CHAPTER VI
Breakfast, Luncheon, Supper – Odds and Ends
"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 to keep 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 digestible than 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 is having 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 good luncheon 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 or coffee, 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 with meat, 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 ends of 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 of meat 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 when you 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 eat up 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 can have 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 my attention, 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."