The Dinner Year-Book

I
have tried, moreover, to inspire such respect for made-over dinners,
as we feel for the pretty rugs made of the ravellings of Axminster
carpets. We do not attempt to impose them upon ourselves or our friends
as “pure Persian.” But neither do we blush for them because Mrs.
Million Aire across the way would scorn to give them house-room. Let
“CONSISTENCY” be stamped upon every appointment of your household,
and even the _parvenue_ opposite cannot despise you. Once learn the
truth that moderate, or even scanty means do not make meanness or
homeliness a necessity, and act upon the lesson, and you can set
criticism at defiance. Apropos to this point of consistency, let me
say, in explanation, not apology, for the small space devoted to
company-dinners, that I have dealt with them upon the principle that
ten times one makes ten. Having, in emulation of the Eastern beauty,
carried the calf with ease for four weeks, you will hardly appreciate
the difference in the weight of the cow you lift upon the fifth. In
plainer phrase, give John and the children good dinners, well-cooked,
and daintily served, every day, and the entertainment of half-a-dozen
friends in addition to the family party will cease to be a stupendous
undertaking. They have a saying in the Southern States that aptly
expresses the labor and excitement attendant upon such an event in
too many families; the straining after Mrs. Million Aire’s _diners à
la Russe_, which presuppose the despotism of a _chef_ in the kitchen,
and the solemn pomp of a Chief Butler in the _salle à manger_. The
Southern description of the frantic endeavor is—“Trying to put the big
pot into the little one,” and it is invariably used with reference to
preparations for company. Be content, my dear sister, to put into your
little pot only so much as it will decently hold, and be thankful that
you have in it a sure gauge of responsibility.

I have spoken of dinners for four weeks in each month. I have written
receipts for this number, not in forgetfulness of the fact that
there is but one February per annum, but because the need of adapting
the bills of fare to the days of the week, instead of the month, was
absolute, and if I wished the Dinner Year-Book to be a perpetual
calendar, I must say nothing of the broken week that sometimes ends and
sometimes begins the month. The difficulty of disposing satisfactorily
of the two or three odd days brought to my mind, while blocking out my
work, the summary manner in which one of my baby-girls once dismissed a
somewhat analogous difficulty.

“My dear,” I said to her one night as she concluded her prayer at my
knee, “you have forgotten to pray for your little cousins. How did that
happen? Don’t you want our Heavenly Father to take care of them?”

She made a motion of again bending her knees, yawned sleepily, and
tumbled into bed.

“Can’t help it, mamma! Baby is too tired! Horace and Eddie _must
scuffle for themselves_ just this one night!”

I have given you twenty-eight—nay, counting your possible
company-meal—twenty-nine dinners in succession to little purpose if you
cannot collate from previous receipts one or two for yourself, and be
the better for the practice. I need hardly say that I do not anticipate
or desire slavish adherence to the plan sketched for your day or week.
I _have_ sketched—that is all—not worked out a sum in which addition
or subtraction would materially affect the sum-total. The framework
is, I would fain hope, symmetrical. I expect you to build thereupon as
convenience or discretion may dictate.




Touching Saucepans.


WHILE it is true that the finest tools will not impart skill to the
untrained workman, it is equally a matter of fact that the best artisan
is he who cares most jealously for the quality and condition of his
instruments as well as for the finish of his workmanship.

A visitor once asked permission to witness the operation of cooking a
beefsteak in my kitchen, saying that her husband had spoken in terms
of commendation of those he had eaten at my table. Like the good wife
she was, she desired to “catch the trick,” whatever it might be, of
preparing them to his liking. I willingly acceded to her request, and
upon her return to the parlor her husband inquired eagerly: “Did you
learn the secret?”

“Yes,” was the smiling answer. “You must buy me a gridiron!”

Up to that time, she then explained, fried steaks had been the rule in
her house, and gridirons a thing unheard or unthought of.

A fried beefsteak being, as I have elsewhere stated, a culinary
solecism, I have, perhaps, selected an extreme case as the test of
my discourse upon the necessity of a supply of fitting utensils for
the proper prosecution of home-cookery. Mrs. Whitney’s idea of the
“art-kitchen,” so charmingly set forth in “We Girls,” may not be so
chimerical (with limitations) as most practical housewives—practised
in nothing more than in the exerci