and make a full list for you, but just to begin on, I will give you a few things you can have:
"Macaroni and cheese; cheese fondu; rarebit; milk toast; milk toast with grated cheese on it; French fried toast; vegetable croquettes; fish croquettes; creamed fish; baked potatoes cut in halves and the centres scooped out, mixed with creamed codfish and browned; sweet potatoes treated in the same way, omitting the fish; Spanish toast,—that is, thick tomato, green peppers, and onion, on toast; corn fritters; clam fritters; fruit fritters; creamed peas; croustades of bread filled with any sort of creamed meat, fish, or egg; green peppers filled with similar things; baked beans; fried eggplant; stuffed eggplant; all sorts of salads with mayonnaise; creamed celery, baked; cabbage and cheese baked; rice and tomatoes; rice croquettes; potato croquettes; eggs in every shape when they are cheap; all kinds of griddle-cakes and muffins. As a second course, if you want one: jam and thin crackers; or cookies, or gingerbread, or a bit of cake; left over preserves, or anything sweet that you have at hand; and of course tea or cocoa. You see how easy luncheons are, even if you can't have meat. Really the greatest help in learning to keep house is to understand how to have good luncheons at a small expense; when you know that, you know how to do both breakfast and dinner better."
"Of course if I am all alone I can have a goodluncheon with but little to eat, but you know what a way people in town have of dropping in at that time. Suppose you, for instance, should come in some fine day; I am sure there would not be enough for two people."
"That is one of the places where I hope, my dear, your grandmother's 'faculty' will assert itself. Suppose I do come in, or even a more formidable person than I. If you were planning to have a cup of soup left over from the night before for a first course, thin it with a very little boiling water and a seasoning of kitchen bouquet if it is a stock soup, and add a little milk if it is a cream soup, and serve it in two half-filled cups instead of one full one. There will be enough that way without too much liquidating. If you were to have had a hot dish first, say a little baked corn, put in a beaten egg and a trifle of milk, and it will grow larger at once; or, if you planned to have one plate of string-bean salad, add a hard-boiled egg quartered to the quantity, and there will be enough for two. If you were to have had some little hot thing which you cannot add to, fry some potatoes to go with it, and add 'sippets of toast.' If there is nothing whatever to eat, make an omelette, or open one of the tins of tomatoes you keep for such an occasion and have Spanish toast, and then tea and crackers and cheese and jam; you see it is simple enough."
Dolly groaned. "Yes, simple enough for you, my experienced sister, but most frightfully difficult for me."
"Just in anticipation, Dolly. Really it is great fun to manage, and you will enter into the spirit of the thing when once you get to work. Now we will take Suppers next in order."
"I thought you did not believe in suppers."
"I do not, but I must take into consideration that you may have to live where it is customary to have them instead of dinners at night, and you must possibly conform; or, Fred's work may send him home at noon and again late in the evening; in that case you must also have them. Anyway, the subject is part of your education and you cannot be allowed to skip it.
"You lay the table in the same way as for breakfast and luncheon, with doilies instead of a tablecloth; suppers are really the very same thing as luncheons, you have the same things to eat. You can have a first course of soup, if you like, served always in cups or bouillon bowls, not in soup plates; or, you can begin with a hot dish. In winter time you must have things of the same sort as I planned for luncheon; not meat, but baked corn, or minced clams, or milk toast, or bread croustades, or baked beans; with them go potatoes, possibly, sometimes, or merely tea orcoffee, with hot biscuits or muffins. Then comes a salad, if you choose. In summer I have the main dish for either luncheon or supper of salad, and you can serve mayonnaise or French dressing on them. Here a meat or fish salad comes in if you can afford it; chicken or cold salmon with mayonnaise, or lobster, or whatever you can have easily. Afterward comes the sweet course; or you can omit the salad, as you did the soup, and have the supper consist of the main dish first, with tea or coffee, and the sweet course next and last. It depends on circumstances what you will decide to do. Of course with a heavy dinner in the middle of the day you would have a lighter supper at night; but if you wanted to enlarge the meal for company, you do it by putting on the extra courses.
"For the sweet course you usually have preserves in winter and berries in summer, with cake or cookies or gingerbread. Or, you can have hot gingerbread and American or cream cheese, and no fruit; or you can have first one thing and then the other."
"It seems to me you have a good deal of cheese in your suppers and luncheons. I thought it was considered indigestible."
"Not at all, by those who understand how to use it. Most of the nations of the world live largely on it and have digestions of iron. Do not have it withmeat, but in the place of meat, because it is so hearty. When you put it in a dish and cook it, always put in a tiny pinch of cayenne pepper and one of soda, that makes it perfectly wholesome. When once it is digested it is all solid nourishment, too, and for the money you get more than you can in any other way; so don't be afraid to use it. Cream cheese is always considered easily assimilated, and if you can get some one to make it fresh for you out of country milk you will find it a perfect standby."
"You passed lightly over the subject of cake for supper; don't we have chocolate layer-cakes at all?"
"Dolly, try hard to curb the natural propensity to make chocolate cake which lies in every woman's heart. All girls, I know, consider it the very staff of life, but it isn't; it is an expensive thing to make, and as few men care for it, it is largely wasted on them. Do not make much cake of any sort, and when you do, make up simple little things and have them fresh. Make cookies and gingerbread and drop-cakes and spice-cakes and peanut wafers and such things, and when you are tempted to indulge in a great layer-cake, count up first the ingredients, the butter and sugar and eggs and other things—and refrain."
"I have already written down somewhere in my book, 'Beware of ingredients,'" said Dolly, meekly.
"That is an excellent rule, too: 'Beware of ingredients.' Stick to it, my dear. Now, if you are sure you understand Suppers, we will go on."
"I think I do. Have a hot dish in winter for a main course, and something nice and cold in its place in summer. Have coffee or tea and preserves or shortcake or gingerbread and such things afterward, usually. When you have company, begin with soup, then have the main course, then the salad, and last the sweet. It really seems exactly the same thing as a luncheon."
"So it does, and it is, too. Now we come at last to my hobby; such an interesting hobby, too, Dolly; it is Scraps, or, Left-overs, if you like that better. And here you must study hard, for to my thinking you stand or fall as a housekeeper by your knowledge or ignorance of the subject.
"Of course you know the saying that a French family could live on what an American family throws away. There is something in the saying, though I will not admit it to be entirely true; but it is a fact that a good cook seldom has anything to put in her garbage pail, and it really is horrifying to see what people, especially poor people, do throw out: half-loaves of bread, good-sized bits of vegetables, bones that would have made soup, and lots of other things.
"To begin with bread, save all the odds and endsof that. Make crusts and hard ends into crumbs and sift them well; the half-slices make into bits of toast and use them at once, whenever you find them in the box, before they get very dry. No bit of bread should ever be wasted.
"Then there is fat of all sorts; the grease on top of soups, drippings from meat, bacon fat, everything of that sort is to be saved. Put the strips of fat through the meat-chopper and then put all in a dish with water, cover tightly, and set in the oven and let it cook till the water is gone. Strain it through cheesecloth, put it in a covered pail, and you will always have enough for frying without buying lard. When you use part of it and it gets brown, do not pour it back on the white fat, but put it by itself, and when you have enough cook it up again with boiling water, strain it twice, and it will turn white and as good as before.
"As to bits of meat, I have told you about those; use them up in soufflé or in hash, or any way you can. Some people insist that there are some things that one cannot properly use, such as an end of steak, but I have yet to find the bit of meat that is not good for something. The steak ends I pour boiling water over and scrape till the charred part disappears, and they make either hash of some sort or soufflé. If you cannot do any better, at least put the bits ofmeat into soup stock, and of course all the bones you have go with it.
"As to bits of fish, those go into patties or croustades; the patties are really baking-powder biscuits. I just cut out the middle, without opening them, and there is a perfect shell. I put a little butter inside, heat it well, and fill it with creamed fish or anything else. The croustades are one of the most useful things of all for serving left-overs. To make those you take slices of bread three inches thick and cut them into rounds with a biscuit-cutter; on top you mark a smaller circle. Dip each one in milk; drop it into hot fat and let it turn golden brown; fill it with creamed chicken or meat or fish or peas. A platter of croustades is a really attractive dish and as good to eat as it is to look at. If ever I have a round loaf of bread that I can spare I make that into a large croustade, too, especially for company. I cut out the middle till it is a good-sized shell, butter the inside, and brown it in the oven, and then fill it with creamed salmon, or anything else. Creamed oysters are delicious in it. That does not properly come under left-overs, but as it belongs with croustades I put it there, anyway.
"As to eggs, begin by saving all their shells and washing them; they do for clearing coffee. Of course you must not break a fresh egg for that. Then whenyou make mayonnaise out of the yolk of one, always make up a dish calling for one white, perhaps a little cake; or, whip it, sweeten with powdered sugar, mix with currant jelly, make it very cold, and serve it in two small glasses as currant fluff. It does for dessert after a heavy dinner. If you use the egg white first, do not let the yolk dry out, but stir it with a little cold water and you can keep it over a day or so till you need it; or make it up at once into mayonnaise, and do not put water in it.
"Vegetables, as you know, I have already told you a good deal about. Peel the potatoes carefully. When you have only a little bit of carrot or turnip, mix this with cooked peas; or put all three together and cream them. Put a slice of beet in corned beef hash; a spoonful of peas goes into an omelette; a carrot can be diced and added to beef stew; celery tops go into soup; mixed vegetables are to be made up into vegetable croquettes; cooked potato makes potato soup, and so on. Never let so much as a single pea escape your watchful care. Even in slicing an onion, remember not to cut through the middle, but to begin at one end, to keep it fresh for next time, and so on till it gradually disappears.
"Now, the worst of economies is yet to come, for to my mind utilizing bits of cold puddings and such things is most difficult. If you feel you must not eatup such left-overs at luncheon, and of course you ought to feel so, and yet there is not really enough to make a second dessert as it is, you have to face a problem at once. But here are a few things I have learned.
"Suppose you have a very little rice pudding left; mix some jam with it, beat in it the yolk of one egg, pour it into two little moulds, and bake them in a pan of water. They will come out nice little shapes of fruity rice, quite different from the previous pudding. Corn-starch left-overs can be thickened by reheating and adding more corn-starch; when it is all smooth, pour this into a baking-powder can to harden, then turn it out, slice it, dip each piece in crumbs, egg, and crumbs again, and fry in deep fat; they grow soft in the middle and are very good indeed; the French call them fried cream. Treat bread pudding in the same way, and serve with a nice sauce. When you make gingerbread, put some raisins and spice into part and bake separately. When you want this half, steam it up and serve as a fruit pudding with a hot sauce. You can crumb up plain gingerbread that is stale, add a little molasses to keep it together, and raisins and spice, and steam it that way, too. It is surprisingly like a plum pudding.
"A spoonful or two of boiled custard can be utilized as sauce for another pudding. Tapioca pudding canhave canned fruit with plenty of juice put with it; it can be cooked over again and this time served cold, perhaps in a mould. In fact nearly everything but a small bit of pie can be made over to seem unlike itself. Pie, my dear, I really think you must eat for lunch, provided there is but one small piece."
"Fred can have it for dinner," said Dolly, complacently. "All men love pie, and I can have coffee only, for once."
"So you can; or, if you have saved all the bits of pie-crust, as, of course, you should have done, you can have a little tartlet in place of the pie. I always make up some tartlets, anyway, when I make crust, and when they are filled with peach jam with perhaps a dot of cream on top, they make an excellent dessert. This reminds me to say that a half-can of fruit or left-over cranberry sauce can be put into a pie-crust shell with strips of crust over the top; they make very good pies."
"I should think you could use left-overs of canned fruit for pudding sauces."
"Bright girl! So you can. Chop up the fruit and heat the whole together; it would be especially good on cottage pudding."
"I hate cottage pudding; I shall never have it."
"Oh, yes, you will; put grated chocolate in it and you won't know what it is. But don't divert myattention, for I am not done yet with left-overs. There is orange peel, for one thing. Keep all the orange skins you have and throw them into a crock of salt and water and let them stand till you have enough to make candying worth while. Then drain them and wash them well, and put them in cold water and bring to a boil; repeat this till the water is perfectly fresh. When the skins are transparent take them out, put two or three together and cut them in tiny little strips; cook these in thick sugar and water syrup, only enough to cover them, and dry in the oven with the door open. Sprinkle with granulated sugar, put them in a fruit-can with a cover, and they will keep for years, and be just the thing to put in fruit-cake or plain bread pudding or any such thing. Lemon peel and grapefruit peel are good, too, and quite as useful.
"When you have a little syrup left after you have taken out spiced peaches or pears from a can, stew peeled and quartered apples gently in it and serve them without canning. They will be almost as good as the peaches were; and sometimes stew prunes a little, till you can slip the stone out, and put these in the syrup. You can't guess how good they are, and how they help out a plain meal."
"And watermelon rind—don't you do something with that?"
"Yes, make that up into sweet pickles, too."
Dolly suddenly threw down her pencil and snatched off her apron.
"Mary, there are the Cliffords coming around the corner. I know they are coming to lunch, too!"
"Of course they are, and we have scarcely anything to give them. Let me see." The refrigerator yielded up some outer pieces of celery, a good-sized wedge of cheese, eggs, and milk.
Before the door-bell had rung, Dolly was told to lay the table. After she had done that she was to come into the parlor and entertain the guests while her sister excused herself and transformed the cheese into a rarebit, and the celery, with hard-boiled eggs and mayonnaise, into salad. The meal was to conclude with thin crackers and jam and tea.
"And plenty for them, too," said Dolly, ungraciously, as the footsteps sounded in the hall. "I did not want them to interrupt my lesson."
"That was the end, anyway," said her sister, laughing; "and you can't convince me you are so interested as all that. Now I'll go to the door; be as pleasant as you know how, and we will surprise them with a good luncheon of transformed scraps in short order."
"The lesson to-day begins with a story, a story with a moral, too," said Mrs. Thorne. "Once upon a time, when I was a young and inexperienced housekeeper, it began to snow early in the morning, before I had been out to market. It happened that everything in the house had given out at once, and I had a long list of things to get, but as I had a bad cold I did not wish to go out in the storm. I waited nearly all day for it to stop, as it was against my principles even then to telephone for anything, but at last, as it began to grow dark, I could not wait longer, and took my receiver to call up the grocery and meat market, only to find the wires were down. What to do I did not know. Even if I ventured out it was now too late to hope to have anything delivered before dinner-time, and I could not carry the food home in my arms and at the same time manage a dress and an umbrella.
"Well, just as I was trying to make up my mind to go and borrow something of the neighbors whom I didn't know, which made things all the harder forme, a strange grocery boy came to my door by mistake, thinking it was the apartment above. I saw my chance, and poured out my tale of woe to him and begged him to help me. Of course I could not ask him to go to the meat market for me, but between us we planned a meal which we could get at the grocery, and I tipped him to go and get the things and bring them back at once, and I would pay for them on delivery. He said he had canned roast beef, for one thing, so we began with that. Then he was to bring canned string-beans, and some oranges for dessert, besides the staples I had to have. It was an expensive meal, I assure you, for roast beef is not cheap, even when it is tinned. I thought then I must have meat, at any price. I know better to-day, and could now plan a supper which would cost about a quarter of what that meal came to. However, as I said, I ordered the things, laid the table, put on the potatoes to boil, and the groceries came just before six o'clock. Ten minutes later Dick appeared, bringing with him two college friends who happened to be in town for the day, men I had never met, and for whom I certainly would have wished to have a good dinner!
"There was nothing to be done but to make the best of things. We had a first course of the beef, heated in gravy, with potatoes and pickled pears. The string-beans I served up in a salad, though of course I wantedthem with the meat; but I was determined to have three courses, somehow; I had no crackers or cheese to serve with it, either, and plain beans seemed very little. The dessert was oranges and coffee. How I wished I had anything else, even nuts, to help out, but there was nothing whatever. I simply lived from hand to mouth in those days and bought supplies enough for only one day at a time. Well, we tried to make up in conversation what we lacked in food, and I thought of what some novelist of New England life once suggested, that when the cake was heavy you should always turn the talk toward the sufferings of the Pilgrim Fathers. But I can tell you that experience taught me a lesson. Never again did I fail to have something to set out in an emergency, and now anybody may drop in, day or night, and I can furnish a really good meal; not an extravagant one, but one that I shall not be ashamed to offer."
"That reminds me to tell you something. This morning, after you left the dining-room, I was telling Dick about the luncheon yesterday, and how you managed to get up such a good one for the Cliffords, and he said, 'Dolly, you and Mary are having far too easy a time of it. One of these days I am going to surprise you with a nice little dinner-party by bringing home two fellows I know.' His eyes twinkled as though he was planning a joke of some sort."
"Yes, I know the kind of joke perfectly well; he often springs these surprises on me when he thinks he will catch me unprepared, but that only makes me more determined to have everything ready for such an event. Come now and see my emergency closet, and you will understand why Dick's little jokes do not alarm me."
The closet was dark, but Mary lighted a gas-jet and showed rows of shelves stretching almost from the floor to the ceiling, with pots and jars and packages, fruit-cans and jelly-glasses and paper boxes.
"Here in the middle part are my groceries," she began, pointing out some well-stocked shelves. "First come the tins of soup, only two, because they are of the best kind and expensive; but I have those on hand all the time, for they are very good, and such a comfort when you are in great need. Next are the tins of meat and fish; not roast beef now, but a can of tongue, two of chicken, and bacon, and several of salmon and sardines. Then come the vegetables, two of each kind, like the animals in the ark: grated corn, peas, string-beans, tomatoes, and mushrooms. Here are several kinds of crackers, to serve with fancy cheese, either with salad or for dessert, and the cheese as well, three pots, two small ones and one of larger size. And I have two cans of condensed milk, a jar of beef extract, and some nuts. Hereare olives, too, and a pot of ginger, and some quickly made gelatine for jelly. All that last needs is to add hot water and pour it into a mould, and before you know it it is ready for use, and very pretty and good. You can imagine how, if we were actually without another thing in the house except what is here, with perhaps coffee and sugar and potatoes, we could have a good dinner. First soup; then hot tongue with a brown sauce, with potatoes and grated corn made into a custard; then a salad of string-beans, with crackers and cheese; then jelly, for dessert; and we could follow this up with a breakfast of bacon and a luncheon of creamed chicken, you see."
"But, Mary, these things must have cost a great deal of money; dollars and dollars, I am sure. How did you ever get them?"
"Most of them out of the tin bank on the kitchen mantel. When a day comes that I do not need to buy any meat and no staple is out, you see I have perhaps sixty cents over from my dollar; then I buy a can of vegetables, or a pot of cheese, or a can of tongue or soup, or whatever is out in the closet. I make it a rule not to use up what I have here without replacing it at the earliest possible moment; that prevents my getting out of everything before I realize it. Then when I am feeling very poor, and am in need of a vegetable, let us say, I just use one of mycanned ones from here, and so tide over till the money is plenty again. Of course toward spring I let everything get low, for I like to put in fresh canned things once a year; then in the fall I stock up for the winter as I can."
"It's a great idea," said Dolly, admiringly. "The first thing I do when I go to housekeeping will be to set up an emergency closet and keep it full all the time."
"Not too full; that is extravagance; but get just a few very useful things and add to them as you can."
"Tell me why, with all these things you did not fly to get them out when those people came in to lunch the other day. It would have been much less trouble, and we could have had a better luncheon; not that I cast aspersions on that one, either."
"For two reasons: first, because I found on looking in the refrigerator that I could manage with what was there, and I do not take anything from my closet except in case of real need. And secondly, because the Cliffords have rather a habit of coming in to luncheon in that way, and once when I was showing them over the apartment they went through this closet, and I knew I would be found out if I served anything canned to them. And also, perhaps, to show you what could be done with odds and ends of food,because the lesson that very day had been on the subject."
"Oh, I see; very good reasons, too. Now what is to be to-day's lesson? Or is this closet the lesson all by itself?"
"Dear me, no; that is only the first half. Now look at my preserves on the other shelves. On the top one are my very best ones, peaches, rich cherries, strawberries, and such things. Those I use only when I have company; or, if I have a plain ice-cream, sometimes I put some around that to help out. I am careful in using them, because they are not cheap to make, by any means, when you have to buy the fruit.
"Next below come my canned fruits, and those I use more freely; plums, you see, and red raspberries, and blueberries, and such things. Many of those I use in pies in winter, when I must economize on butter and eggs. They were not so costly as the preserves, for I bought them a few at a time and put them up as I could.
"Below are all my spiced fruits, peaches, pears, melon rind, gooseberries, currants, plums, grapes, and various things. Those are great helps when one has a rather plain dinner. My jams and jellies come last, on these shelves, and here I have just the usual things, currant jelly and grape and crab-apple andso on. And on this last shelf of all are my winter preserves that I keep on making all the time."
"Winter preserves! What in the world are they?"
"I rather thought that would surprise you, but one of my pet economies is in making preserves and jellies all winter. See, here are six glasses of apple jelly I made up the day you lunched down-town. I found some cheap apples in market that morning and bought them, and then I cut them up without peeling them, stewed them in water enough to cover them, hung them up in a bag to drain, and when the juice was all out I boiled it fifteen minutes and put in the sugar and boiled it five more. Then I dropped in half a lemon for a moment to flavor it, and put it in glasses. It was firm in a short time. That explains my way of doing. I buy anything I find that is cheap and put up a glass of it one day and another glass of something else the next day, and so keep this shelf full all the time and save my summer fruit. Some of the jelly is spiced, too, for variety. I dropped a bag of whole cloves and cinnamon in while it cooked, and gave a distinctly new flavor to it. That goes well with meats; it's no trouble at all to make up a few glasses either way."
"'No trouble,' is your daily phrase; you say it over and over, and I never cease to be astonished at it. Everything seems a trouble to me, and I amsure jelly-making the year round would be a dreadful trouble."
"Not at all, if you took it as a matter of course and made nothing of it. I cook up my fruit in the morning while I am doing up my dishes, and then put it in a bag and hang it up and go away and forget it. After luncheon I find the juice is all out, because I have only a small amount of fruit, you see. I let that boil while I do the luncheon dishes, and put in the sugar, and it is done; I pour it into glasses and set it away to harden for one day, or for two if necessary, and then I just pour melted paraffin on top of it and put it in the closet. That is really no trouble, is it?" Mrs. Thorne asked, placidly.
"Well, we won't discuss it now. Tell me instead whether you do up anything besides apples in winter?"
"Yes, indeed, lots of things. For one, when early in the season I find a basket of winter pears, I get those and make up pear conserve. I peel and chop them, cook them with sugar, lemon, and ginger-root; four pounds of pear, a pound and a half of sugar, an eighth of a pound of cooked and finely chopped ginger-root, and a chopped lemon. Boil it down thick, and you will find it extremely good, especially with cream cheese, or in sandwiches for afternoon tea. If pears were expensive in thefall and I did not pickle any, I usually do some now.
"Later on, carts full of small sour oranges come through the streets, and then I make orange marmalade; that helps out a breakfast nicely. And when, later still, the carts have the queer little whole figs covered with sugar, I preserve them. They are the best thing in ice-cream you ever ate, and also good just as preserves; and I make sweet pickles of them if I had no peach pickles in the fall."
"How do you make those?"
"Just by the one rule you always use: a quart of cider vinegar boiled down with three pounds of sugar and a handful of whole spices; that is a pretty large rule for just a few pickles, however, and you had better divide it."
"And what comes next?"
"Cranberry conserve, I think. You chop a quart of the berries, mix them with the pulp of two oranges and the grated peel, a cup of raisins, and two cups of sugar, and boil it all down till it is thick. That is a really choice thing to have with chicken or a good company roast. Then, too, I make a little mint jelly to go with lamb, also for company. I divide the apple jelly when I make that, and in part I put a bunch of bruised mint, or if I cannot get that in winter at the butcher's, I use dried mint. When it is done Istrain it well and add a little green vegetable coloring, and it makes a lovely jelly. You know you can also make that with a basis of lemon jelly and use gelatine to set it with, if you want it at once."
"Suppose in the autumn you find peaches and pears are expensive; do you go on and do them up regardless of price, or do you depend on these winter preserves?"
"I certainly never do anything 'regardless of price.' I get around the difficulty some other way. If I cannot afford peaches and pears, I preserve some apples, for one thing, making them just as rich and transparent as I can, and they do to help out in the place of the better things. Then I always have a good deal of summer fruit, for some of that is bound to be cheap at one time or another, no matter what the season is. And I put up melon rind in the place of pickled peaches, and citron and crab-apples in the place of pears. So you see I have enough with the winter preserves, even when I have to do without the costly fruit."
"It sounds as though you were supplying a boarding-school or a hotel with all these things, but I suppose you mean that I shall make only a little of each kind."
"That is it, exactly; make these things up as you can, a glass or a can at a time. For instance, when you have cranberry sauce for dinner and have a cupfulleft over, boil that down the next day with an orange and some raisins and a little more sugar, and you will have two glasses of compote. So with the other things; do not take a whole rule at a time, but divide it and make up a small amount."
"I am sure with a closet full of such goodies I shall be extravagant and use them all up as fast as I can; it will be such a temptation."
"Then you must resist it. Have things only when you need them. Put on the jelly when the dinner seems just a little bit too plain, and if there is any over, do not feel bound to eat it up at luncheon the next day in order to 'save' it. That idea of saving is too absurd. But make it up into something useful for dessert; tartlets, perhaps."
"And when do you have the preserves and canned fruit?"
"Those are for Sunday night suppers and company luncheons and to put with too plain a pudding when somebody drops in at dinner-time. And when butter and eggs are beyond the dreams of avarice, I just fly to this closet for relief. I make deep tarts of cherries or plums or blueberries and put a crust on top only; they are about the best winter desserts that we ever have. And the bits of crust left over from them I make into small tartlets, to fill with jam or jelly and help out luncheons, or I cut the crust into stripsand cover it with sugar and bake it in a very hot oven, so the sugar melts and turns to a brown caramel. Those go well with afternoon tea. Or, sometimes I cover the strips with a little white of egg and chopped nuts and put them in the oven to just brown. They are what our grandmothers called 'toothsome dainties.'"
"Let's make pie to-day and try those; they sound perfectly delicious," begged Dolly.
"Very well, we will. And, by the way, remember when you make cake to keep out just a little batter and thin it with water or milk and pour it on a buttered tin; bake it quickly, mark it off while warm into strips, cover with the egg and nuts as before, and brown it; that is just as nice as a more elaborate cake."
"You said we were not to have cake."
"No, I said not often, and no rich cake at all. But you can make cake once a week, for Sunday night, of course; and when you do, Dolly, try this: take out enough batter to put in two little patty pans. Bake those, and while they are fresh split them open on the side and take out part of the crumb; put in a spoonful of preserves or jam or half a peach and press the edge together so the opening does not show. Then cover the cakes with plain icing made by mixing a little water or milk with confectioner's sugar; whenthis is firm, serve the cakes for a dessert. If you have a tiny bit of whipped cream to put with each cake, so much the better. There you have a dessert which practically costs nothing, for the cake was inevitable anyway, and you simply took a bit of left-over, added the fruit and icing, and there you are."
"If I had a cow and so could have cream, I could fill the middle with whipped cream, and have something even better."
"Yes, indeed; it makes me sigh to think of that cow! Or, you could manage this dessert in this way; bake the cake in one small tin instead of in two little ones, and split it and fill it with soft custard well thickened with corn-starch and flavored; or you could put jam between the layers and eat cream on it, if you had any. Or, you could use strawberries in summer and have a perfectly delicious shortcake."
"Yes, of course; I'll write all those things down. Only I suppose we sha'n't have cake very often if it has to be cheap and plain, for I don't care for that kind."
"Oh, there are good kinds you can have, my dear. I said not to have extravagant kinds, that was all. Have good cake when you have any, and do not try and skimp on the materials. Only, make a little cake, that calls for a small amount of butter and few eggs, and eat it up while it is fresh and good, ratherthan make a huge layer-cake that lasts a week and costs money. If you choose a good rule, you can vary it. One day bake the cake in a loaf and add raisins and spices; or split it and put jam between the layers; or bake it in two tins and put mixed nuts and raisins chopped together between the layers. You can have all sorts of things for a change, you see."
"I am afraid to venture, but I suppose I will learn in time. When eggs are cheap I suppose we can indulge in a little better cake than when they are dear."
"Yes, indeed; and then, too, you will economize in butter, so you can afford to spend a little more on eggs. In April or May you can have sponge cake, or even angels' food; either divide the rule and make half, or make it all and use part in one or more dessert. Even stale cake is most useful cut in strips and put in soft custard or with whipped cream; while for that good thing, pêche Melba, you need a round of rather stale sponge cake for each person, to stand half a peach on before you fill the top with ice-cream or fruit. And there is cabinet pudding, made by lining a mould with stale cake and filling the inside with custard, jam, and more cake crumbs; you bake that in a pan of water. And you can make a pudding of mixed bread and cake crumbs, too, and color it withgrated chocolate, and have a change from the usual thing. Don't think I despise cake, or undervalue its use, for I do not. I am only warning you not to make too much of it and not to use an expensive recipe."
"I see. Your advice here, as on other occasions, would he 'Study the cook-book,' I suppose."
"Exactly. A sensible cook-book is a wonderful help in learning to live on a little. But before we finish this lesson I had better just tell you a little more about eggs, because here I differ with so many housekeepers that I want to put the matter before you and let you hear my side; you will find the other exploited in plenty of articles here and there. I do not believe in using any eggs that are not fresh. I never put mine down in lime or brine or anything else. That seems a heresy, because it is possible to keep them in several ways. But I either buy good, fresh ones when I need them, or go without. One can easily manage to use very few in housekeeping by being careful, and I would rather do that than have those on my table or in my food which have the slightest flavor of stateness. I just tell you this as a personal feeling, and if you live where you can buy them cheaply in quantity and put them away for winter use, do so; only I never do it."
"How many do you use a week, anyway?"
"A dozen for two people will answer, and in verycold weather, when they are costly, as I said, I do without, except for breakfast once a week, possibly."
"So if they are forty cents, or fifty, a dozen, you spend a good deal."
"Yes, we do; you need not follow in my footsteps if you do not choose, you know. The fact is, I economize everything else so carefully that I suppose I permit myself this one laxity."
"That reminds me; are you infallible, Mary? In other words, do you never make a mistake and overrun your allowance? I have a horrid sinking feeling that I certainly shall do that."
"Very likely you may, at first. I used to; but it would be inexcusable after my six years of housekeeping if I did so now. But do up your accounts at the end of each week, Dolly, and if you find you have spent more than your dollar a day, or if your tin bank is so low that you see you are not going to have enough in it for staples the next week, cut right down somewhere. I suggest in meat and fruit and cake. Live on very plain things till you catch up again. In that way you will keep within your monthly sum, and if you do that it is all right."
"Well, now, just one thing more and I will let you go. I see you have an eye on the kitchen clock. Tell me how you manage to so plan your meals that you will not have the same things over and over. Ifwe are to have cheap meat always, and cheaper vegetables, and no fruit to speak of, it seems to me I shall get right into a rut and have the same food each week, a sort of squirrel-in-a-cage round and round, and that would be horrid."
"So it would, and distinctly unhygienic as well, for you must have variety or your digestion will give out. I think a good way is to write out bills of fare and follow them more or less; or, to have a card catalogue and keep that in a convenient place and run it over when you want anything. That is, have Puddings in one small square box, each recipe written out clearly with a nice black title. If you want one, run these over and select something for which the ingredients are in season. So with hot breads, and made dishes and meats. That might be some little trouble at first, but after you were started I think it would be simple and easy to follow."
"Yes, it might be a help; I'll put that down. However, that does not quite cover what I meant to ask you. How do you plan your meals? Do you begin with what you happen to have in the house, say a piece of mutton, half a can of tomatoes, and so on, and so have a hit or miss meal, or do you plan two dinners at once and buy things that will do over in different ways?"
"I do both ways; I say to myself when I buy anything,'What form can this take to-morrow?' and when I see things in the refrigerator in the morning I plan the next meals out of them. I always plan luncheon, dinner, and breakfast each morning. I never will think up breakfast after dinner at night. But I see what you mean, and in the next lesson we will go to work on the subject of meals. I really think, as it is more play than work, we won't make a lesson of it, but a game; the Game of Menus."
"It sounds difficult, just the same."
"No more than whist or chess or any other game worth learning. Of course it calls for brains, and it cannot be learned in a moment, but it's a game, all the same, and good fun when you have learned it; you'll see!"
"Now for our game," said Mrs. Thorne, after looking in the refrigerator the next day. "I have been thinking about what it is like, and I have decided that it is not so much like chess or whist as it is like anagrams. But though it may not be as great an intellectual feat to master it as though it were one of the famous games, it takes brains, nevertheless. So take heart and try and learn it."
She took one sheet of paper and gave Dolly another, and went on.
"You know already that the refrigerator plays a large part in our housekeeping and we must be guided in our planning by what we find there morning by morning. But still there is always a place for new dishes after combining the old ones. So first we see what we have and then decide what will best go with it."
"Do you always write down what you are going to have? Why?"
"Oh, no, of course I do not write every meal down, but I keep a lot of possible menus on hand and turnto them for inspiration when I feel stupid. Or if I have a maid, I hand her over a few and have her follow them, and so be sure—that is, tolerably sure—that the meal will come out as I planned it. Besides these good reasons, there are more which apply especially to you. One is that when you have once learned to make up menus rapidly, you will save yourself a lot of mental storm and stress. Often young housekeepers groan over thinking out meals, especially dinners, of course, since they are the most difficult, and declare that they have had every known meat and vegetable again and again. Instead of that sort of thing, if they had at hand a number of dinners written down, they could select one and save bothering.
"And one thing more. You might often go on having the same thing over and over without realizing it. Now, in writing down the dinners for a week at a time you soon see if you are repeating yourself. If the words 'beef stew,' for instance, appear frequently you presently grasp the idea that you are having too much of that festal dish, whereas if you did not see the words in black and white, you might not guess it."
"I still do not see how you can plan a second day's meals at the same time you plan the first day's, unless you can gauge with accuracy the size of the family's appetites. Suppose some night, instead of each one'staking one helping of meat all around, we should all take two helpings; that would smash your written menu to bits."
"Yes, of course it would, and such things have happened. But written menus are not binding contracts, but only suggestions, and when you and Dick recklessly eat up all the meat between you some night,—personally I should know better than to join you in your extravagance,—then you will have to modify your next day's menu and either plan a new meal or substitute something else for the meat you had arranged for. But still you will find written menus a great help if you use them sensibly and do not feel bound to follow them literally. Now let us begin to play the game. You write down a dinner for to-night, and then I will undertake the thankless task of criticizing it."
Dolly gazed thoughtfully at the chandelier a few moments and then wrote rapidly. Presently she read glibly: