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THRIFT
IN THE HOUSEHOLD
THRIFT
IN THE HOUSEHOLD
BY
DORA MORRELL HUGHES
BOSTON
LOTHROP, LEE & SHEPARD CO.
Published, March, 1918
COPYRIGHT, 1918,
BY LOTHROP, LEE & SHEPARD Co.
All Rights Reserved
THRIFT IN THE HOUSEHOLD
press
co.
U.S. A.
"Annual income twenty pounds, an-
nual expenditure nineteen nineteen six,
result happiness. Annual income twenty
pounds, annual expenditure twenty
pounds ought and six, result misery"
Mr. Uicawber in "David Copperfeld."
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. WHAT THRIFT Is AND Is NOT . 9
II. BUYING. . .' . . ' . 19
III. MANAGING, AND LITTLE LEAKS . 37
IV. LITTLE ECONOMIES . . . 49
V. VINEGARS. EGGS . 75
VI. THE GREATEST ECONOMY : YOUR-
SELF 89
VII. LABOR-SAVING . . . .107
VIII. BREAD AND CAKE . . .115
IX. SOUPS . . . . . .133
X. OILS AND FATS .... 149
XI. COAL AND ICE .... 167
XII. POSSIBILITIES OF CORN MEAL . 185
XIII. MEAT AND MEAT SUBSTITUTES . 195
XIV. DESSERTS . . . . .225
XV. THRIFT AND TEXTILES . . . 243
XVI. CARE OF CLOTHING . . . 257
XVII. THE FAMILY GARDEN . 277
CHAPTER I
WHAT THRIFT IS AND IS NOT
THRIFT
IN THE HOUSEHOLD
CHAPTER I
WHAT THRIFT IS AND IS NOT
THRIFT is the making the best of what
one has in strength, time, or money ; get-
ting one hundred per cent, in one's re-
lations with life. Thrift is an apprecia-
tion and application of the accumulative
force of little things. Thrift is a con-
structive force ; waste is its destructive
opposite. Sometimes thrift is saving,
going without ; sometimes thrift is spend-
ing " there is a scattering that increas-
eth " but always it is something for
something. Thrift is the base on which
11
12 THRIFT IN THE HOUSEHOLD
success of every kind is built, for either
thrift or waste is used in everything.
The business man applies thrift when he
finds the measure by which he can re-
duce his " overhead " by the fraction of
a cent, for he realizes that these fractions
soon grow into dollars.
Philosophers, since first there were
philosophers, have been telling their
hearers that there were no trifles, but
the American households as a whole
have been managed as if to use no more
than was needed, to save the bit here
and there, were beneath their dignity.
Women know less of thrift and more of
an uneven, haphazard effort at saving
than is consistent with their duty as
partners in home-making ; unfortunately,
too often they have no respect for nor
appreciation of the power that lies in
their hands, and therefore fail to realize
the possibilities of the material with
which they work, and their servants
WHAT THRIFT IS AND IS NOT 13
have imitated them, and have despised
economy as stinginess, which is quite
another matter. Stinginess is selfish-
ness. If you notice, you will find the
givers among the thrifty. What they
have not wasted they share with others.
Every article, however small it may be,
that is wasted must be replaced and it is
11 the little foxes that spoil the vines."
Few persons waste dollars at a time, but
they waste many in cents. The Wool-
worth Building, and the Fifth Avenue
house, built, as the megaphone man tells
his hearers, from five-cent and ten-cent
pieces, are object lessons in the financial
advantage of saving trifles.
There is no thrift in saving when the
value of the article saved is less than the
expense of saving it. Sometimes there is
more thrift in throwing away than in
saving. Does that seem a paradox?
Not long since, when eggs were sixty
cents a dozen and bread six cents a loaf,
14 THRIFT IN THE HOUSEHOLD
there was an article in a home publica-
tion on the importance of saving bread
crumbs, and as an illustration how to do
this a recipe for a bread-pudding was
given. This called for a cup of bread
crumbs, value less than a cent, and five
eggs, cost twenty-five cents, and milk,
sugar, and heat. To spend twenty-five
cents to save five is waste ; to spend
twenty-five cents to save thirty is gain.
It is not economy to spend time, ma-
terials, and strength in making something
that the family will not like when it is
done.
The average cook, and housekeeper,
too, if she has three oranges and is mak-
ing an orange-pudding which requires
two oranges, will use the three. If the
housewife objects to using three when two
are enough she very likely will hear her
cook ask, " What's the use of being so
stingy with them ? What is one orange
good for ? " If the housekeeper can tell
WHAT THRIFT IS AND IS NOT 15
her, the cook will appreciate the thrift,
otherwise she will continue to waste.
There is an old proverb of our grand-
mother's day that is equally true to-day
though not as often heard : " a woman
can throw out with a spoon in the kitchen
more than a man can bring in with a
shovel." That is because a woman gen-
erally does not realize that what she
throws out has any money value. There
is no more exacting business than house-
keeping and home-making. Those wives
who think it beneath them and unworthy
of their attention simply show their ig-
norance of what it is. That there are so
many who feel time spent in work at
home to be time wasted explains in a large
part why the cost of living has steadily
increased. All waste raises the cost of
living. What is wasted must be supplied
in some other way. Had women handled
the money in past years they would have
had a better understanding of the value
16 THRIFT IN THE HOUSEHOLD
of things with which they worked. So
many women do not have the spending
of cash that they do not know what one
hundred cents are good for.
If the garbage pail is always full, if the
housewife says, " My cake isn't as good
as usual. I didn't have good luck with
it this time," there is much waste in that
household. There is no luck about cook-
ing. Cooking is the combination of care
and brains expressed in the arrangement
of certain materials. Cooking is a branch
of chemistry, and should be followed with
equal painstaking. Then, it will be
equally effective.
It is very thriftless to cook without
recipes unless one has cooked so much
that with her experience she has learned
to measure by eye and feel. Also, it is
thriftless for one who has much cooking
to do not to master the principles of cook-
ing that she may become independent of
recipes. A good cook knows as soon as
WHAT THRIFT IS AND IS NOT 17
she reads a recipe whether or not it is
worth cooking ; there is a law of propor-
tion and affinity governing the combina-
tion of food materials, and the less money
you have to spend on food, the more it is
to your advantage to know the laws of
cooking and how to apply them.
An empty garbage pail is the certain
indication of two things : how to buy and
how to use what one has bought. Thrift
does not put slices of bread, halves of stale
loaves, bits of vegetables, cheese, bones,
and scraps of meat into the garbage pail.
Thrift appreciates that a cold potato rep-
resents the amount that potato cost plus
the expense for heat to cook it ; it knows
that a loaf of cake spoiled or bread
burned, anything that carelessness has
left to become sour or worthless, repre-
sents an expenditure of money equivalent
to what it will cost to replace and cook
it. The woman who leaves dough stick-
ing to her mixing-pan will lose consider-
18 THRIFT IN THE HOUSEHOLD
able bread before the year is done, and
she will lose it not merely in that one
channel but in others, for one is careless
in many things if she is in one.
A very small leak in a ship if left un-
heeded will sink a good-sized vessel ; so
the happiness of many a household is
wrecked on small things. There can be
no real happiness in a home where the
outgo is the same as the income or greater,
and wherever that is the case there are
leakages in the kitchen. It is absolutely
impossible for a man to get ahead finan-
cially if there is not good management
in the kitchen, and good management
means taking heed of trifles. The di-
rection that Christ gave His people,
" Gather up the fragments that remain,
that nothing be lost/' has a practical
merit to-day.
CHAPTER II
BUYING
CHAPTER II
BUYING
THERE are two avenues through which
thrift is cultivated : buying and manag-
ing. Usually one is advised to buy in
quantity, and if one has storage room,
that reduces the cost of articles consider-
ably. Large families serve thrift by buy-
ing in quantity, but small families living
in flats may find quantity-buying very
wasteful. For a large family to buy flour
by the bag is as foolish as for a small
family to buy it by the barrel. There is
more loss proportionately to flour in the
bag because it sifts through the holder,
but for the small family the loss is
smaller than it would be to have a barrel
of flour which before it could be eaten
would become musty, possibly wormy,
21
22 THRIFT IN THE HOUSEHOLD
unless there were unusual facilities for
keeping it.
Cereals and meals, which are only
other forms of a cereal, do not keep long
unless in a thoroughly dry atmosphere
and therefore should be bought in such
quantity that they will be eaten before
must or insects corrupt. Even rice and
the so-called sterilized grains will become
wormy if kept by the month before using.
Canned goods are wisely purchased by
the dozen or the case. Of most, the case
contains four dozen jars. There is a re-
duction by the dozen usually, though
since prices have become so high many
dealers will not sell by the dozen or case.
They prefer to retail the cans getting the
larger price for them. If you get a re-
duction of only a cent on a can there is a
considerable saving when you think of
all the canned fruits and vegetables that
go to satisfy the appetite of the ordinary
family. Remember the words of Poor
BUYING 23
Richard, "Take care of the pennies,
and the dollars will take care of them-
selves. "
I believe it is wiser to buy regularly at
the same stores than to wander about
looking for bargains. Very often so-
called bargains have short weight or
other weaknesses. Every store has oc-
casional bargains, not always advertised,
sales of special values ; in the better
stores it is to the regular customers that
knowledge 01 these is given, because there
never is enough of the stock on sale to be
offered for general buying.
Prices are lower in the stores that in-
sist on cash sales and do not deliver
goods. It is proper they should be lower,
for the expenses of such stores are greatly
reduced below those where deliveries are
made of every little order any time of day,
and cash in hand enables a merchant to
buy more cheaply and so to sell at better
advantage to the buyer. These cash
24 THRIFT IN THE HOUSEHOLD
stores save the salaries of bookkeepers
made necessary by charge accounts, and
they are also free from losses from uncol-
lectible bills.
When men are buyers they watch the
printed list of prices and conditions of
what they will buy ; when women are
buyers they often go to their buying with-
out knowing anything about the standard
price and variations from that. They do
not know whether articles are plenty and
cheap or scarce and high. Men know
what they should be charged for what
they buy; women often buy without
asking the price of what they are get-
ting.
In every city of any size a market price
list is printed once or twice a week giving
prices and market conditions of foods.
The home member of the matrimonial
partnership should study these lists.
Even if she pays as much she will know
more what she gets. The buyer should
BUYING 25
know if she is getting sixteen ounces to
the pound.
A scale for the kitchen running as high
as twenty-five pounds is almost as great
a necessity as a dishpan. If you pay
nine and a half cents a pound for sugar
and get fifteen ounces only instead of a
full pound you will pay for many pounds
of sugar that you never get. Perhaps
you lack the moral courage to exact of
your dealer what belongs to you. Re-
member that any one who is willing to
be robbed will always find the thief to
rob her.
It is possible to avoid any unpleasant-
ness in securing your dues by saying to a
grocer with whom you begin trading,
" I see that your measures are full and
generous to your customers. I always
weigh my packages and it is a satisfaction
to know that you are as just to me as to
yourself." Thus you accomplish three
things : you show that you are " on your
26 THRIFT IN THE HOUSEHOLD
job/' that you are watching how things
go, and you tell him this by praise, which
is better than finding fault.
If a package is short-weight and you
wish to continue to trade there you can
say, " I would like to have you see to this
yourself as last time your clerk was care-
less with his weighing." If you have no
grounds for praise you should take your
business elsewhere, and not help a man
to success in thievery, for he is as truly a
thief who takes an ounce from your
pound as he is who takes the money for
it from your pocket.
Another great waste for the consumer
has developed from what is said to be a
commendable measure, that is, the fancy
box and carton business. This is claimed
to be more sanitary, and so it is in a few
instances, but as a whole it is a claim un-
justified by facts, and a decided item in
increasing the cost of living. In some
instances it more than doubles the cost
BUYING 27
of the article contained. It is sanitary to
wrap bread, cakes, pies, crackers, and ar-
ticles to be eaten without further cook-
ing, but what good is served by placing
in close cartons such foods as rice, and
those things which must be cooked before
serving? All cereals are thoroughly
cooked after being taken from cartons
and are thus sterilized. Why pay double
for them? Corn meal sold in cartons
costs nearly three times as much as
that bought in bulk. It keeps no better,
tastes no better, and must go through the
same processes for cooking as that bought
by the pound. The same is true of other
things.
The first package I ate of seeded raisins
stated on the wrapper that they were
cleaned, and being of a naturally trusting
nature I used the raisins in a cake with-
out washing. The cake was spoiled.
From a cupful of raisins, sold in cartons
because of cleanliness, I have found a
28 THKIFT IN THE HOUSEHOLD
saltspoonful of sand, beside stalks. The
cook who does not wash her raisins will
have regrets and a few other things.
Then, why not buy raisins by the pound
rate open? The same is true of dried
fruits and many other articles. They all
have to be as carefully looked over,
washed, and treated as if they had not
been placed in cartons as a sanitary meas-
ure for cleanliness. There is a good deal
of humbug about the extra cleanliness of
things packed in special containers, but
there is no doubt that some things are
better thus treated and that more are not.
Employ containers for cooked foods, omit
them for foods to be cooked, and thus
encourage thrift.
Whether it is thrift to make all dealings
on a cash basis or to run accounts is a
mooted question with something to be
said on both sides and the weight in
favor of cash payments. Running bills
usually leads to spending more ; it is so
BUYING 29
easy to say, " Charge it," when you see
something tempting that you would not
buy if you were paying cash for every-
thing. Persons who spend recklessly by
instinct should never run bills they will
find the entire income mortgaged before
it is due. Those who calculate all ex-
penses of the household and have will
enough to hold by their calculations have
the use of their money thirty days longer,
and of credit in an emergency, for it is
one of the peculiarities of the business
world that it is easier for a man to get
credit who is slack about paying for what
he buys than for a man who has always
followed the Biblical injunction to "owe
no man anything." If such a one asks
time it is at once taken for granted that
conditions are unfavorable with him and
that he will be a risk to the merchant.
The average consumer will save ten
per cent, by living on a cash basis and
have the satisfaction of knowing what
30 THRIFT IN THE HOUSEHOLD
money she has is hers. The apostle of
thrift will favor living on a cash basis
and making the most of what one has.
If the housewife is allowed only five dol-
lars weekly for her table she must plan
so carefully that she has at least a dime
left with which to build a reserve fund.
Thrift lies in small savings. Unless she
saves her little she can never become a
thrifty buyer. It is always possible to
save something if one does not despise
the day of small things. It may not be
possible to save a quarter though it will
be to save a nickel or dime. Thrift
makes the housewife plan according to
her income, not according to her desires.
No one claims that a table can be as well
furnished or as much can be done with
five dollars as with three times that
amount, but the skill of the housewife
and the mistress of thrift is never better
employed than in making her wits do the
most that can be done with what she has.
BUYING 31
Until one tries to do it she has no idea
how interesting she can find the accom-
plishing of this aim. To the doer the
promise holds true : " Thou hast been
faithful over a few things, I will make
thee a ruler over many things."
There is a mistaken idea of thrift which
sometimes influences the would-be econ-
omist to buy articles by their cost price
alone, without reflecting whether the
lower price gives proper value for what
is bought, whether it has as much propor-
tionately of material as the higher priced.
It is not what you pay that makes the
important factor in living but what you
get for what you pay. For instance :
here are two baskets of apples ; the fruit
in one is large and speckless, that of the
other is windfalls, bruised, gnarly, and the
second is one-third less in price than the
first. The second will prove the dearer
because it has so large an amount of
waste ; the first has almost no waste, for
32 THRIFT IN THE HOUSEHOLD
the skins are so smooth and fine that
from them and the cores may be made
several glasses of jelly. From the second
basket will be no such profit. In con-
sumption of time for preparation twice
as much will be necessary.
A good housewife who never bought
poor supplies once said to a critic of her
methods, " Only rich people can afford to
buy poor stuff, since they do not suffer if
a few dollars are thrown away in waste."
The boarding-house keeper who bought
two seven-pound turkeys instead of one
large bird was not thrifty. The larger
birds are a trifle less in cost per pound,
the intestinal waste of the larger bird and
the skeleton is less than of two smaller
birds and the meat is richer. How do I
know about the waste of the two? I
weighed the waste when I was buying to
know how much was thrown away. The
larger birds have more meat in propor-
tion to skeleton. It costs more in time
BUYING 33
to prepare two birds than one. In every
respect the large bird is the more thrifty
purchase for a large family than the same
weight of birds in two bodies.
The foundation of true thrift is getting
the proportion of most for the expen-
diture, not the price. One does not learn
this relation all at once or by accident,
but by computation. Once learned you
may build on it your home of thrift.
"There is that scattereth, and yet in-
creaseth, and there is that withholdeth
more than is meet, but it tendeth to pov-
erty." The knowledge of this and the
ability to use the knowledge are thrift.
This principle explains why of two cuts
of meat at the same price one is extrava-
gant and the other is not. It is not alone
the cost of porterhouse that makes it in-
advisable for one of small means, but the
proportion of waste in bone and fat for
which one pays. You must always re-
member you are paying for all this waste
34: THRIFT IN THE HOUSEHOLD
at the same price you are paying for the
delicious meat.
Never buy second-class canned goods
but those you have tested and know to
be reliable. At times there are sales of
these to make way for the new and then
it is good buying to get what you need.
Good cans have ends slightly concaved
and if dented will remain so. Twice-
soldered cans are not to be recommended.
Keep all articles in tin, earthenware,
or glass, although no acids nor liquids
should be kept in tin. Have containers
lettered so that you do not handle more
than the one wanted when you go for
anything, and keep the covers on them
when not being used.
Nearly all kitchen supplies may well
be bought in quantity, as most of them
improve with keeping. Polishes, starch,
blueing, all kinds of soap, cleansing-pow-
der, clothes-pins, and such things, are
cheaper a year's supply at a time.
BUYING 35
Sugar keeps indefinitely and should
the price ever lower it will be decidedly
thrifty to lay in a supply. Never keep
sugar or anything else in a damp store-
room. It is also far from thrifty for any
family to live in a damp house, too damp
to store supplies, since it induces disease,
and disease is a very heavy expense.
Sickness soon reduces any surplus, so
that anything which induces depleted
strength, whether it be feeding, dressing,
thinking, is extravagant. One of the
thriftiest habits is that of making the
sun welcome in home and self. The best
germ-killer is God's own, the sunshine.
Let us sum up the matter of buying
thus : Pay cash for everything, or settle
all bills at end of a definite time, by week
or month.
Examine all supplies as they come in,
having a sales order slip by which to
check them, and to insure their being of
quality and amount ordered. Put them
36 THRIFT IN THE HOUSEHOLD
away in their containers as soon as
checked.
See that your maid is as careful in use
of goods bought in quantity as if they
were bought by the pound, and train
yourself to the same care if you do your
own work. Sugar and flour require
special care to save waste as you take
from the bins.
Buy when things are in season, not
when they are dearest, which is when
they are out of season. Buy fruits and
vegetables for canning when and where
they are most abundant. That is when
they are cheapest, and also the best.
Things out of season are seldom as good
as when their proper time for being eaten
has come.
CHAPTER III
MANAGING, AND LITTLE
LEAKS
CHAPTER III
MANAGING, AND LITTLE LEAKS
MANAGING is the art and science of
using to the best advantage what has been
brought into the house. There is no part
of the household economy where it is not
called upon, no part which is not the bet-
ter for what New England means when it
says of a housekeeper : " She has faculty."
Solomon knew her in his time and she
to-day is the woman who " looketh well
to the ways of her household." It is in-
teresting to notice how like the twentieth-
century manager is to this old-time woman
in essentials, though conditions have
changed so greatly. Read the last chap-
ter of Proverbs and learn what she was
and 4s.
39
40 THRIFT IN THE HOUSEHOLD
Managing means the charge of waste as
well as the first use of everything. It is
in the department of management that
the wreck of the home happiness comes
and financial anxiety with an incompetent
manager. A good manager keeps things
comfortable. Her mind is easy and there-
fore she produces ease. She needs no
advice but gives it to those who cannot
manage time, duties, or money success-
fully.
System is the secret of good manage-
ment, and it extends to the smallest de-
tail of home affairs. It softens greatly
the jolts of difficult experiences.
She who has learned to prevent little
leaks in the home has learned how to
make the dollars count for one hundred
cents. So many of them are there that
one might fill a large book with a list of
them. One great mistake for the would-
be devotee of thrift is to cook too much
at once. Monotony in diet spoils the ap-
MANAGING, AND LITTLE LEAKS 41
petite, the digestion, and wastes the food
cooked, for it is refused. Sometimes it is
well to cook in large quantities, for many
things need hours for their cooking, and
it is as cheap to cook much as only what
will be used at a single time. The extra
quantity may be canned and saved until
wanted. For instance, it takes no more
fuel to cook three pounds of prunes than
to cook half a pound, so I always cook the
three pounds and can all but enough for
two meals. As my family is small it is
more convenient to can often. I fill ajar
or more as I have material, set it in the
bottom part of the steamer when I am
cooking dinner and the same heat steril-
izes it that cooks something else. Excess
meats, soups, vegetables, and even oat-
meal may be saved in this way until one
wants it. It is thrift to preserve food
thus and the amount quickly accumulates.
In our family we dislike to see the same
dish served twice in succession, and as we
42 THRIFT IN THE HOUSEHOLD
consider waste wicked we avoid it by
canning.
The folly of cooking too much for one
or two servings lies with those who have
not learned what to do with the extra
amount. I once saw ten cold potatoes in
the garbage pail of a friend whose whole
married life had been a struggle with
debt. " Why don't you use your potatoes
in some other way, in salad, croquettes,
baked with cheese or onions, or fried ? "
" My family don't like them fixed up in
any of those ways." Would not the
economic consideration of that fact have
led to cooking just enough for the one
meal? It is poor planning that leaves
ten good potatoes to be wasted. Do you
know there are over three hundred ways
in which potatoes may be prepared ?
A skillful manager will overbalance
the weakness of a poor buyer, but no
buyer can cover the defects of a poor
manager. It is the little wastes that des-
MANAGING, AND LITTLE LEAKS 43
troy the family's peace of mind, though
they may not average a farthing's worth
each but they are so many they amount
to pounds when a year is done. They
are to the house what nail-holes would
be to a ship if thousands were in the
hull. In no department of the unthrifty
is there freedom from small wastes. They
increase the gas and coal bills, help the
plumber to get rich by stopping up the
pipes, fill the garbage pail, and so on
ad infinitum. Let us consider some of
the little wastes.
Soap lies soaking in dish or laundry
water. Green soap is used instead of old.
Bits of soap are thrown away. Dish-
towels are taken for holders and burned.
Gas ranges are left lighted when no
cooking is going on, or gas is left going
full head when a dim light would serve as
well. In homes that use stoves instead
of gas ranges cords of wood in the shape
of boxes are thrown out, yet it all has
44 THRIFT IN THE HOUSEHOLD
heating possibilities. Rags and papers
are thrown out and so scarce has such
material become that the price of paper
has risen high enough to bring failure to
many publications. I have a friend who
saved his newspapers and started his
son's college fund by a sale of those
saved in a short time. They brought
eight dollars, and the price was lower
than it has since been. When the three-
year-old has become of college age the
practice of that kind of thrift will have
amounted to considerable.
In the kitchen waste runs riot, often
when the housekeeper is her own maid.
Cheese is kept in a damp place and be-
comes covered with a white mould ; bits
of it that are dried are thrown out ; ends,
crumbs, and bits of bread accumulate in
the garbage pail ; a cup of peas or beans,
a spoonful of this or that vegetable, bones
and scraps from roasts and chops, left-
over gravies, all go with the bread. All
MANAGING, AND LITTLE LEAKS 45
of these have possibilities of usefulness
and are just that much money wasted.
Milk and cream sour for lack of atten-
tion and as soon as sour are turned out.
Fruit juices are turned down the sink.
Potatoes are pared so generously that
more goes with the peeling than into the
pot. Bacon fat is turned down the sink,
thus disposing of one of the best and
most useful fats by stopping up the drain-
pipe.
Cold potatoes and other vegetables are
left to sour ; dried fruits and cereals be-
come wormy for want of attention ; food
is left in tin, which induces unwhole-
some changes in it ; all kinds of winter
vegetables and apples are left to sprout
and decay for want of picking over.
Boxes of tea, coffee, and spices are left
open and the flavor of each is gone; some-
times these things are kept in paper bags,
which is worse yet ; sugar, tea, coffee,
rice, and flour are spilled and wasted in
4:6 THRIFT IN THE HOUSEHOLD
handling; brooms and mops are worn
out by being set on the floor. They
should be hung.
Tin dishes are not properly dried or
are melted by being set on the stove to
dry. Tin is less thriftful to buy than
enamel, agate, or aluminum. The dif-
ference in cost is more than saved in the
wear of the dishes. More coal is burned
than needed by not closing dampers when
fire is not used.
New brooms are used for scrubbing and
sweeping paths. Silver spoons are taken
for scraping kettles. Sometimes they dis-
appear in the garbage. Steel knives lose
their handles from being soaked in hot
water. Mustard is left to dry in the pot ;
pork spoils for want of salt, and beef brine
needs scalding. Pickles and olives spoil
for want of vinegar or fresh brine.
Woodenware is left unscalded and warps,
or it splits from being dried in a hot
place. Ammonia, gasoline, and other
MANAGING, AND LITTLE LEAKS 4T
volatile substances are left loosely corked
and evaporate.
Clothes are washed with strong wash-
ing-powder or chloride of lime, lye, or
soda and come out rotted and faded.
Clothes in one washing have been per-
forated with tiny holes from chloride-of-
lime washing-powder.
There are little wastes at the table as,
for instance, putting so much sugar in
your cup that it does not dissolve. That
means sugar enough for another cup.
Another decided waste is too large help-
ings, which is not to be changed into not
giving enough to eat, but it is wiser, if
one would save, to help twice than to put
too much on one's plate at first.
The butter cut in small blocks or made
in shapes and served on the bread and
butter plate is to be advised for thrift.
Of course you do not throw away butter.
On the plate it is perfectly clean even if
left, because the knife used for it is used
48 THRIFT IN THE HOUSEHOLD
only for that. Let the serving be small
but repeated.
Avoid the waste that comes from neg-
lect of your tools. Never let the egg-
beater soak, which draws oil from the
gears, but wash it at once and set to dry.
Care of one's tools doubles their useful-
ness.
CHAPTER IV
LITTLE ECONOMIES
CHAPTER IV
LITTLE ECONOMIES
THERE need be no waste in the home,
for much that seems necessary now may
be eliminated and what you have you
can turn to some use. In the matter of
garbage, which is the largest evident
waste, there may be something helpful,
particularly for one who has hens or a
garden. When garbage is nothing but
the leavings made in preparing food for
cooking it is proper food for poultry, and
if one has a garden it makes good fertil-
izer. For this it is planted in quite a
deep hole. The earth is thrown over it,
then more garbage added with perhaps a
little lime if the land needs it. Garbage
may be placed over the oven of the coal
51
52 THRIFT IN THE HOUSEHOLD
range, and contrary to what you may be-
lieve, the heat of the fire will burn it
without any odor if the damper is left a
little open. It will not injure the stove
nor cool the oven. These ashes are a fine
dressing for garden or for house-plants.
Potato peelings are strong in carbon
and if dried may be used as kindlings,
but the truly thrifty housewife cooks her
potatoes in their jackets, at least until they
can be peeled, which keeps her fingers
from being discolored and saves a quarter
of an hour or more in the oven. After
the peelings can be removed only skin
thick the potato may be finished in oven
or pot. Potatoes thus peeled, then
greased very lightly all over and baked
in a hot oven are as nice as baked pota-
toes can be, and what is better ?
Baking potatoes takes considerable gas
and every moment of the firing means
money spent. You can lessen the time
by boiling the potatoes for fifteen or
LITTLE ECONOMIES 53
twenty minutes and finishing them in a
hot oven. They will be equally good.
If you dislike to peel potatoes you can
boil them until nearly done, then peel
and continue the cooking. Thus you
save the wastage that peeling brings.
The best of the potato lies near the skin.
Old potatoes are much improved by
being soaked for an hour or more in cold
water, then plunged into boiling salted
water. Instead of peeling them, remove
an inch of the skin all around. All
vegetables not directly from the garden
are better for being freshened by stand-
ing a while in cold water.
When you bake potatoes have the
skins dry. Wet potatoes lower the heat
of the oven, and as potatoes are largely
starch they need the stronger heat to
make them light. The heat should do
to the starch grains of the potato what
it does to the corn that is set to pop over
the coals.
54: THRIFT IN THE HOUSEHOLD
Use the little bits of potatoes that are
too small for the table by boiling, mash-
ing, and adding to the dough for bread
or doughnuts. The proportion is two-
fifths as much potato as flour. Many
cooks will tell you that bread with the
addition of potato is the best bread that
can be made. These small potatoes are
as good as any for frying, croquettes, or
mashing, and though it is tiresome to
prepare them it is as good a way of saving
money or earning it as any other. " A
penny saved is a penny earned." There
are a hundred calls for each cent that you
save, and the need of them dignifies your
saving of the pennies by using little
things and wasting nothing.
When you prepare asparagus, instead
of throwing away the bottom part that
you break off, peel it until you come to
the juicy center. Cut it in inch pieces,
and put it to cook half an hour earlier
than you do the better part of the stalks.
LITTLE ECONOMIES 55
Do not salt until nearly done. You will
find what was once waste will be edible
and tender. Save the water in which
you cook these bits as well as the aspara-
gus proper ; the next day add milk,
thicken if you prefer, season, and have
asparagus soup. Use it as the first course
of a dinner.
Instead of buying parsley week after
week, why not buy a pot of it? It is
ornamental and grows nicely in any
sunny window and may be grown in
winter in a box in the cellar by a win-
dow if it has the sunlight. Parsley is
hard to start, but after it has been potted
it grows well. One may also grow a pot
of thyme, which is pretty enough to
grow for its own sake did it lack the
merit of being one of the best of season-
ings. Crush a leaf between finger and
thumb and the room will be fresh with
its fragrance. Chives also may be added
to the family garden, and with them
56 THRIFT IN THE HOUSEHOLD
basil and marjoram. A window-box will
provide such a garden for all the year,
and these living plants will at most
trifling cost furnish seasonings for many
kinds of food and additions to salads, to
make them different and delightful.
The leaves may be gathered occasionally,
slowly dried and ground for seasoning.
For the out-of-door garden tarragon
should be planted. Added to cider vine-
gar it becomes the delicious tarragon
vinegar so much liked for salads.
Tomatoes originally were grown as
house-plants. Our grandmothers raised
them in pots for their beauty, without
so much as a dream that one day they
would be eaten more than any other
vegetable except potatoes. Then they
were " love apples," and held to be deadly
to the eater. Is there any reason why
she who would have delicacies in winter
may not grow her tomatoes in a sunny
window as they were grown for years?
LITTLE ECONOMIES 57
The dwarf varieties can be grown in pots
nicely. Such plants have thriven in the
window of a fireless attic where the sun
came for the greater part of the day, but
tomatoes or any of these plants will do
badly if subjected to coal or illuminating
gas. They can endure considerable cold
if helped by the sun, but no gas.
One of the greatest economies for the
cook who uses a gas range is the set of
steamers in which she may cook several
things at once. If you would be a thrifty
housewife, provide yourself with one of
these. In six months you will have
about saved its cost in your gas bill.
With a set of steamers you can prepare
an entire dinner without having the odor
of one thing at all affect the foods above
it. Do not buy one of tin, however
cheaply it is offered. This is a lesson of
experience. I bought " a bargain." It
cost forty-nine cents and lasted three
weeks. A good one will last for years.
58 THRIFT IN THE HOUSEHOLD
Another great economy that means
great saving in fuel and in time, perhaps
in unspoiled food, is a fireless cooker.
You can have one ; if you cannot afford
to buy a really good commercial cooker
you can make one yourself. I made
mine and did well with it. Any recep-
tacle made so air-tight that the cold can-
not get in will keep the heat from getting
out. Take a box, line it with several
layers of newspapers either pasted or
tacked on. Nearly fill it with hay or
sawdust or crumpled paper. Leave
spaces where you will set your kettles.
Pack the filling as tight as you can
around them, so tight that the hole is
left when you take the kettle out. I
used mine by starting the food cooking
in a tin that would fit into one a little
larger. In the second I placed the food
receptacle with the boiling food, and
filled the second with boiling water.
Then this was set into a kettle big
LITTLE ECONOMIES 59
enough to hold it and more boiling
water. When all were boiling hot they
went into the box, each being covered
closely, and were covered thickly with
the same stuff as the remainder of the
box packing. Thus prepared, the food
could be left to care for itself. This is
an excellent way of cooking tough fowl
or meat. Cereals or fruits set to cooking
like this when you go to bed will be
ready for breakfast the next morning.
Nothing ever spoils by over-cooking, and
much more time must be allowed for
preparing a meal with any fireless cook-
ing. The home-made will do less than
the best sold but it will do much more
than none at all.
The results obtained in flavor with a
fireless are much the same as those ob-
tained by casserole cooking in a hot oven ;
in each case the juices and flavors are re-
tained instead of dissipated as by ordi-
nary methods. A tightly covered earthen
60 THRIFT IN THE HOUSEHOLD
bean-pot is a true casserole, and may be
used for the same dishes with much satis-
faction, though not as fitting to set upon
the table.
Corn cooked on the cob should not be
wasted. The grains may be taken from
the cob by running the edge of a sharp
knife between the rows, not cutting, and
these grains are to be spread in a thin
layer on a bake sheet and dried thor-
oughly in a warm oven. When dry,
place in close receptacle and keep in
cool, dark, dry place. The dark can be
secured by wrapping thick brown paper
around the receptacle. To use this corn,
soak it overnight previously. Many
persons like this better than the canned.
It may be used for soups, corn pudding,
fritters, or any other purpose for which
the fresh or canned corn serves. The
corn on one cob will make corn custard
or fritters for two.
Bits of soap which accumulate, either
LITTLE ECONOMIES 61
in kitchen or in chambers, may serve
another term by being set to boil with a
little hot water and allowed to cool in a
flat dish after all have become soft and
united into one mass. Then from the
piece may be cut small cakes to be
wrapped in pretty paper and appear in
the bathroom. For the kitchen, let the
soap be left in a jelly, which is a very
convenient shape for it to be in when one
has scrubbing or laundry to be done.
Use your sour milk with soda for
gingerbread, biscuits, griddle-cakes, and
such things and you will have lighter
results than when you used only sweet
milk. If you are afraid of getting too
much soda, use with it a like measure
of cream of tartar. Some cooks use a
spoonful of baking-powder to the spoon-
ful of soda and then the bread or cake
never tastes of soda or has a golden glow
that is not wanted. Sour cream is very
good in salad-dressing. If there is con-
62 THRIFT IN THE HOUSEHOLD
siderable sour milk it can be converted
into cottage-cheese by pouring over it
boiling water until it is cooked, draining,
and dressing with a little butter or cream
and salt.
In cooking rhubarb or cranberry sauce,
boil until nearly done, add a pinch of
soda, and sweeten to taste. The soda
neutralizes the acid and about half as
much sugar will be enough. Too much
soda will make the rhubarb tasteless.
Combine rhubarb with strawberries if you
have some that seem not quite good
enough to be served raw. The flavors
combined are delicious.
Oiled surfaces, whether floor or lino-
leum, should not be wiped with soap and
water. Wipe with a cloth wet with kero-
sene. Do not use ammonia on polished
or oiled surfaces or on any surface that
you do not want cleaned from its finish.
Cook fruits slowly to bring out their
sweetness. This makes prunes much
LITTLE ECONOMIES 63
sweeter, and makes it unnecessary to
sweeten prunes.
Fabrics soaked in borax water will
come out clean with neither cloth nor
color injured. Borax water does not
harm the hands as harsher cleansers do.
Use everything left over. Bits of meat
and even a spoonful of gravy will help to
make something or to flavor it, and a
spoonful of jelly or jam adds to the
pudding-sauce just the touch it needed.
Has your hot-water bottle a leak ? If
it is from a broken spot in the rubber
mend it with layers of mending-tissue
larger than the hole. Place a piece of
tissue, hold it on with a warm iron, and
continue until four or five have been
set. Let it cool and harden for a day or
more before using. If it leaks around
the stopper it needs a new washer. One
can be put in place and the bag will last
a long time. Do not be in haste to cast
anything aside.
64 THRIFT IN THE HOUSEHOLD
As a hint in regard to what you can
do with two or three left-overs try this.
Perhaps you have two or three potatoes,
a tablespoonful of onion. Do you think
there is nothing to be done with them ?
Brown the onion in whatever fat you
have, the cheapest being a slice of fat
pork cut in small pieces and tried out.
Leave these crisp pieces in the pan.
After the onion has browned a little,
add the potatoes cut in dice. Just before
serving stir in a cupful of milk in which
you have beaten two eggs. It is a good
supper dish.
You can vary this by adding to it
minced green pepper, or a little corn, or
lima beans. You can use beans, onions,
tomatoes, and peppers with or without
potatoes in almost any proportion, taking
what you have and omitting what you
have not. You can be reasonably cer-
tain of having something to taste good
by such combinations either for hot
LITTLE ECONOMIES 65
dishes or for salads. The one rule in
making a left-over into something is to
be sure it tastes good. No chef can do
more.
Lettuce will keep a week fresh and
crisp if placed in a cloth or paper bag
and then in a tight pail. Keep it in a
cool place.
Orange, lemon, and grapefruit peel can
be saved, cut in strips, left standing in
salted water overnight. In the morning
parboil in one or more waters to draw out
the bitterness, of which with grapefruit
there is considerable, though with orange
and lemon only little. Then boil in a
thick syrup. Place hot in jars and seal.
With boiled rice, it is excellent for des-
sert ; it furnishes another dessert with
syrup and toasted crackers ; and it may
be used like citron. It is also good to
eat like candy. Baskets of candied peel
make an attractive Christmas or birthday
gift.
66 THRIFT IN THE HOUSEHOLD
If you have a chop or steak left that
has been cooked, do not think you must
discard it because it dries when one
tries to warm it. Put it in a covered
dish in a steamer and let it heat by
steam. The steam does not dry it as
oven or pan heat does, and the meat will
show little difference from newly cooked
meat unless the cover was not tight and
the steam ran into the plate as water.
Steaming is a much better method of re-
heating than the one more commonly
used.
Do you throw away the green stalks
of celery and the leaves and then do you
buy celery seed or ground celery for sea-
soning? That is contrary to thrift. All
the leaves and stalks not good for the
table may be washed and those which are
fit for it cut in dice for salad, and some-
times the outer stalks are excellent when
boiled and then dressed with a white
sauce. All leaves and stalks not other-
LITTLE ECONOMIES 67
wise good should be dried in a slow oven
or in the sunshine and then run through
the finest of the meat-grinders. It is the
best celery seasoning and costs nothing.
Keep in tightly closed jars. Keep every
kind of seasoning in a close receptacle.
All the smell that creeps out is that
much of the strength of the seasoning
being lost.
Tea and coffee left uncovered soon lose
their strength. The best way to buy
coffee is in the green berry and in large
quantities, as in the green berry it im-
proves by keeping. To get the full
aroma and deliciousness of coffee roast
and grind it just before making. Use
left-over coffee for mixing gingerbread
or for gelatine desserts. Never warm it
up for a beverage, as the flavor of coffee
lies in a volatile oil which soon goes after
the coffee is made.
Keep a little bag of mustard and horse-
radish in the mouth of a pickle jar and
68 THRIFT IN THE HOUSEHOLD
the contents will not mould. If pre-
serves or pickles show signs of mould,
remove the mould and cook up again.
Mould is not a sign of fermentation, and
unless it is shaken through the jar will
not harm preserves. Old ladies some-
times say of preserves, " They are sure to
be good for there is mould on the top."
Unsealed pickles made without mustard
and horseradish often are improved by
reheating.
If you have made a cake and it fell,
keep it and next day steam to serve as
pudding, with a good sauce. Usually it
comes out very good because it fell from
not having baked enough. If cake falls
from having had too little flour mixed
with it, break it up and soften it with
milk or water, as little as possible, then
add flour to make a stiff dough with
baking-powder in the usual proportion
to the amount of flour you add. One
mixing-cup of flour is half a pint. Steam
LITTLE ECONOMIES 69
or bake, allowing twice as long for steam-
ing as for baking. Never lift the lid of
the steamer while cooking cake, dump-
lings, or puddings. They will fall. If
water boils away, add boiling water at
one side of the water receptacle.
It is true thrift to make and bake
without chance of imperfect result, and
this is simply a matter of care and at-
tention to details of mixing and baking.
If one has been careless she does well to
make amends as directed above. It is
also far more profitable to cook only
what one needs and to cook that well
than to have left-overs and food to be
worked up for a second appearance.
Practice the thrift that plans according
to this principle, but become as expert
as possible on using left-over articles of
food because there will always be some
of them. If you want to know what
your thrift amounts to in dollars and
cents, try putting in a penny bank what-
70 THRIFT IN THE HOUSEHOLD
ever is represented by the food you do
not waste. You will thus get a realizing
sense what thrift means. You will not
have gone without any of the foods you
wanted, but you will have made them
of greater value to the family treasury.
Your kitchen scale will tell you how
many ounces of meat or other substance
goes to your soup, salad, pie, or whatever
you make for your economy. It becomes
very interesting to learn the practical
cash saving by such economy, and this
method brings realization. It will sur-
prise you. Your loaf of bread cuts a
certain number of slices, the whole being
priced at six or twelve cents at present
time. How much do you waste when
you throw into the garbage one of the
slices, or how many fragments does it
need to make a third of a loaf?
The next time there is melted ice-cream
left don't say, " You may as well throw
that out ; it isn't any good now." Set it
LITTLE ECONOMIES 71
with gelatine for blanc-mange, or thicken
it with corn-starch or tapioca for pud-
ding. Two eggs to a pint of liquid
stirred in and cooked, makes it a good
custard. You can use the left-over cocoa
or chocolate in the same way, or you
may use it for the liquid in place of milk
or water.
You can often use water in mixing a
cake instead of milk and the cake will be
lighter and less liable to scorch. Dishes
containing milk or molasses will scorch
readily. Grease well the dishes in which
such cakes and pudding are baked, as
they stick more than sugar-made articles,
and when you lose in that way your
profit is less.
Save gas in the range by turning off
when not in use if only for two minutes.
Matches are cheaper than gas. Do not
light until wanted, and turn off five min-
utes before removing kettle from range.
The water will continue to boil for some
72 THRIFT IN THE HOUSEHOLD
minutes after the gas is out. In using
the gas oven, get the full heat and then
turn out the gas for baking articles need-
ing a slight heat. Watch the oven, and
when more heat becomes necessary light
it again. Most housewives use twice as
much gas for the oven as is necessary.
An outside lining of sheet asbestos makes
the oven hold heat considerably longer.
Lemons, cranberries, and rhubarb may
be kept a long time if covered with cold
water and sealed. Cut rhubarb in inch
pieces, pack in jars, let the cold water
from the faucet run on it until it has no
bubbles, then seal. Keep in the dark,
and it will remain good indefinitely and
can be used like the fresh plant. The
same method holds good with cranberries.
Lemons need the water renewed, and will
not keep as well as the others. When they
are cheap, squeeze out the juice and mix
it half and half with sugar until ajar is
filled. Seal. It is ready for use in any
LITTLE ECONOMIES 73
way that one wants lemon-juice. A
spoonful to a glass makes an excellent
lemonade, and for lemon pie it is as good
as the fresh lemon. This mixture keeps
better than the lemons.
Grate the yellow rind into pure grain
alcohol and let it stand. Add a crystal
of citric acid. You will have an excellent
extract for flavoring. Use only enough
alcohol to absorb the oil of the lemon.
Dilute for using. I make orange, ginger,
and vanilla in the same way. Ginger-
root is the slowest to make a strong ex-
tract but it makes a better extract than
one buys, because it is stronger and costs
less. This principle is that on which
most extracts are made. You must not
use wood alcohol, or denatured alcohol.
They are unsafe.
CHAPTER V
VINEGARS. EGGS
CHAPTER V
VINEGAKS. EGGS
MAKE your own vinegar. Keep your
cider until it turns to vinegar or add to
the cider vinegar which you have the old
cider, and fruit juices you will not put
into pudding sauces or other things.
The vinegar into which you turn your
liquids must have plenty of " mother "
for the starter. Add the water in which
you boiled apple peelings not to be made
into jelly. Clean potato water may be
added. Nothing should be hot when
turned into the vinegar, as heat destroys
the active principle in the mother. If
warm it will the sooner begin to work.
Keep in a warm place until fermentation
has ceased, clarify if necessary, and strain
the vinegar if it does not seem clear. If
77
78 THRIFT IN THE HOUSEHOLD
the made vinegar does not clear readily
add to it a half-pint of sweet milk to
a gallon of vinegar. It will curdle and
settle, taking with it the impurities, after
which it may be bottled. The sediment
will be the working part of a new vinegar.
To destroy the mother, boil it.
Starting with this vinegar you can
make fancy vinegars for your use or to
give your friends. The general rule for
making flavored vinegars is to pour the
hot acid on the leaves or whatever is the
base of the new vinegar, and leave the
two to stand undisturbed from two weeks
to a month. Fresh leaves are better than
dried but not as easy to get. Any drug-
gist has the dried tarragon, mint, or other
herb, but the growing plants are not often
seen. Onions, horseradish, mustard, and
celery, as well as herbs may be treated
with the hot vinegar. Mustard and
celery seed will be better if boiled with
the vinegar. Fancy vinegars sell at
VINEGARS. EGGS 79
fancy prices and cannot often be bought
at that.
Last fall I made a very unusual and
good vinegar from the red part of water-
melon. The modus operandi was mash-
ing the melon, the pulp and juice turned
into closed receptacles where it could
ferment. All vinegars when making
must have heat and be kept warm with
the sun if not otherwise. The water-
melon juice cleared itself, and when fer-
mentation was complete the acid was as
clear and colorless as water. It would
" make " if added to the cider vinegar,
and next time will be used with it. The
two acids combine well in flavor. I
used the watermelon vinegar in making
pickles and found it as successful as cider
vinegar.
Fermentation may be started with yeast
if one wants to make a vinegar without
the flavor of the cider vinegar, and more
quickly than by waiting for it to come as
80 THRIFT IN THE HOUSEHOLD
a natural result of conditions. Almost
any liquid will turn to vinegar if left to
sour and work itself clear. Molasses will
become so acid that it must be diluted
very much to use at all. I once made
some pickles by pouring molasses over
sliced green tomatoes it was a recipe in
a cook-book and the resulting pickles
were so sour that the acid made ordinary
vinegar seem sweet. They could not be
eaten, but might have been with diluted
acid, perhaps.
Vinegars may be made from the juices
of oranges, peaches, and other fruits. The
recipes for these call for yeast-cake ac-
cording to amount of liquid. Half a
cake will ferment a gallon, or nature
will do the same. There is no more real
need for a fermentative agent than with
watermelon. I have never made any of
these fruit vinegars but have made many
of the herb vinegars, and plan to keep
mint and tarragon vinegar always on
VINEGARS. EGGS 81
hand. With onions at the present price
onion vinegar will be added to my supply
of fancy vinegars. They may be made in
quart quantities.
EGGS
There is an economy in putting down
eggs for winter provided you can get ab-
solutely fresh and infertile eggs. It will
not pay to lay the eggs down unless you
can be sure they are fresh. One of the
leading authorities on farm matters has
advised every one who can do so to put
down eggs whenever they can be bought
at less than forty cents a dozen, as the
probability is that the price will rise in
the future to much more than that. The
price is lowest in spring when eggs are
most abundant, but they are more liable
then to be fertile and thus will not keep
well.
There are several methods of preserv-
ing eggs, but the two tested by the
82 THRIFT IN THE HOUSEHOLD
Department of Agriculture and recom-
mended by the authorities of the Depart-
ment are in water-glass and by lime.
The country way for years was to put
the eggs in a half-barrel or big lard-
firkin. The great disadvantage of this is
that the last eggs put down are the first
to be eaten, unless one does as an old
friend of mine did. When her firkin
was full she put a tight lid on it and re-
versed it, opened it at the bottom and
thus used the first laid down before the
late. Better than that is to have smaller
receptacles, which may be opened in
order of age, beginning with the oldest.
Working from the oldest to the last put
down you will never get any that are
very old.
Water-glass is a sodium silicate and is
dissolved in water. The proper propor-
tions are given with the material. The
water has a somewhat slippery feeling.
When the eggs are to be used, they are
VINEGARS. EGGS 83
removed from the liquid and rinsed in
clean, cold water, but must not wait
long before being used. The informa-
tion given by the Department of Agri-
culture says eggs thus preserved may be
used for soft-boiling or poaching up to
November. To cook an egg in the shell
first prick a tiny hole in the large end
of the shell with a needle to keep it
from cracking. They are satisfactory for
frying until December and after that
time until March they may be used for
omelets, custards, and cake cooking.
As the eggs become older, the whites be-
come thinner and it is harder to separate
yellow from white. It becomes difficult
to beat the eggs. As the eggs age, they
do not look as inviting and sometimes,
even when not bad, there is a tinge of
pink in the white, which is said to be
due to a small supply of iron in the
sodium silicate and does not harm the
egg for cooking. Some of these changes
84: THRIFT IN THE HOUSEHOLD
in the eggs will be avoided by so placing
them in separate receptacles that they do
not get so old before using. Sixteen
average-sized eggs may be packed with
the water-glass in a half-gallon crock.
Seal the jar or crock when full. The
water-glass may be used again.
The most enthusiastic advocate of pre-
serving eggs I ever met was a personal
friend who had put eggs down in lime-
water for forty years when she told me
about that method. She did not like
the water -glass method, and perhaps was
slightly prejudiced against it, as she got
better results with the lime-water. She
said she had never had a bad egg with
the lime process, but she was fortunate in
having hens and thus being assured of
perfectly fresh material to preserve. Forty
years' experience and no poor eggs is a
good recommendation. The lime-water
is a strong solution, three pounds of un-
slaked lime to five gallons of water which
VINEGARS. EGGS 85
has been boiled and allowed to stand
until cool. The mixture must stand
until the lime settles and the liquid is
clear. The eggs are to be packed as with
water-glass, having at least two inches of
water above the eggs. Rinse as with the
other preparation. These eggs retain
their original appearance on breaking
somewhat longer than the eggs from
water-glass. The lime-water is somewhat
the cheaper solution, but the Department
of Agriculture endorses the water-glass
process the more highly.
Eggs are so important a part of the
family diet that it is well worth your
time and care to have as many as you
can. My grocer said, " The price of eggs
in winter does not trouble me. In the
spring I buy thirty dozen where I know
they are good, put them down, and they
last us until they come again." That is
from a man who can always get his foods
at cost price, and what is a good plan for
86 THRIFT IN THE HOUSEHOLD
him is equally good for others. Eggs
must always be put down in earthenware
or glass. I know I spoke of the firkin
and have seen it used a great deal in the
country, but it is like other exceptions to
rules, and when you begin you do better
to follow the rule exactly.
Buy no eggs for preserving which are
over four days old. The fresher they
are, the better for keeping.
Even when using fresh eggs, break
each egg separately, and then only one
will be lost. I once spoiled eight by
breaking the ninth into them when it
was much too old to be pleasant. Yolks
separated from whites may be kept fresh
if covered, without blending, with cold
water. Cover the whites with a lid to
keep from drying. If beaten eggs be-
come hard, soften them with milk.
If eggs are scarce and you want to
make a cake that calls for more than one
egg, add the butter last and have it
VINEGARS. EGGS. 87
melted when added. Then one egg will
serve for two cakes. Beat yolk and white
separately and add last of all but the
butter. Eggs may be made to do double
duty by beating up with a tablespoonful
of water to an egg. If more than three
eggs are called for, omit one and add a
spoonful of corn-starch. Beat it in with
the eggs or the mixture may fall. It
may be substituted in scrambled eggs or
an omelet.
CHAPTER VI
THE GREATEST ECONOMY
YOURSELF
CHAPTER VI
THE GEEATEST ECONOMY : YOUKSELF
THERE is one possession which the
woman who makes the greatest effort to
be thrifty often wastes with reckless
prodigality, in spite of the fact that it is
so valuable it cannot be replaced by any-
thing else ; money cannot buy it, and
once lost one seldom can get it again.
Of all the wastes about the household
this is the one irreparable, and as the
housewife is wasting it she seems to
think she is doing something very com-
mendable. She will save her pennies and
waste her life by overwork and lack of
sleep, and in the end she spends all she
has tried to accumulate, in the vain effort
to be well again.
Of all the good gifts the fairies bestow
91
92 THRIFT IN THE HOUSEHOLD
upon a child at birth, the first and best is
good health ; if that does not come by
birth, the next best for the child is a
mother wise enough to nurture him so
needfully that health grows within him
as he sleeps, eats, and, later, works.
Blessed is the household where the mother
puts good health above all things except
moral strength. In that household the
mother does not throw away her strength
and time doing work that can be elimi-
nated, but she serves cleanliness with
reason.
However hard one works and however
steadily, she never can have an absolutely
clean house. Nature forbids it. All out-
of-doors is dirt, yet we take to out-of-doors
and we thrive. Instead of working so
hard to drive out the dust why not take
more of out-of-doors into the house?
That is thrift. It may fade the carpet,
and the life-giving sunshine generally
does fade it and the paper and other
GREATEST ECONOMY: YOURSELF 93
things, but these can be renewed if the
members of the family are well, for they
will work with so much more enthusiasm
that their incomes will increase; more-
over, there is no home that is so inviting
and homelike as one that is not too new
and speckless. Better is a home where
faded walls and floor are, with a well,
happy mother, than an immaculate, dark-
ened home with an irritable, nervous
mother presiding over it. In homes
where the income is small, only one per-
son to see to everything, there is always
occasion to choose which you shall have,
more show, more work, less happiness, or
health and content with plain living.
As a matter of dollars and cents, regard-
less of the spirit of the home and the
happiest homes are not the most scrubbed
it pays better to work less.
A woman will tell you, " I cleaned all
my up-stairs to-day, took up the carpet,
washed the floor, etc.," as if she had done
94: THRIFT IN THE HOUSEHOLD
a truly virtuous deed, when what she
really did was to strain her back, neglect
her food, work all day keyed at the high-
est tension, and go to bed at night with
every nerve strained to the utmost, an
aching head and back, and the conscious-
ness that her weariness and aches have
made her so snappy that the children
have stayed as far from her as they could,
and her husband has " decided to do
some extra work at the office." Wearing
one's self out like that and being cross
is a sin, and if a woman herself must
clean her house at such a cost she will be
much wiser to let the extra work be un-
done. Probably no one else ever would
know whether or not she had done all
the cleaning, or care. Just why houses
should become so remarkably dirty twice
a year when they apparently have been
kept clean all through the months be-
tween is one of the puzzles of a thought-
ful mind.
GREATEST ECONOMY : YOURSELF 95
When this country was first settled and
only one fire was kept in most houses,
and that in the kitchen, and all winter
the family hibernated and dirt accumu-
lated because it was too cold to clean the
rooms unlived in, there was reason for a
yearly digging-out ; but now it is the cus-
tom to occupy all the house, and all is
kept swept and garnished from January
first to the following December thirty-
first at midnight it should be possible to
keep it livable without any yearly up-
heaval. There is enough to be done each
day not to add any needless labor to the
amount.
If you, my dear sister-worker, find
yourself getting so tired each day that
you " cannot think," try this way of cul-
tivating thrift. Take time to consider
with yourself how not to waste your life.
It is the best thing you have. Did you
ever notice how many husbands have
young wives spending the money saved
96 THRIFT IN THE HOUSEHOLD
by the work of the first wives, who die and
leave it for their successors to spend?
Why not spend it yourself? Reflect on
that topic deeply and heartfully, and then
decide first that you will not join the
number of those thus making a place for
some superfluous woman. That decision
being made so that it cannot be shaken,
reflect thoughtfully on what you can do
to save yourself, which is to make yourself
well and keep yourself well.
You know just about what you can do
before you become conscious of weariness.
You should stop a little the other side
of that. If you can work but an hour
and feel right, work that at your best and
stop.
If you cannot afford to hire a helper
really cannot afford it by going without
something else then there remains for
you only to cut down the work and have
the members of your family help you.
Probably you are the kind who hangs up
GREATEST ECONOMY : YOURSELF 97
everything the other members of the fam-
ily drop, who puts away or packs every-
thing for them, and who makes of herself
an unthanked servant for the household.
Having resolved to be just to yourself, you
must change this condition, so talk over
the situation with your family and re-
quest their cooperation in making life
easier for you. Very likely they will be
greatly surprised to know that you have
any lacks in that respect. If you have
brought them up so selfishly that they
will not help for the asking, then make
a demand that they do at least what be-
longs to them to do, the work they make,
and if they do not heed your words, leave
all their proper work undone.
Let their clothes lie where they were
dropped, also their tennis-rackets, books,
etc. Don't give way to the weakness of
saying, " I can't stand seeing them
around." If you can't, just go somewhere
else and forget about them. You may as
98 THRIFT IN THE HOUSEHOLD
well go while you are able to do it as to
wait until you are carried feet first. If
you were sick abed you would have to
let them lie, so play that you are too ill
to attend to them. It should come easy
to you to do that.
The woman who is always tired is a
woman who is not well, and she belongs
in bed quite as much as the woman who
is there. Rest will do her more good
than any medicine and help more to keep
her well, and the housemother should
rest some part of every day as soon as she
is conscious of weariness ; even fifteen
minutes' relaxation will do her good, and
after it she will go on with renewed en-
ergy. She can get this rest if she will.
It is always possible to do the thing one
should do, and to be pleasant is the first
duty of a woman with husband and
child.
As soon as you feel that you have more
to do than you can ever get done, and
GREATEST ECONOMY : YOURSELF 99
wherever you turn you see nothing but
dust and dirt, it is time for you to drop
everything for half an hour. Go out-
doors and breathe fresh air and see how
the sky looks. There is no more dirt
than when you did not notice it at all.
You see it because your nerves are mag-
nifying everything. Remember, " As
thy days, so shall thy strength be," and
you can do all that belongs to you
to do without the wear that makes you
cross. You have no more before you that
absolutely must be done than you can do
well. Separate the things you know
must be done from those that can be left,
and be guided in your decision by the
state of your mind and body, and pay no
heed to the things you would do because
your neighbors do and think you should
do. Your neighbors do not have your
life to live ; live it yourself as seems good
to you. Tasks are the things you do to
satisfy your neighbors' notions. Do no
100 THRIFT IN THE HOUSEHOLD
more of them. They bring nervous pros-
tration.
" Do the duty that lies nearest," but be
sure it is a duty. You can recognize a
duty because it is something that makes
you and your family physically well, that
develops them spiritually and morally,
and does not take from you more than
you are able to give. Your first duty is
to make yourself so lovely that your fam-
ily want to be with you. Nothing is
worth while to you or them that does
not help you to be dear to them. Test
what you lay out for your work by its re-
lation to this great demand, and reject it
if it does not meet the test.
Very many seem-to- be-important tasks
will fade into nothingness if judged by
this test. You think of pies, doughnuts,
cakes, or what else to be made, but are
those really necessary to body or soul ?
They take much time and they are de-
licious, but if you are not strong, cannot
GREATEST ECONOMY: YOURSELF iOl
9
your family be well nourished and whole-
somely fed without them? You know
they can. The actual requirements of
the body to keep it in perfect physical
trim are very few. A simple dietary does
more to make and keep it perfect than all
the products of the cook in sweets and
desserts. All forms of thrift are against
much cookery of that kind, thrift of time,
money, strength, health, and good spirits.
Eggs, shortening, flour, milk, all are so
expensive that it is not thrift to put much
of them into the non-essentials of diet.
While you deny your appetite these
pleasing gratifications you can content
yourself and family by reminding them
of the gains in health, and in money.
Very few women ever stop to reckon the
cost of cakes or any such foods. They
know what eggs and meat cost because
they pay for them in a lump sum, but they
cannot tell you what a cake costs until
they count it up. With lard at twenty-
ib2 TSfttFT IN THE HOUSEHOLD
five cents a pound, eggs at fifty cents or
more a dozen, sugar nine cents or more a
pound, and milk and flour equally high,
it is not hard to see that cake is as ex-
pensive as needless. Women can lessen
the indirect expenses of the family in
many ways, beginning with what they
need not spend on doctors and medicine.
If the housewife will cut out from her
housework the non-essentials, she will go
through her days much more healthfully
and comfortably. Weariness creates poi-
sons in the blood that after a while create
the so-called diseases. Why not avoid
the illness by leaving undone the acts
that produce it? You will have to leave
them undone after the illness ; it is as
easy to foresee the evil and escape it.
One severe sickness will use up in a
month the savings of a year and indirectly
much more in what one's time is worth,
and while the wages of the housewife's
substitute are being paid as well as her
GREATEST ECONOMY: YOURSELF 103
board and breakages the appreciation of
the regular worker's duties and value
will be increasing.
"How shall I save health?" do you
ask? "How shall I plan my days to
eliminate the needless? " That is some-
thing no one can tell another, for the
needs of families are different, but a gen-
eral rule may be given. Simplify every
department of life. With foods, cook
those which are most easily prepared and
use the fireless, since that is the easiest
and least time-devouring of all cooking.
That saves labor, time and money beside
strength, all of which you need to con-
serve. Eat many uncooked articles for
desserts ; figs, raisins, dates, prunes, and
other fruits cost less than cakes and pod-
dings and keep the body in good tone.
These are all good with the morning
cereal. They supply also the sugar that
is necessary for perfect nutrition.
Plan to have a meat or its substitute, a
104 THRIFT IN THE HOUSEHOLD
starch, and a fat at each dinner. The
body has to be fed with these to meet its
needs. As most meals are provided for
individuals of different ages and physical
conditions, a compromise has to be ar-
ranged, varied as the mother knows to be
best.
Meat substitutes are fish, fowl, cheese,
nuts, legumes, milk and eggs. Potatoes
and cereals furnish starches. Fats are
found to some extent in most foods but
the fats for the table are butter and cream,
with salad oils, and children should be
encouraged to eat much of them. Every
family would be the healthier for a green
salad daily which should be served with-
out mayonnaise. There is no thrift in
providing that dressing, which is as un-
wholesome as expensive. Many persons
find peanut and cottonseed oil as pleasant
as olive for salads and the cost is a third
less. It is said that no case of appen-
dicitis has ever developed among persons
GREATEST ECONOMY: YOURSELF 105
who eat oil freely. Children, unless they
have heard their elders say they never
could take oil, will eat vegetables dressed
with oil and lemon juice and ask for
more. There are so few fats palatable to
children that the salad habit should be
encouraged. Also, a salad is a dish easy
to prepare for the table.
Economize on the daily duties by hav-
ing those common to every day follow a
regular routine. The more nearly auto-
matic they become, the less they take out
of you, while saving the wear of thinking,
"What shall I do next?" Insist that
each member of the family turn back his
bed before leaving his room, and leave
the window open. Also, have him take
care of all his belongings. To pick up a
paper or a match is not much effort, but
it is as much for you as for him, and the
aggregation of picking up for every one
is an appreciable tax upon one. Perhaps
the weaker sex would not be the weaker
106 THRIFT IN THE HOUSEHOLD
if she did not bend her back so much
picking up what the stronger leaves on
the floor. There will be more life for
you to put into better things when you
have taught your family to look after
their own belongings. You should have
begun the lessons when they were little.
Each year of practice makes the good
habit become more like instinct.
CHAPTER VII
LABOR-SAVING
CHAPTER VII
LABOK-SAYING
BEGIN on Sunday to prepare for the
week's work so that you shall finish each
day of it with the joy of doing, not with
the weariness that grows greater and
heavier day by day. Take your day of
rest as does the man who insists on an
eight-hour day. You need it as much as
your men do. Plan your day's work and
meals to be as light as you can possibly
make them. Have your dinner nearly
ready on Saturday. It won't hurt your
men to eat cold meat once a week. Study
how to get the hours of rest that will do
you good ; let it be your day and let
your family make it good for you. Prob-
ably they will enjoy the change as much
as you will, and you will feel and look
so much the younger.
109
110 THRIFT IN THE HOUSEHOLD
Take Monday to put the house in order
after Sunday, to get food ready for wash-
day ; Tuesday, for putting clothes in soak
and getting them ready thus to be treated.
Monday is the day to take out the stains,
to mend rents that will be enlarged by
going through the wash, and to get the
week well under way. It saves labor to
soak the clothes with a good powder that
you can make yourself, or to use a spoon-
ful of kerosene to the gallon of water.
The odor of kerosene will be lost when
the clothes go through the wash. A
washing-machine is an economy in the
average household because it makes very
hard labor become easy and does the
same work in half the time. Add a good
wringer, and wash-day is no more to be
dreaded than any other day. Laundry
work is the hardest and most exacting
of the household, and a woman should
have every appliance that will make
it easier, if to have them she leaves
LABOR-SAVING 111
her bedroom with only a bed, table, and
chair.
When you put the clothes on the line
hang all things of the same kind to-
gether, all sheets, slips, etc., side by side.
Hang them to swing smoothly, and fold
as taken from the line. Do not iron.
Sun-dried sheets folded while the sun is
on them are so sweet that ironing is no
improvement. Moreover, there is health
in such clothing. Fold ordinary towels
and do not iron them. For underwear,
woven garments, or those made of crpe
or seersucker if you want heavier ma-
terial, will need no ironing, just pulling
into smoothness and shape. They are
very pretty with a little needlework for
trimming, which may be done in odd
minutes. By a little thought you can
make your ironing only a small amount
of work, less than the washing.
If you do your own work, all that you
can leave undone without lessening the
112 THRIFT IN THE HOUSEHOLD
comfort or in any degree injuring the
health of your family will keep you
fresher and happier. If you hire your
laundry done, the less ironing, the less
the cost for the washing, and the more
you will have for the finer things of the
mind or for charity. To-day from all
over the world comes the cry for help,
and to answer it one must practise thrift
as never before.
Try to "have as few handlings of the
clothes as you can. You can sort the
not-to-be-ironed as you take from the
line. As you iron the others, place
systematically on the drier. Have those
to be mended separated from the others
on the drier and so on. Mend when
taken from the drier, and do not put
anything away without buttons on and
rents repaired. Let the sewing-machine
help with the mending. Do not waste
time sewing by hand when it can be
more effectively done by machine.
LABOR-SAVING 113
If you have a small family, you may
save time and strength by doing your
dishes all at one time. Scrape them,
pile in an orderly manner, pour hot
water over them, and let them stand in
the pan until the most convenient hour
of your day for doing them. This may
be in the pauses of getting dinner at
night. There is a considerable saving
of time, and the dishes by their soaking
are about half-washed when one begins
on them.
It will be a great help in keeping
rooms clean to have on each floor a duster,
broom, and brush. By removing dust
and dirt as it comes the weekly cleaning
may be turned into a fortnightly work,
and made easier by taking half of the
rooms each week. With your work, as
with your money, it is the small savings
and expenditures that count for profit or
loss. Use your head to devise methods
of saving motions and labor. Keeping
114 THRIFT IN THE HOUSEHOLD
things convenient is a great gain in
health.
In your kitchen and pantry have your
cooking articles and dishes so arranged
that you can get what you want without
moving anything else, and all within easy
reach. That is a decided advantage in
working rapidly, and is free from the
irritating influence that accompanies
keeping dishes, covers, and so on, piled
one on another.
CHAPTER VIII
BREAD AND CAKE
CHAPTER VIII
BREAD AND CAKE
BREAD, being the commonest and most
important article of food, must form a
large part of the cost of the table. In no
other thing has the standard of the
housewife changed so greatly as in rela-
tion to bread-making. One of the
memories from my childhood in New
England is hearing the discussion of a
woman new to the neighborhood, and
what I remember is this, spoken in
pitying accents : " Yes, poor thing, she
does the best she can, but she hasn't any
faculty. Why, she buys her bread!"
That to the generation earlier was a sure
indication of a poor or lazy housewife.
Now it is the exceptional housekeeper
who makes her own bread, and perhaps
117
118 THRIFT IN THE HOUSEHOLD
that fact has had its share in raising the
cost of living.
Whether it were more profitable to
make my bread, cake, and other flour
products or to buy them, no one was able
to tell me when I began to keep house,
so I determined to find out for myself,
and I kept account of all that was baked
from a bag of flour, added to that the
cost of other material and of fuel. As
gas has always been my fuel and I can
read my meter I could tell how much
gas was burned for each baking or steam-
ing. I found a gain of fifty per cent.,
and if there were no gain where would
the baker get his profit? Though he
buys for less and has increased produc-
tion, he must pay other expenses lacking
to the housewife, so it is fair to credit
him with a cost no heavier than that of
the home-maker, and his profit she saves
when she does the work. No housewife
at the head of a large family can afford
BREAD AND CAKE 119
to buy her bread if she desires to be
thrifty in the least. The higher the price
of flour and other material, the more need
of her being the bread-maker.
The following statement may help you
to see that making your bread is cheaper
than buying it, outside of the fact that
home-made bread has more body to it
than baker's bread, and " goes farther."
In a barrel of flour there will be flour
enough for 330 loaves of bread. Suppose
you pay $15 for the flour. Your loaves
at ten cents each, and they are quite as
likely to be more, will cost $33, and you
will see at once that the shortening and
baking will not cost you any such sum as
the difference between cost of the barrel
of flour and cost of loaves of bread bought
from the baker. A light, delicious loaf
of home-made bread will serve more than
baker's bread because it has more sub-
stance to it. No woman with a family
of four persons is thrifty if she buys
120 THEIFT IN THE HOUSEHOLD
bread unless she is frail and overbur-
dened with work.
In my family of three persons I have
found it profitable to make my cakes,
pies, breads, and puddings, planning to
bake when there is something else to
cook at the same time. With gas for
fuel, it is wasteful to run the oven for
only one article. It takes as much gas
to bake a roast as to bake a roast, a loaf,
potatoes, and one other thing, which are
all a gas oven will hold.
Good bread, even the much-vilified
fine white bread, has considerable food
value. An expert on nutrition (Brews-
ter) says a slice of it toasted and buttered
has as much nutriment as an egg.
" As for the vexed question of Graham
and entire-wheat bread vs. white, the
difference is really not nearly so great
as some persons would have us believe.
In fuel value, the white has a slight ad-
vantage, since the darker forms are com-
BREAD AND CAKE 121
monly made up with somewhat more
water. The protein of the darker sorts
amounts, on the average, to only about
two per cent, more, fifty bites of the one
matching forty-nine of the other. The
white sorts are for most persons dis-
tinctly more digestible. In the bone-
building minerals the difference is some-
what greater. Even here it amounts, in
general, to only about two parts in ten.
Moreover, some white flour contains more
protein and more phosphates than some
dark, the low-grade flours having com-
monly the most. The striking difference
between white and dark flours lies in
their content of woody fibre, which may
be twenty times as great in certain brands
of Graham as is the super-refined white.
This fibre tends to make the bread indi-
gestible. On the other hand, there is
probably nothing else so good for keep-
ing the bowels properly at work."
Thus does Brewster dispose of a favor-
122 THKIFT IN THE HOUSEHOLD
ite popular notion. Recent investiga-
tions among English workingmen show
that among well-nourished men of that
class, bread provides nearly two-thirds of
the total energy value of the ration. This
proves that bread is worthy of its high
place in the dietary, and the more active
the individual, the better for him is bread.
" The mainstay of a child's diet should
be bread." He is always working, and
the bread and butter give him what he
needs in the best form. There is good
basis for the Continental breakfast of
bread and coffee or chocolate, and work-
ers of the offices and stores who have tried
for breakfast two slices of buttered toast,
with fruit cooked or raw, will rarely re-
turn to the heavier meal, which makes
the mind heavier as well.
Do not have always the same kind of
bread. Variety in this is as welcome as
in other things and as readily found.
You may have bran, rice, whole wheat,
BREAD AND CAKE 123
brown bread, as part of your bread ration
and it will pay you to make it yourself.
Then for breads that are almost a meal
in themselves offer nut, date, and raisin
bread. These need no meat accompani-
ment and will satisfy hunger perfectly.
Where lunches have to be put up daily,
these breads should be made often. Nut
bread with butter or jam is the delight
of all who have been given it.
Bread become stale is bread in its most
wholesome state. It is amazing how
slight a realization most women have of
the uses of stale bread. Not a crumb
should be thrown away. In this one
article the housewife will find herself
gaining greatly in thrift as she learns
how to avail herself of crumbs and broken
bread. Even the crumbs that remain on
the bread-board after cutting should be
turned into a glass jar. Dried slowly
without browning, they will keep indefi-
nitely and are ready for any number of
THRIFT IN THE HOUSEHOLD
purposes, saving cracker crumbs. All
crumbs, all bits of bread, and heels
of loaves should be dried thoroughly,
ground fine with a bread-roller or through
a meat-grinder, and they are even better
than the cracker crumbs one buys for
breading cutlets, etc. The lightest grid-
dle-cakes have bread crumbs as their
foundation ; brown bread is all the better
for having part of the wheat flour added
as crumbs.
The delicious bread sauce so favored
in England with roast chicken cannot
be made without bread crumbs; they
may be combined with potatoes for fry-
ing if there is a scant supply of the lat-
ter ; a hash is improved if crumbs take
the place of part potato ; bread crumbs
are needed in all households for breading
cutlets, croquettes, chops and such things.
Bread crumbs help well to fill out a
meal when combined with mashed po-
tato, blended with an egg, all seasoned,
BKEAD AND CAKE 125
shaped in small balls and dropped in
deep hot fat.
A dish of considerable substance may be
prepared from crumbs by soaking them
in a cup of milk, adding an egg, season-
ing well, then adding a spoonful of baking-
powder and enough flour to make a thin
batter. Into this stir any bits of meat
you have if it is only a spoonful it will
give flavor.
Shavings of fat pork, nice and brown,
are very good. You can turn the batter
over the fat pork-crisps and bake them
like pancakes. If you cook on top of
the stove, when one side is brown, turn
it and brown the other. It can be baked
in the oven also. You can have a hearty,
appetizing dish by having some bacon in
the skillet with the fat and turning the
batter over it. Have plenty of fat but
not too much, which is when it comes
above the dough. To have crumbs pre-
pared is a saving of time and a great
126 THRIFT IN THE HOUSEHOLD
convenience. Crumbs for scallops should
be bigger than for breading. Always
make the dough for anything of which
crumbs are a part somewhat thicker than
with flour alone. Crumbs may be mixed
with a custard and " make it go farther "
without making it less palatable.
Probably there is more unthrift con-
nected with the treatment of stale bread
than in any one other branch of family
service. Garbage men can tell how sel-
dom does one find a garbage pail that does
not hold enough of bread alone to feed a
hungry man for a day, and that is a low
limit, as any one knows who has shared
the garbage receptacle of an apartment
house. Stale bread toasted, dressed with
a white sauce to which grated cheese has
been added, makes a dish with nutrition
enough for the breakfast of a man who
works out-of-doors. In Europe, cheese
and bread are an important part of the
diet and may well help those who wish
BREAD AND CAKE 127
to make thrift take the place of dollars.
Slices of cheese are served for breakfast
in some parts of Europe just as slices of
cold meat sometimes are served in the
United States.
Crumbs of brown bread and corn-meal
bread may be converted into baked
Indian pudding by substituting them
for part of the meal the recipe calls for.
Then follow the rule. If you have any
dry gingerbread add that to the other.
Bread puddings are very good when well
made; when not they are a waste of
material. There are many kinds of ex-
cellent puddings which will use the
crumbs, but a bread pudding which calls
for several eggs should be made very
seldom. Puddings are served after the
appetite is satisfied or nearly so, and the
nutrition of the meal does not require
eggs ; when the main part of the meal
has been light, a two-egg pudding is
more thrifty than at other times because
128 THRIFT IN THE HOUSEHOLD
there is need of more food value in the
dessert. Eggs are not extravagant when
they are a substitute for meat, but except
when of low cost, are wasteful in pud-
dings and cakes because they are added
to a meal which does not need them.
Cake cannot be called a necessity of
life but it is a food that is pleasant and
has considerable nutrition, therefore it
may have an occasional place on the
table of the thrifty, though as it is al-
ways eaten after a fulness of other food,
it should be a simple combination of one
egg, or two at most, with such ingredients
as one needs. As good a cake as any
family need to eat may be made with
two eggs ; if you make simple cakes for
daily fare you will not mind the expense
of something richer on festal occasions.
Most experienced housewives have a
recipe which has proved worth making
up, and this they vary as they need other
cakes. For instance, gingerbread by the
BREAD AND CAKE 129
following rule has been made in our
family for years and is thoroughly de-
pendable. You will note that it is egg-
less. One-half cup of molasses, one-
fourth cup sugar, one-fourth cup melted
shortening; turn on these one-half cup
of boiling not just hot water. I use
coffee left from breakfast in place of the
water if there is any. Allow enough
flour to make a slightly thick batter
(about two cups, more or less), with
which sift one-half teaspoonful each of
soda, salt, and ginger. Bake slowly, as
any molasses mixture burns readily.
This is turned into a bake-sheet and
baked about two inches thick. That is
the first result.
From this come other cakes. Some-
times I bake in muffin tins and have
little cakes ; sometimes to the original
recipe I add raisins, or chopped dates, or
citron, or any two of these ; sometimes I
turn a cup of black walnut meats broken
130 THRIFT IN THE HOUSEHOLD
rather fine into the dough, and find it
delicious. Then I season with spices as
fruit cake, and add nuts, raisins, and a
little minced orange peel that I candied.
I made my Christmas plum pudding as
a variation of this recipe and it was as
good as any Christmas pudding needs
to be.
Beside being plain gingerbread or little
cakes it is made in layers ; as a layer cake
it does not need as much flour. If for
supper dessert, I have it hot and spread
between the layers jelly or whipped
cream when I have something left from
my week's allowance. Sometimes I make
a nut or other filling. Sometimes I make
it as a loaf. As my oven is likely to
burn on the bottom, I bake my cake in
my iron skillet and it makes a pretty
loaf of extra size. You see what I mean
by an inexpensive base producing many
cakes. You can turn this into a dark
chocolate cake by omitting the ginger
BREAD AND CAKE 131
and using an ounce of cake chocolate, or
two spoonfuls of powdered cocoa or
chocolate with it, and seasoning with
vanilla. By frosting with chocolate or
other icing you will have a cake that
seems much more expensive than it is.
It is the same cake in all forms but it
does not taste the same and in all it
is inexpensive. Of course, as nuts and
fruits go into it the cost rises. Ginger-
bread is the most desirable form of cake
for home consumption speaking from
the health point and served hot will de-
light nearly every one. There are recipes
for its making requiring from no eggs
to four, and for keeping it is well to add
an egg, but gingerbread never keeps with
us. It is so good that it quickly disap-
pears.
It is very well to use several eggs in a
cake or pudding if one serves it when
there is very little preceding it as food,
but not otherwise. When one has satis-
132 THEIFT IN THE HOUSEHOLD
fied his appetite with heavier food the
system does not need the protein of the
eggs and it is mainly wasted. There are
many good eggless recipes, much to the
purpose with eggs at fifty to sixty cents a
dozen, or even more. Eggs as the main
dish of a meal are not extravagant, even
at the higher price, but as part of cakes
and puddings they are not used in our
house when they go above forty-five cents
a dozen, and very seldom at that price.
The members of my family do not know
whether my cake is made with eggs or
not, but they say " it tastes like more."
CHAPTER IX
SOUPS
CHAPTER IX
SOUPS
HOUSEWIVES in this country do not
know as they should the thrift of soups.
They understand the merits of chowders
and stews which are dishes containing
everything for a meal in one composition,
but they have never really grasped the
economy of a thin soup daily at the be-
ginning of a dinner. It is truly econom-
ical. It warms the stomach and starts
the digestive apparatus as surely as does
drinking warm water before eating. Its
work is very much the same. If one is
very hungry, it takes the edge off the ap-
petite, and that is more healthful than
eating as we do when we are very
hungry.
Less meat is eaten when soup is served,
and the body thrives as well. As a rule,
135
136 THRIFT IN THE HOUSEHOLD
the ordinary household does not serve
soups as a first course of a dinner, seem-
ing to regard it as a luxury for the table
of the rich, whereas it is one of the
greatest economies. It is rarely neces-
sary to buy material for the daily soup.
In my household nothing except an oc-
casional bunch of soup herbs was bought
for soup in a year. The bones from dif-
ferent meats and fowl supplied the stock,
and left-overs of vegetables gave variety.
Cream soups are too heavy for a first
course unless the second be of vegetables
or the less nourishing fish. With salmon
or oily fish it is a bad arrangement. As
an economy, one should not make cream
soups often. Water in which vegetables
are boiled should be the base of soups.
French housewives do not add meat
juices to this. The water with a little of
the vegetable in it is seasoned and served
with sippets of bread as the first course.
To American palates it seems flat at first,
SOUPS 137
but not after a while, and the water con-
tains mineral salts which are beneficial
to the taker of them. You can make
your soup look better to you by thicken-
ing it with corn-starch or flour to what
you like as soup consistency, and you
can add milk if you like it better that
way. Season it well, serve with it crou-
tons, which are dice of stale bread browned
in butter or bacon fat. Then you will
have a good soup.
Did you know you could make nice
soup from left-overs of fish ? One of the
nicest I ever had or ate was the result of
an experiment of mine. I boiled the
backbone and skin of a cooked finnan-
haddie for half or three-quarters of an
hour in water ; strained it, seasoned with
butter and salt, added milk to make soup
enough for serving, and passed toasted
crackers with it. That was made from
what seemed to be wholly waste, and
the family declared it as good as oyster
138 THRIFT IN THE HOUSEHOLD
soup. Milk may be added to any soup
except meat stock, and it makes the soup
richer in food value.
Unless one has the art of making soups
from the little leavings that cannot other-
wise serve the family there is no econ-
omy in having them, but it will pay any
housekeeper to acquire the knack of
making good soup from the bits. Fish-
soups, well seasoned, are very good and
should be more frequently served. They
require milk for the body of the soup
and are heartier than vegetable-soups for
which water is the stock.
The cook who wishes to surpass her
fellows must become past mistress in
the art of seasoning. She will use dif-
ferent spices for different soups and not
have everything taste alike. Continental
cooks, even to the humblest mother of a
home, know how to season, and the re-
sult is a flavor compounded of many in-
gredients, not one of which is stronger
SOUPS 139
than another. One will use a single
clove or peppercorn, a leaf of celery, and
so on, the whole being so delicious to the
smell that one is made eager to eat it.
Soups are always thin, about as thin
as milk ; the next member of the soup
family is a pure*e, which is a thick soup,
but not thick enough nor compounded
to be a stew; then come chowders and
stews, which are really meals of them-
selves, not, like purges and soups, aids to
a meal. Purges of the legumes, that is,
peas, beans of all varieties, and lentils, are
heavy enough, though made only of one
ingredient beside water and seasoning, to
form a meal with bread and butter that
is as hearty as an ordinary woman should
eat at luncheon. These need long cook-
ing, and should be started with soaking
overnight. The more they are cooked,
the more wholesome they are, though
they need not measure up to the time set
by Mother Goose for her bean porridge.
140 THRIFT IN THE HOUSEHOLD
The national dish of France and also
of Belgium is a kind of chowder, though
called soup, because it never would be a
course at a dinner. As you would ex-
pect, the pot au-feu, and huitze pot are
masterpieces of thrift, and as the need in
this country for cheap living increases
there can be no better aid to meeting
that need than to learn to make either
of these soups. They are alike in their
general making, for which there is no
rule. No one buys new material for
these soups ; they are a combination of
what cannot go on the table, because
there may not be enough of it. The
stock pot in a French or Belgian family
is never empty, unless for an occasional
washing. Into it go the left-overs, a
bean-pod, a leaf of cabbage or lettuce, the
bones from the meat these are rather few
a sausage, and so on. In our country
the garbage pail gets all of these, for it is
the little bit that makes the pot au-feu
SOUPS 141
and the huitze pot, and all the bits feed
those who without them would go hungry.
Then the pot receives the water it needs,
and everything simmers away for hours,
so slowly that nothing is spoiled by hard
boiling ; another agency for the appetiz-
ing result is the flavoring. That cannot
be imparted by directions, but any one
can learn it by experimenting.
Before the War, one would see in the
markets the children of the very poor
gleaning from the floor of the market-
place the scraps that would furnish the
huitze pot and save them from hunger.
It would not seem that these bits of
refuse could be made of any service, but
a bean-pod is not the less something to
eat because it has fallen to the ground,
and so the poor are fed, for the children
would collect a basketful of odds and
ends that no one begrudged them, and
no one else wanted. It is a thrifty people
that teaches its poor to make something
142 THRIFT IN THE HOUSEHOLD
worth eating from what it finds to its
hand. Our people should learn the same
lesson of thrift, though perhaps not the
same application of it.
Chowders and thick soups should be
eaten as the hearty dish of a meal, and
should not be preceded by a soup. They
supply all the nutrition and bulk that
the system needs at a meal. After the
legumes have been strained, do not throw
away the pulp which has a great deal of
the peas, beans, or lentils still with it.
Shape it into a mold around a platter
and fill the space with sauerkraut or with
left-over meat minced and thickened with
white or brown sauce, or tomato made
solid with gelatine, or chopped cabbage
and beets, or sliced onions and cucum-
bers, or cabbage with diced celery and
apples, or whatever occurs to you. If
you have seasoned everything well, so
that it tastes right without being spiced
much, your family will not miss meat
SOUPS 143
when this is served. First you will have
your soup, then the dish which is so
pretty with the mold and contrasting
center, and if you add to this some
corn-meal muffins or johnny-cake, so
much the better, with a light dessert for
finish. This is a very satisfactory dinner
for active workers, but a little heavy for
sedentary workers if taken in the middle
of the day.
Either chowders or stews may be baked
if preferred. When they are baked in
a casserole or bean-pot there is less of
the waste that goes into the air. The
economy of any food requiring much
cooking depends somewhat upon the na-
ture of the fuel. If you keep a coal fire
for its heating value, any cooking you
may do on it is so much gained, while
if gas or electricity is your fuel, cooking
is an extra cost and the amount may be
estimated by watching the meter. It
might be much cheaper to provide a food
144 THRIFT IN THE HOUSEHOLD
of which the first cost was considerably
more than that of peas or beans, but
the cooking expense very much less.
When you have made your fireless cooker
you will find stews, chowders, and such
foods very nutritious and as inexpensive,
as the cost of cooking by fireless is so
trifling. If you want to keep a greater
heat in the cooker, place at the bottom
under your kettle a brick or two heated
as hot as is safe. If you have an old
blanket or carpet you can throw over the
entire outside, so much the better.
All gravies are a good starting-point
for a soup. Let it make the soup for
your first course. Dilute it to proper
consistency, season with whatever you
have, add any left-over vegetable of
which there is only a spoonful or two, or
even a spoonful of the cereal from break-
fast which will thicken it somewhat.
Simmer it for a couple of hours, strain,
add croutons, or noodles, and serve.
SOUPS 145
Make only enough for one meal at a
time. When there is gravy, it may be
added to tne water in which a yester-
day's vegetable was boiled. If there is
no gravy, milk may be the base of the
soup flavored with the water for the vege-
tables.
If you think a soup so compounded
will not be worth serving, try this which
I served yesterday. The spinach for din-
ner was cooked only in the water that
clung to its leaves, but as it cooks, the
steam brings out more, and when the
spinach is done there will be a pint of
liquid. This contains the mineral salts
which are so valuable for the body.
Spinach furnishes iron, and unless one
gets some part of the liquid, all of this is
lost. To my mind, it is better economy
to administer iron in this way than as a
drug. This liquor was hot, salted, half a
pint of milk added, the bits of the vegeta-
ble left in the soup, and a nicer light soup
146 THRIFT IN THE HOUSEHOLD
you will not often find. One of the best
arguments for saving the water in which
vegetables are cooked is the eating of the
wholesome part of the vegetable, other-
wise lost.
A simple soup may be made from the
liquor that surrounds canned peas. Add
to it two tablespoonfuls of peas mashed
through a sieve. Put the liquid and the
mashed peas into a pan with a scant pint
of milk and a thickening of corn-starch.
Cook only long enough to remove the
rawness of the corn-starch. Season, and
serve with croutons. This soup is rich in
nutrition.
If you want to increase the nutriment
of a soup, serve it with grated cheese, for
which you can use the hard cheese not
fit for serving at table as cheese with des-
sert. You can even make a cheese soup
if you wish which will be too nourishing
to be served with much else for a meal.
The foundation is milk and water, in
SOUPS 147
equal parts, brought to the boiling-point,
thickened with flour or corn-starch in the
proportion of a tablespoonful to a quart.
When this is cooked and seasoned with
paprika, mustard, and salt to suit taste,
add two tablespoonfuls of grated cheese
to a quart. Serve with cubes of hot toast,
or toasted crackers, and you have a good
supper for a cold night.
CHAPTER X
OILS AND FATS
CHAPTER X
OILS AND FATS
OILS and fats are important articles in
the family diet and at the present time
are mounting in price so rapidly that to
supply them becomes a real problem. To
the woman who regards lard as the only
material to be considered for shortening
and frying, there is nothing to be said,
but there are other fats equally good or
better, and the systematic saving and
clarifying of fats brought out in cooking
will lessen very considerably the amount
that must be bought.
Save water in which meat has been
boiled, and let it cool with the fat in it.
It will rise to the top, become a firm cake
which may be removed, freed from any
scum at the under side, and will be as
151
152 THRIFT IN THE HOUSEHOLD
good for most cooking as the fat you pay
well for. Before cooking sausage scald it
with boiling water. Let it stand. Grease
will cover the top of the water. Remove
the sausage, turn the water into an open
jar with large top, and treat the fat that
forms into cake in the same manner as
the other. This will be flavored with
spices, but it is very excellent shortening
for dark cakes and gingerbread. It is
good for frying potatoes, but cannot be
as generally used for shortening as the fat
from beef and pork.
All fat from cooking should be saved
and clarified ; to clear it, put over the fire
and heat until the water evaporates, being
careful that the fat neither discolors nor
burns. An easier method is to boil all
fats in water, s-alt when taking from the
heat, and let it cool on the water. Fat so
cleared is always white. If bits of skin,
etc., are caught in it when cooling, strain
through a clean cloth or very fine sieve.
OILS AND FATS 153
You can strain water and all, and the fat
will separate so that it needs no further
care except to take it from the water.
This fat may be used acceptably in place
of butter and lard.
Fat from lamb and mutton will lose its
objectionable features if mixed in the pro-
portion of one-third lamb or mutton fat
and two-thirds beef or pork fat. Chicken
fat is one of the very best of fats, and
when mixed with beef and pork fat it
looks like butter. It does not injure fats
for cooking to be combined. Chicken
fat should be tried out like others, and if
a fowl is very fat the excess should not be
cooked with the bird but reserved for
cooking. It may be used for cakes, pud-
dings, and biscuits, and gives no hint of
any unpleasant flavor. As the fat of suet
is rather hard when cool, that of poultry
is well mixed with it to lighten it.
Suet is a wholesome fat and should form
part of the family's material much oftener
154 THRIFT IN THE HOUSEHOLD
than it does. To use it is true thrift.
When it is chopped very fine it makes
good shortening for puddings and the
crust of meat pies. It is not good short-
ening for things to be eaten cold because
it coagulates as it cools. Suet tried out
is white and inviting. It can be used ex-
actly as lard is and for the same purposes.
It may take the place of butter in sauces
and gravies. Its value in the household
economy should be better known. Its
first cost is the lowest of all cooking fats
except mutton, which owing to its tend-
ency to form a coating on whatever it
touches, can be used only in combination
with other fats.
One housekeeper, with some local re-
nown as a cook, uses suet entirely in her
cooking. She buys at the rate of two
pounds for fifteen cents, tries it out with
water, and has something over a pound
and a half of very nice shortening. The
fat tried out from the suet known as
OILS AND FATS 155
cord-fat is no stiffer than good lard.
Cord-fat is the fat about the intestines
and costs less than some other, and
harder suet. Suet works very well mixed
with lard or vegetable oil in any pro-
portion.
Bacon fat has so much merit that not
a drop of it should be wasted. The
French use it in salad dressing, and like
it 'better than any other oil for that pur-
pose. It may serve very well in many
ways not commonly known. It may be
the shortening for gingerbread, or it may
even be used to enrich biscuit, and you
will be surprised to find that there will
be no bacon iaste to the biscuit unless
you have let the fat become browned. It
rather improves corn-bread to have the
seasoning of bacon, and it seems to be a
richer shortening than lard in the same
quantity. I have seen a housekeeper
who always talks about the high cost of
living and who earnestly strives to lessen
156 THRIFT IN THE HOUSEHOLD
her part of it empty into her sink all the
grease from the breakfast bacon. She
did not know she could use it for any-
thing but frying potatoes, and she did
not know that she could keep it sweet as
long as lard if she kept it cool and clean.
When you empty the skillet in which
you have been frying bacon, do not wash
it. Have some griddle-cakes for breakfast,
or something else to use up the fat that
does not run from the skillet. You will
have more left in it than you realize, so
why throw away a fat and then be obliged
to replace by some more that which you
wasted ? Do not leave the skillet stand-
ing day after day with left-over grease in
it, as that will attract bugs and hold dirt,
but plan to use it the next meal, for an
omelet or any one of the many things you
cook in a greased skillet.
Vegetable oils steadily make their way
in popular favor, and though the first
cost seems rather more it really is not,
OILS AND FATS 15Y
for only half as much of the oils for
cooking are used in any recipe as the
amount of butter or lard given in the
recipe as necessary. Dietists claim a
wholesomeness for the vegetable oils that
is lacking to the animal oils. They give
a very pleasant flavor and a delightful
brownness to whatever is fried in them.
In frying, it really is cheaper to use a
deep fat this is the true frying enough
to cover the article to be cooked by it,
than to use only surface fat, renewing as
it disappears. At best it is a wasteful
manner of cooking with the arguments
many and strong against it for health's
sake. Anything that soaks fat and leaves
grease on the plate is unfit for food. For
the thrifty, frying will never be a favor-
ite method of cooking, but for croquettes
and some other articles one must use it
now and then. When frying, do not let
the fat get smoking hot and stand wait-
ing for the cook to use it. Be ready be-
158 THRIFT IN THE HOUSEHOLD
fore the fat is, and drop into it only a
little at a time, since its temperature falls
with each cold spoonful put into it. This
is not only an economy of fat, but is the
only way of keeping an even temperature
for the articles plunged into it.
One fat preparation against which prej-
udice has done much deserves better
treatment than it has had, and if once
tested in a family remains there. Thou-
sands of families who have to buy poor
butter, really unfit for eating, refuse to
try oleomargarine because they have read
so much against it written by those in-
terested in selling butter, and with them
it is like,
" No man e'er felt the halter draw,
With good opinion of the law."
The butter interest is rich, and it has
printed much against oleomargarine that
is not just, and it has succeeded in mak-
ing a heavy penalty fall on the merchant
who sells it colored like butter. There
OILS AND FATS 159
is now a heavy tax on each pound of col-
ored oleomargarine. I have a friend who
ate oleomargarine for two years, paying
thirty-five cents a pound as she supposed
for butter. That is the argument of the
butter-sellers against it. It cuts out the
sale of butter, but to the man whose
salary is twenty dollars a week or less,
that does not seem an argument against it
when a good sweet butter costs him from
forty-five cents a pound upwards, and
then does not keep as sweet as oleo does.
Oleo is a more cleanly fat than cheap,
worked-over butters, and has been im-
proved so greatly that if Congress had
not hurt its sale by establishing for it a
standard of whiteness strongly prejudicial
to it in the customer's eyes, thousands
now would be eating it to their decided
advantage who now go without eating
any butter fat or else buy what they can-
not afford to buy. One would object to
eating the uncolored oleo just as he ob-
160 THRIFT IN THE HOUSEHOLD
jects to eating white butter. There is
no law against coloring that. Makers
are allowed to color butter without stat-
ing on the wrapper that it has been so
treated. Why this is permitted and such
restriction placed on coloring oleomarga-
rine with the same ingredient is one
of the peculiarities of legislation which
affect the buyer uncomfortably and make
him somewhat cynical when he reads of
" equal rights for all." To him it seems
to indicate that really there is quite a
difference between tweedledum and
tweedledee.
June butter gives naturally the color
that the eye craves, but only June butter
has it, from the quality of new grass. It
would be impossible to make enough
butter in one month to supply the de-
mand during the year, and some milk
would not give it at all, but as the
public will not buy white butter, all
butter-makers are allowed to color it at
OILS AND FATS 161
their desire in order to increase the sell-
ing properties of their product, which is
the same reason that the makers of
oleomargarine want to use it, and would
if it were not for the weight of the in-
fluence of the butter-makers. The color-
ing is vegetable and may be used with
perfect safety. In fact, a bottle of color-
ing may be sold with the uncolored
oleomargarine which the buyer may mix
with it, and that is lawful. Isn't that
interesting, consistent, and amusing ?
If one does not want oleomargarine he
will not buy it even if it is colored, but
next to butter, it is the best preparation,
and it is so good a butter substitute that
you cannot tell the difference sometimes,
therefore I advise the use of it for those
who seek thrift. Recently I had some
butter at fifty-four cents a pound and
some oleomargarine at twenty-seven, and
those at the table could not tell by taste
or eye which was the butter. In cook-
162 THRIFT IN THE HOUSEHOLD
ing anything, there is a separation in the
hot fat that proves it to be oleomargarine,
but does not affect the flavor at all.
In England, the meat drippings are
sold in small groceries and the poor buy
that instead of butter. Others beside the
poor buy it. " Spread bread with drip-
pings and toast it in the oven and you
will find it a very good dish," said an
Englishwoman to me. Equally good
will you find it to take your stale bread,
spread over it the crisp scraps that are left
after frying out the fat of suet, and toast-
ing these and bread together in a good
oven. There is no need for butter sub-
stitute beyond these. Try it some cold
night for supper with some vegetable
accompaniment. It will be very nice
with the bean soup or other legumes.
These crisp scraps are also very pleasant
to the taste stirred into corn-meal breads
before baking. No other shortening will
be necessary.
OILS AND FATS 163
There is something else to be considered
from fats, and that is the economy of
turning the waste fats into soap. Fats
that are not clean enough for eating may
be converted into soap with as little labor
as to make bread. You can, if you wish,
make several dollars' worth of good soap
for no greater expense than the potash
used with the fat. If you think you will
try it, have a receptacle for scraps of
cooked fats, trimming of meats that can-
not be tried out for table use, what is left
after trying out all suet, extra amounts
of mutton fat, which is very agreeable to
the skin, and when you have six pounds
you will be ready to make your soap.
Have at hand a tin of reliable potash.
Dissolve the lye in three quarts of cold
water in a large kettle on the back of the
stove, then put in the scraps and boil
until they seem to be dissolved. You
will be surprised to see how they will be
converted by the lye. Strain the liquid
164 THRIFT IN THE HOUSEHOLD
through a sieve. Boil the scraps about
ten minutes with a little water to draw
from them what they retain, and add to
the first water. Throw the scraps away.
Put the other part on the stove to boil
until it is converted into soap and looks
like a very thick cream. When it
reaches this stage add one-third cup pure
borax dissolved in a little water, and
one-half cup of ammonia. Be very care-
ful it does not boil over, which it does
quickly, and stir with a wooden spoon.
When you take it from the stove, stir
into it one-half cup of sugar to make it
like froth, stir well for five minutes, then
turn into dish to cool. You can put it
into a wide-mouthed stone crock and cut
a slice as you want it. This soap is not
as hard as bar soap and harder than soft
soap. It is for kitchen use wholly. If
any liquid settles, you can use it for
floors or for putting clothes to soak.
On all tins of good lye there will be
OILS AND FATS 165
found a recipe for making soap, not all
having the same recipe, but the one I
have given is one which has been used for
years in one family, and has been found
serviceable without being hard on the
hands. Excess of lye will make any
soap bad for the skin, but the proportion
given is not severe.
If you da not care to serve thrift by
making your year's supply of soap for
about fifty cents, take the waste scraps
you would have used in this way and
keep them wrapped in paper in a thick
paper bag; when you want a quick fire or
to kindle your fire use these scraps. Of
course you must not keep many on hand
as they will corrupt, but for rapid heat
they are excellent.
CHAPTER XI
COAL AND ICE
CHAPTER XI
COAL AND ICE
THE cost of fuel is a very heavy ex-
pense in all families, and the less one
knows about how to run a fire, the
heavier the expense. Knowledge is
economy in warming a house and getting
the heat for which one has paid. The
greatest economy in fuel is that which is
given by proper running of the fire. Few
know how ; those who do know can heat
their houses on a much smaller amount
of coal. Those who do not want heavy
coal bills will show thrift by living in a
sunny house and letting every bit of sun-
shine get into the rooms. That makes a
perceptible difference in the amount of
coal one burns.
The fire-pot of the stove or furnace
should never be heaped to the top, but
169
170 THRIFT IN THE HOUSEHOLD
the coal always kept on the line of the
fire-brick. All coal above that is wasted,
and by obstructing the draft lessens the
heat obtained. Those who do not know
how to get heat out of coal always pile
the stove full and learn nothing by ex-
perience. The coal should be started so
that the gas shall be burned off gradu-
ally, then the furnace or range regulated
so that the coal burns steadily without
burning fast. It is the rapid, almost
white-hot fire burning out at once that
forms clinkers, which are always the
indication of uneven firing.
In warming a house it is not necessary
to be throwing coal on almost as often
as one would throw wood, and when a
furnace is fired in that way it is a waste
of fuel, heat, and money. It is an econ-
omy to sift ashes if one burns coal in
such a fashion that a large part of it is
left unburned, but it is a much greater
economy to burn it in such a manner
COAL AND ICE 171
that no cinders and no un burned or half-
burned coal remain to be burned again.
The art of running a coal fire has to be
learned by practice, and you have it when
you do not find stove or furnace filled
with cinders or half-burned coal.
When we began our housekeeping
neither of us knew anything about a
furnace or what coal to buy, and what
we did get vanished with a saddening
rapidity. More than that, the furnace
fire went out regularly each day, but
" knowledge is power " with furnaces as
with other things and both members of
the family proceeded to get knowledge
experimentally and by asking others.
Now we know how to run a furnace
and keep warm on as small amount of
coal as any one we know. If we found
those who could do it for less we should
at once learn from them. Why burn
ten tons of coal if nine can be made to
furnish the necessary heat ?
172 THRIFT IN THE HOUSEHOLD
We started our career as firemen with
kitchen and furnace coal, big pieces
which filled the fire-box and burned
with discouraging quickness. One of our
consulted said, " Why don't you try pea
coal?" That is a very small coal, and
when we tried it it fell through the grate
almost as fast as it went in at the top.
Further consultation-led to starting the
fire with a good bed of furnace coal over
which the small coal is laid. The small
coal forms a bed on which more is laid,
and once we learned how, it was thor-
oughly satisfactory for heat, for lasting,
and for cost, as pea coal is much less dear
than the larger coal, and though you get
no more pounds for the money, what you
do get seems to go farther. The fire has
kept eighteen hours without attention
and then burned up.
In our endeavors to find warmth at a
reasonable rate we tried coke which had
been recommended to us, but we did not
COAL AND ICE 173
like it as well as the pea coal. Coke as
recommended to us would be mixed, one
part of coke to two parts of coal. It
worked fairly well, making a hot fire
which was soon exhausted. Burned in
any larger proportion, it soon burns out
the fire-box because it gives such an in-
tense heat. There is the further disad-
vantage of having to renew fuel much
more frequently than with coal alone,
and this extra amount burned serves to
offset considerably any apparent saving
in first cost. Our experience in burning
coke was that coke was an expensive and
unsatisfactory fuel, increasing labor and
dirt.
Any woman who wants merely to keep
a fire going in her kitchen should be able
to hold the fire on a large hodful of coal
a day. The average kitchen maid will
burn four hodfuls to produce the same
effect. When not intending to use the
fire for cooking, just keep it alive and
174 THKIFT IN THE HOUSEHOLD
increase the heat gradually as needed,
and your part in the cost of coal will
lessen with no decrease in the efficiency
of what is burned. It is less expensive
to keep a furnace fire going than to build
it, but if one is going to cook much when
a great heat is desired in the oven it is
better to start a new fire in the range,
Much less coal will keep a fire than will
start it, therefore let your effort for thrift
influence you to get well acquainted with
the idiosyncrasies of your furnace and
range. If you are at all imaginative,
long before you have mastered it you
will believe firmly in " the total de-
pravity of inanimate things," and that
your furnace is the worst, but as you
learn what it can do you will forget all
that and be ready to tell your neighbors
how you can produce wonderful results
instead of discomfort.
If you have poor coal you may find it
better to sift your ashes. Some coal is
COAL AND ICE 175
more wasteful than others. It is cheaper
also to buy of some dealers than of others
whose prices are less. Slate is cheaper
than coal in cash but not for long. Get
a good dealer and stick to him. Buy
your coal if you possibly can during the
summer months when prices are lowest,
and buy your year's supply then. Some-
times you can buy it without having it
all delivered at once, but sent to you as
you need it, in two-ton loads. If you
own your house and live where cold
winters are, you will find it a decided
economy to put double windows on the
cold side of the house. A Maine man
once told me that in one winter he saved
the cost of the double windows by the
difference in the coal burned before and
after he had them.
During the coal strike some years ago,
the following method of getting heat
from cinders was evolved ; it was given
to me by one who had followed it for five
176 THRIFT IN THE HOUSEHOLD
years, but personally I know nothing of
its efficacy. " Get ten-cents' worth of
oxalic acid crystals and dissolve in two
gallons of water with one bag of coarse
salt. I got two bags for ten cents. (The
price will be higher now.) Use one bag
with a hod of fine ashes or cinders. Roll
in balls and put in middle of fire-pot.
It makes an exceedingly hot fire and is a
great saving. I used three barrels of
furnace cinders in one winter. If clink-
ers form, put into the fire the peeling of
yellow turnips (rutabaga) and the clink-
ers drop off." The expense of trying this
is not much and it may be found avail-
able for you.
For fuel save corn-cobs and dry them.
Also the skins of vegetables if there is no
other method of turning them to use.
The writer once lived in a city where
there was no coal to be had for three
weeks, and the inhabitants used corn-
cobs for fuel. They make an intense
COAL AND ICE iTT
heat, soon over, and are not practical
when one has other material but the cobs
from corn eaten in summer time may be
dried for kindling or for open fire in fall
or winter.
ICE
It may seem impossible to go through a
summer without ice and preserve butter,
meats, and other foods, but thousands of
persons in parts of the earth where artifi-
cial ice is not made and natural ice never
forms do live comfortably without it.
They have learned how to produce cool-
ness by other means. Whatever method
will keep heat in food can be modified to
keep it cool ; for instance, the fireless
cooker, and the thermos bottle. Rapid
evaporation is the explanation of some
methods, keeping hot air from the foods
to be cooled. The Department of Agri-
culture has prepared a bulletin giving
directions for making an iceless refrig-
erator, and it is as useful in one State as
178 THRIFT IN THE HOUSEHOLD
in another, though it was written more
particularly for those States with most
heat and least convenience for getting
ice. The Department of Publications will
send the bulletin for ten cents. Mean-
time, try the suggestions to be given
herein.
Never buy ice when it is cool enough
to keep butter firm by putting it outside.
If you want ice in really cold weather,
all that you need do to get it is to set a
pail or pan of water out-of-doors and let
it remain there overnight. What need
of paying the iceman for it ?
Keep your provisions in the coolest
place about the house. Keep butter and
milk sweet without ice by placing in a
pan, and this pan in another consider-
ably larger. In the bigger one have
enough water to come to the top of the
smaller, and to the water add two table-
spoonfuls of salt. Soak a large flower-
pot until it is saturated with water. It
COAL AND ICE 179
must be large enough to go to the bottom
of the larger pan, and to cover the smaller
entirely when it is turned over it. Being
porous, rapid evaporation is constantly
going on, and will keep everything
within firm and cool. A fancy flower-
pot will not do for this. It must be the
unvarnished terra-cotta pot. Once a
week it should have another soaking.
This is much the same as the method
practised in some tropical countries to
keep water cool, and is equally efficacious
with foods.
Another adaptation of the same prin-
ciple is to cover the inner dish with a
towel which has been wet in cold water,
folded in such a manner that the corners
will hang down into the water of the large
dish. Keep the pan in a cool place and
butter will be as firm as in winter. By
capillary attraction there will be a steady
current of water from the dish through
the cloth. Renew the water in the dish
180 THRIFT IN THE HOUSEHOLD
and change it daily. Campers often use
this method of preserving perishable
goods.
If you have occasion to save bits of ice
in a room through the night, protect them
by lining a dish with wet white flannel ;
fill it with ice, cover outside and in with
more flannel, and set in a cool place. In
a bowl the ice will last overnight. This
is advantageous for an invalid.
If you take ice you can keep it in
many ways from melting. The iceman
says the best preservative is several thick-
nesses of newspaper over the ice. But
if you feel a prejudice against having
your ice thus protected you can try the
pad described herewith. It is excellent
in its effect. It must be kept as clean as
the refrigerator should be. To make it,
get a piece of heavy felting at least half
an inch in thickness. Lay this between
two sheets of woven wire, preferably the
galvanized, as it will not rust and will
COAL AND ICE 181
last five times as long as the non-gal-
vanized. Cut the three pieces an inch
smaller on all sides than the cold cham-
ber to permit free circulation of air. Dip
the pad in cold water before placing it
on the ice. As soon as the pad becomes
damp from contact with the ice it throws
out a blast of cold air which completely
envelops the ice and makes it last much
longer. The felt can be bought at a har-
ness-maker's and the wire at any hard-
ware store. The expense is trifling, and
with good care the pad will last for years.
It should be washed twice a week and
sunned so that it does not become slimy
from being wet.
Ice may be preserved also by fasten-
ing two sheets of cotton-batting between
brown paper covers. Place under and
over and around the sides. This keeps
the ice, but encloses it so thoroughly
that it does not cool the food chamber as
well as the felting pad. A cover for a
182 THRIFT IN THE HOUSEHOLD
pitcher, like a tea cozy, that will com-
pletely enclose it, may be made of the
cotton and brown paper, and the water
or other fluid will remain cool a long
time and the ice unmelted for hours. It
is better as the cozy over a dish than as a
pad for the ice chamber, but it is men-
tioned because it has merit and the first
cost is less than that of the pad of felt
and wire. In the long run it is more
expensive, as the cotton pad is good only
for the short time until it is flattened by
the water and the paper is in bits, while
the felt pad will last more than one
season.
No one with any idea of thrift will
leave ice standing by the door steadily
melting in the hot air, thereby melting
the money you have to pay for it. Rinse
it at once and place in the chamber, cov-
ering it to keep it cool. If you take ice
and yet wish to economize on it, never let
your ice chamber get empty. Keep it
COAL AND ICE 183
full. It wastes less beside supplying more
coolness. You do not get as much for
your money with a ten-cent piece two
days in succession as you do with twenty
cents' worth every other day, though the
actual outlay is the same. If you take
larger pieces you will not need as many
of them nor as much ice. Little pieces
are wasteful because they so soon melt
and leave the ice chamber getting warm
again to melt the ice as soon as it touches
the sides. Once filled, and the refrigera-
tor well chilled, it can be kept thoroughly
cool by small renewals and the box never
allowed to become empty. Open the box
once in a while to renew the air which
becomes stale if unchanged.
If you find a hole in the ice-pan or the
bottom of the refrigerator you can make
it water-proof by a temporary mending
with little labor and expense, but it will
not be any protection against hot things.
You do not put hot dishes in your refrig-
184 THRIFT IN THE HOUSEHOLD
erator probably, at least you should not,
so you can try this plan of mending it.
Hold a paper under the hole. Melt par-
affine, and while it is hot pour a coating
over the hole, letting the paraffine run
some inches beyond the hole. Some of
the paraffine will run through the holes,
which explains why the paper is held
under. Make the coating of paraffine
quite thick. Scrape off the part that ran
through, as it is as good to use again.
This repair work will serve as well for
the purpose named as a piece of zinc
soldered on, but will not last as long.
CHAPTER XII
POSSIBILITIES OF CORN MEAL
CHAPTER XII
POSSIBILITIES OF CORN MEAL
NEW ENGLAND owes its life to corn, for
had its daily bread depended upon wheat
in the early days when Puritans and Pil-
grims were fighting their grim fight for
existence there would have been no New
England. Why may not these days of
scarcity of wheat flour find profit from
those when corn was the basis of bread
food ? No system of thrift goes far that
does not recognize the benefits and econ-
omy of corn in the diet. Financially and
hygienically corn deserves the old Indian
name, " the friend of man."
Man might live many years on no
other foods than corn and its products,
which include oil, sugar, and molasses as
well as meal. The yearly production of
corn in this country is three times that
187
188 THKIFT IN THE HOUSEHOLD
of wheat, and the food value is greater
than that.
Let your thrift begin with the greater
use of corn meal to help out the contents
of the flour barrel. Based on food value,
corn is the leader in food, and at five
cents a pound it is one of the cheapest in
money. Whether served as hulled corn,
hominy, grits, or some arrangement of
meal, it is very nutritious and pleasant to
the taste. When properly cooked it is
easily digested, and its food value is ren-
dered better for food by having bulk, as
foods that do not have bulk are injurious
to the system, which is so made that it
must have something beside concentrated
nourishment.
Corn meal at the time of writing this
is five cents a pound ; this amount of
meal contains as much of food as ninety-
one cents' worth of eggs at fifty cents a
dozen, and fifty-six cents' worth of round
steak at thirty cents a pound. Consider-
POSSIBILITIES OF CORN MEAL 189
ing these prices you will conclude that
the high cost of living can be dealt an
effective blow by taking corn meal for a
weapon. It is an energy-making food.
Variety may be given to dishes of corn
meal by adding dried or fresh fruits.
The old time baked Indian pudding
served by our grandmothers was one of
the best of the corn-meal dishes. When
there was not much else it was a dinner
dish, and often it was the main dish at
supper. It cannot be baked as it should
be in a gas range because it needs slow
cooking, and if baked in a gas-range oven
it would not be an example of thrift, but it
may be baked well in the fireless cooker.
Here is a recipe for Indian pudding which
is three generations old, and perhaps more.
Heat a quart of milk and with it scald
five tablespoonfuls of corn meal, stirring
all the time. To these add one cup of
molasses and a good-sized piece of butter,
and bake in a deep dish for three hours
190 THRIFT IN THE HOUSEHOLD
or more with moderate heat. Stir several
times when first set to baking to keep
meal from settling. This was varied by
the addition of peeled and quartered
apples, was baked in au earthenware deep
dish until it was a beautiful reddish brown
that when turned out would stand quiv-
ering like a mold of jelly. It is the slow
baking that produces such a result as
that.
Such a pudding is all that any ordinary
individual would need for a luncheon or
supper, and is entirely too heavy for a des-
sert. As a one-dish meal it is delicious.
It is to be eaten with cream.
Corn meal should have for cook one
who likes it and is mistress over it, then
from it such food will be made as will
delight the appetite and preserve the
health of the pocket-book.
Corn provides either alone or in com-
bination with meat, milk, fish, or eggs, a
one-dish meal which gives all the mate-
POSSIBILITIES OF CORN MEAL 191
rial the system requires at a meal of tissue-
builders, starch, sugar, and fat. The fuel
value or energy of corn meal to a pound
is 1,795 calories, and in this respect corn
stands above the other known cereals.
The percentage of fat is greater than in
other grains.
The simplest preparation of corn is
hasty pudding, or mush, which is merely
the meal dropped into boiling and salted
water. With milk it forms a balanced
dish, that is, it gives in proper proportion
those chemical essentials which feed all
parts of the body equally. It was the
standard breakfast or supper dish of
workers of two generations ago, and
should be served occasionally by all those
who want to make their money go to its
full limit without taking proper suste-
nance from the family. The mush of old
days was cooked all day, and was almost
jellied when dished. All cereals are
wholesomer for long-time cooking.
192 THRIFT IN THE HOUSEHOLD
After the meal was stirred with a
wooden, long-handled spoon until there
were no lumps, it was set back on the
stove to simmer all day, and it tasted like
a different dish from the quickly made
mush. After one meal as mush it was
turned into a deep pan to cool. In the
morning this was sliced and fried, and
eaten with maple sirup, it was, and is, a
food to be served in every family. The
old way of frying was in shallow fat, but
the modern way is to drop it in deep fat
which is the less wasteful method. The
Italians use mush with cheese and have
a very nourishing food ; as a meal it is
better for having the addition of a green
salad. The natives of Jamaica combine
fish, lard, and corn meal. Note how these
give the essentials of nutrition.
There is in Pennsylvania an organiza-
tion of individuals, who once a year
meet to eat scrapple and apple butter.
Scrapple is a combination of meat and
POSSIBILITIES OF COKN MEAL 193
corn meal, usually spiced. Any kind of
meat may be served in this way, but it is
commonly pork. The mush is made in
the proportion of one cup of meal to
three and a half cups of water. It is al-
ways made and cooled in a pan like a
bread-pan, then fried for breakfast. No
extra fat is necessary.
Remains of fish from the day's dinner
may be converted into fish-cakes by mix-
ing with corn-meal mush in proportion
of two cups of meal to one of fish, all held
together by an egg. Season to taste.
Bits of green peppers may be added if
you like the flavor, or a few drops of
onion juice.
Corn mush is very good with cheese
for an addition, like the Italian polenta,
and becomes a very hearty food. The sole
accompaniment to these dishes of corn
meal and meat, fish, or cheese is a green
salad or tart fruits. Apples as sauce, salad,
or baked are an appropriate side dish.
194 THRIFT IN THE HOUSEHOLD
Apples are sometimes added to brown
bread in small quantities. A cup of rai-
sins to a loaf, or a cup of dates, pitted
and quartered, are an improvement to
brown bread, which of itself is a very
satisfying meal, with butter. The fol-
lowing recipe for brown bread has passed
from mother to daughter for four gener-
ations, and may be depended upon. One
cup of corn meal, one of flour, one-half
cup molasses, one of sour milk or water,
teaspoonful of soda, one-half teaspoonful
of salt. Steam three hours, with water
boiling the first hour very fast, and do
not let the water stop boiling, as if it
does the bread will be heavy.
The Department of Agriculture supplies
a bulletin on Uses of Corn Meal, to be had
for the asking. It should be in every
household, and followed by the home
cook.
CHAPTER XIII
MEAT AND MEAT SUBSTI-
TUTES
CHAPTER XIII
MEAT AJSTD MEAT SUBSTITUTES
IF every family does without meat two
days a week there will be a perceptible
difference in the supply of meat in the
market, and if no regulation is made
obliging every one to go without on the
same days, there will be no crowding of
the markets some days and a correspond-
ing lack on others. To go without meat
is no hardship after one gets into the
habit, and thousands live healthfully and
contentedly without any meat day after
day. They feel better without it. Eat-
ing is largely a matter of habit, in
amount and in kind.
One of the largest sanitariums in the
country is conducted without meat,
neither officers nor patients ever eating
flesh food, and there is no loss of energy
197
198 THRIFT IN THE HOUSEHOLD
from such abstinence. Meat is a stimu-
lant, and only outdoor workers should
eat it oftener than once a day. Auto-
intoxication is caused by excessive meat-
eating.
However, in spite of these facts most
of the world will continue to crave the
" flesh-pots of Egypt," and to desire to
know how to make a little serve as more.
Every housewife knows how hard it is in
her small family to buy roasts to advan-
tage and to use trimmings and bones. In-
stead of trying to use them before they
spoil, can them. They may be canned as
stock or as soup, and all the meat that
one does not wish to eat can be canned by
itself.
Simmer the bones for so long that every
bit of meat will come off with scraping.
Put them on with cold water and simmer
so slowly that no rim of hardened albu-
men is around the top. Remove all the
meat from bones, strain, and place the
MEAT AND MEAT SUBSTITUTES 199
plain broth in jars, or to the stock add
diced vegetables as for making vegetable
soup, season, and sterilize as you do for
other things you preserve in this manner.
The principle of canning and the general
process of canning are precisely the same,
varying only in such minor details as
sugar or no sugar, and so on.
The beef that has boiled from the bones
may be seasoned and made into meat-
balls, to be cooked in bacon fat, which
will add to its flavor. It has lost through
simmering most of what flavor it had.
It may be made into a nice baked hash
with rice, potato, or such bread crumbs
as one has, and a bit of onion and good
seasoning.
The extra meat that has been cooked
only once you can pack into jars, cutting
the meat into bits so it will fit into the
glass closely and be more open to the
heat of sterilizing. Turn enough water
into the jars to fill the interstices, and
200 THRIFT IN THE HOUSEHOLD
then boil with the top on, but not fastened
down, until the middle pieces are thor-
oughly heated. Meat must cook a con-
siderable time because the heat takes an
hour or so to penetrate the inner pieces.
Then, before removing from the boiling
water, snap down the cover, and let the
meat cool in the boiling water, as the
water cools. Probably there will be some
fat on the top. This is a preservative in
itself. Beef, mutton, lamb, and veal have
been canned in this way and I have never
lost ajar. I do chicken or turkey in the
same manner if there is any to do. There
is every probability that the price of meat
will go higher rather than lessen, and
housewives do well to get into the can-
ning habit, which is true thrift, making
the best and most of what they have.
If you have no ice and fear that meat
will not keep, place it out-of-doors in a
cool place so that the air can get at all
sides of it. On the continent before the
MEAT AND MEAT SUBSTITUTES 201
War, many butchers had shops without
ice. Sides of beef and pork hung by
great hooks from the ceiling and all
around them the air circulated day and
night. At night it entered the shops
through wrought-iron doors so that no
stale air was retained in the shop, and
the meat was as fresh and sweet as in any
of the shops with which we are more fa-
miliar.
Here is a recipe for keeping meat that
has been recommended by campers as re-
liable. Cover each piece of meat, chops,
or roast with corn meal or oatmeal so
thickly that it cannot come in contact
with any other substance, and place in a
current of air as cool as can be found.
Do not wrap in paper, which will soon
spoil meat under the best of conditions.
I have been told that steak has been
kept a fortnight in moderate weather and
longer in cold, with no other protection
than the wrapping of meal.
202 THRIFT IN THE HOUSEHOLD
Once a delicious and expensive porter-
house when removed from the refrigera-
tor indicated very unmistakably that it
should have been cooked a day earlier.
What was to be done? One does not
willingly throw away such costly meat,
and it seemed to be hopeless. This is
what was done. The meat was scraped
with a sharp knife until every sign of
badness was removed from top, bottom,
and fat. Then it smelled right, but to
make certain, the meat was washed with
saleratus water, and left in the water for
ten minutes, and then wiped dry with
cheese-cloth. Then it was wiped again
with a clean dry cloth, and broiled. It
was as sweet as ever it was, and very
tender. This process is to be advised in
every case when one has a doubt of the
freshness of meat.
To preserve a ham, put it into a flour-
sack, tie, and pack in a box of wood ashes.
The lye that probably is in them will
MEAT AND MEAT SUBSTITUTES 203
keep it as sweet as you want it. For a
ham that is to be used right along, keep
in the flour-sack tied closely, and hang
from hook in ceiling. A current of air
is a preservative.
When you have not enough meat to
make a dish of itself, use it as a flavor-
ing. Take the odd ends of salt pork and
bacon that are left after slicing and add
them to peas or beans for soup. Or take
them and add to a batter and bake as
meat biscuits, or place a layer of rice,
crumbs, or mashed potatoes, whichever
you have, at the bottom of cups, and over
that a layer of the minced meat, another
layer like the first, wet it with water,
stock, gravy, or tomato, whatever you
have, and you will find the result when
the contents of the cups are baked a
very nice supper or breakfast dish. Use
the bits of meat with greens or grind them
and serve, dressed with a thick dressing,
as salad or as filling for sandwiches.
204 THRIFT IN THE HOUSEHOLD
Bacon rind fried out often returns a
considerable amount of fat. Bits of
bacon cooked or uncooked combine
well with chicken, and a hash of bits
of chicken, bacon, and potato is good
enough for an epicure. Put all frag-
ments of meat through the meat-grinder.
Different meats may be used together.
Add a little to a macaroni and tomato
escallop. Even a tablespoonful will im-
prove it. So will one sausage that you
may have considered worthless. A
spoonful of meat will improve a dish
of hashed-brown potatoes or nearly any
starchy food. It is not necessary to have
enough meat for the combination to be-
come a hash. Stuff tomatoes or green
peppers with a bread-crumb dressing
to which you have added even a very
little bacon or ham, or any other meat.
Meats of high flavor such as bacon,
ham, and sausage add piquancy to more
tasteless meats. These meats may be
MEAT AND MEAT SUBSTITUTES 205
added to a thick white or brown sauce,
seasoned with mustard, and served very
hot on toast. For sandwiches, add a
little chopped pickle and dress with
thick boiled dressing or mayonnaise.
The result is not much like the ordinary
sandwich with a slab of meat between
slices of bread.
Have you a cupful of minced meat you
do not know what to do with ? Beside
the ways to use it that have already been
mentioned try this. Mix it with three
good-sized mashed potatoes or the same
amount in cold boiled rice. Add three
well-beaten eggs, season and cook like an
omelet, or bake in oven. Omelets may
have a flavor from a spoonful of meat,
and a slice of left-over liver cut in small
pieces is very good. Any left-over meat
may be potted by being rubbed smooth
with butter or salad oil, seasoning well
with mustard, salt, and cayenne or
paprika. Ham thus treated is good
206 THKIFT IN THE HOUSEHOLD
enough to be prepared without any
thought of saving. Meats potted will
keep for some time in a cool place.
If you try to practise thrift by buying
the cheaper cuts of meat there are two
difficulties you are quite likely to meet.
In the first place, you may not be able to
find them, or any store that has shank
of beef, flank, or such pieces. If the
seller can dispose of the higher-priced
cuts why should he take space for the
lower-priced ? That is the question once
asked me. Many dealers do not intend
to carry low-priced grades of meats. If
they do not have them, generally the
would-be buyer contents herself by get-
ting the cuts she did not intend to buy,
and the seller is that much ahead.
If you have been fortunate enough to
buy as your good intentions prompted,
perhaps you will feel that you were
really a loser because the meat was tough
and tasteless. That gives you your
MEAT AND MEAT SUBSTITUTES 207
chance to show what good cooking will
do. Long, slow cooking will make the
toughest meat tender, and proper season-
ing will give it savor. If to tough meat
is added a spoonful of vinegar, or lemon
juice, or if it is cooked with tomato it
will become tender. The acid softens
the fibre. I often add a spoonful of vin-
egar to the water in which I cook a fowl
if it promises not to be tender.
To make meat savory let it lie over-
night in a dressing of oil, vinegar, pap-
rika, or onion juice, basting with the
dressing, and the most tasteless meat
will have a choice flavor and become
tender. Never add salt to uncooked
meat, as it toughens even tender meat.
If you do not care to give the meat the
bath of flavoring, season with herbs, or
curry, but do not use the same flavoring
every time. You can take the same cut
and by varying the seasonings produce
quite different results from it. A taste-
208 THRIFT IN THE HOUSEHOLD
less meat is changed and made appetizing
by two or three strips of bacon added
as basting for a roast when cooking.
An inexpensive English dish is lamb's
heart stuffed with sage and onion. A
heart is allowed for a person. They cost
five cents apiece a short time ago. Each
heart is carefully washed and trimmed.
Then they are parboiled in hot water to
which is added a spoonful of vinegar.
After this they are stuffed with bread
crumbs, to which onions and sage are
added generously, with salt and pepper
as liked. They are baked, base of heart
down, and around the tiny pyramids
may be placed the potatoes to bake in
the pan. Baste often with water in
which is a little fat. Baste potatoes as
well as hearts, and they will become a
beautiful brown. When hearts and po-
tatoes are done, remove from the bake-
pan and thicken the water with browned
flour for gravy and you have the founda-
MEAT AND MEAT SUBSTITUTES 209
tion of a nourishing and appetizing meal
at small cost.
From a shin-bone, which is another
inexpensive piece of meat, you may get
a good deal at comparatively small cost.
See that it has meat on it when you buy
it. You can use the edge or aitchbone
in the same way. Have the bone cracked,
then put it to soak as for soup. Use cold
water, let it come to the boiling point and
then simmer. No meat should boil.
Season with an onion, a clove, pepper
and salt, and the ground celery tips you
have dried. Use a tablespoonful to two
quarts of water. When the soup has
cooked down one-quarter, remove onion
arid meat and thicken the water with
flour wet with cold water and stirred
smooth. Be sure it is smooth or there
will be lumps in the soup. Serve the
soup with cubes of stale bread toasted.
This gives one dish from the bone.
Take every bit of meat from the bone
210 THRIFT IN THE HOUSEHOLD
and chop fine. Add to it a tablespoonful
of crumbs, or as much more as the meat
needs to take up the moisture. Season
with onion, pepper and salt if needed, or
with powdered poultry dressing. It is a
combination of sage, thyme, marjoram
and other flavors, and is much better
than most cooks can prepare. Mix an
egg into this and shape into balls.
Brown in hot fat. Serve with tomato
sauce if you wish them to be somewhat
the nicer. The recipe for this is omitted
as it is in all cook-books. Serve with
this arrangement of meat any vegetable
you fancy, and with a simple dessert you
have a three-course dinner that has cost
you little and is good enough to eat.
You will be surprised to find how little
your dinner will have cost you.
Another meat dish from the shin is
spiced beef. Get quite a large weight,
and have considerable bone, as the gela-
tine in it helps to make this dish better,
MEAT AND MEAT SUBSTITUTES 211
Have the bone well cracked. Put it to
cook as directed above. Simmer until
the meat can be pulled from the bone
with a fork. Take from the water and
remove all meat, chop it and the gristle
fine, return to the kettle with cloves, all-
spice, bay leaf, herbs, mustard seed, and
celery seed. Use a smaller proportion of
the pungent spices and remember that
cooking will intensify their strength.
The meat is to be preserved by the spices.
Cook the liquid down until very little
is left. Turn the meat into a dish, a
bread-tin is good, and let it stand until
very cold. Slice and serve cold for sup-
per or luncheon. Were this made of
pork it would be the hog's-head cheese
that our grandmothers kept regularly as
part of the preparation for winter. If
kept cool, it will keep a long time, thanks
to the spices, or it may be put into a
wide-mouthed crock, sterilized, covered
with melted lard, and be kept indefi-
212 THRIFT IN THE HOUSEHOLD
nitely. Melted lard being somewhat ex-
pensive, you may substitute hot paraffine
if you prefer. If this cheese is made in
large quantity, it is better to prepare it
for winter, but five pounds of the bone
and meat will make a convenient dish
to keep on hand in summer or winter.
You can make up twenty pounds for
winter.
The many ways in which you can vary
your meat dishes number into the hun-
dreds, and would make a fair-sized cook-
book of themselves. If you wish to know
more of them, experiment for yourself.
The sole limitation on them is that the
result shall taste " like more." Use your
meat with rice, macaroni, potatoes, or
other starches, with onions, carrots, beans,
peas, turnips, tomatoes, and with combi-
nations of these. You can scarcely fail
to produce something good. Do not al-
ways work your ingredients into the
same old stew. A good stew is a very
MEAT AND MEAT SUBSTITUTES 213
good thing, but nothing is good if one
has a chance to get tired of it.
Boil sometimes, steam, broil, fry, and
roast. Do not let anything come out
greasy. It spoils the article and wastes
a very important food product. A salad
may be compounded occasionally, alone
or with a vegetable, a very small amount
of meat may be used for a hot sandwich
if added to brown sauce, and by trying
you will find yourself becoming more
and more clever each month. It is very
interesting to use your mind this way.
It is also very profitable. Whatever you
compound, you will have it good if it is
not greasy and is well seasoned. " Well "
does not mean highly, but to the proper
taste.
The art of seasoning is that which
makes French and Belgian cooks excel.
The foundation materials are never bet-
ter than what you have. Taine, himself
a Frenchman who knew good cooking,
THRIFT IN THE HOUSEHOLD
wrote, " The table d'hotes of Belgium are
the best in the world." They are made
so by the skill in seasoning. If you wish
to equal their cooks, provide yourself
with all the flavorings of which you hear
and use them to give variety, not all at
the same time. Do not scorn the effect
of a single clove, or think it is too little
to give a place. Try a bit of bay leaf
gather your bay while you are at the
seashore and dry it for flavoring and
use it a little at a time. A well-flavored
dish never has a strong taste of any one
thing but a pleasant blending of many
little things.
Thrift does not buy anything merely
because it is cheap. One may have to
buy that way or not buy at all, but thrift
buys low-priced cuts and then makes
them taste so good that one thinks them
to have been high cost. If one has to
throw away meat she has bought at
a low price because it is unappetizing
MEAT AND MEAT SUBSTITUTES 215
there is no thrift in it. There is no need
for it.
The ragouts of the French are what we
prepare from left-overs but they are not
served as any makeshift but as something
really good, and they are. So may be
your dish from flank, or shin, or neck,
or any tough bit. You will have a pride
in developing your talent for making good
things at low cost that you never had in
any other accomplishment, and you will
have a happy home. The woman who
is a good and economical cook usually
has a home one likes to stay in.
You will find it a pleasant change from
meat to have fish twice a week, and some-
what more profitable in money. It is by
no means a poor exchange. From fish
you may have soup, chowder, stew, bake,
roast, fry, boil, broil, salad, escallop, fish-
cakes, fish-pie, fish-pudding, and hash.
Any article that offers such a range is
worth your consideration. Freshen salt
216 THRIFT IN THE HOUSEHOLD
fish in sour milk, laying the fish back up
in the dish. Some fish are comparatively
tasteless, and to such you may give flavor
by leaving in the bath of lemon juice or
vinegar with onion or other seasoning,
with or without oil according to the na-
ture of the fish, if it is dry flesh or fat.
Or you can give flavor to your fish after
it is cooked by serving with sauce tartare,
a mayonnaise to which is added enough
mustard and paprika with a bit of minced
pickle to bite the tongue. Or you have
the choice of several other sauces.
It is a good plan to serve with fish such
vegetables as have a distinct flavor, as
peppers, cucumbers, cabbage salad, beets,
carrots, and onions. A boiled fish is dis-
tinctly a different dish if the water in
which it cooks has in it a little celery
seed or dried and ground celery tops, a
clove and a peppercorn or two. A dry
fish, one with little natural oil, should be
baked with slices of bacon to baste it, or
MEAT AND MEAT SUBSTITUTES 217
slices of fat pork, which are equally good,
and cheaper.
Massachusetts would scarcely have
come to its present estate if in earlier
days it had not been held by the cod dig-
nified now in that State as " The sacred
codfish. " What it was to the earlier set-
tlers of Plymouth Bay Colony it can be
to-day to others, for it is one of the cheap-
est and best of fish, either fresh or salted.
Fresh cod may be baked, broiled, or fried,
and is made into a delicious fish chowder.
A fresh cod salted to stand overnight, in
the morning wiped free from salt, placed
on a bake-sheet, put into hot oven, baked
very quickly, and dressed with butter and
slices of lemon is very well worth eating.
It may be dressed with strips of bacon
before baking if one wants a change from
butter.
Small fish may be baked in a bean-pot
or casserole to be eaten hot or cold and
will be good for a long time if kept in a
218 THRIFT IN THE HOUSEHOLD
cool place. To prepare them, place a
layer of cleaned fish on the bottom of the
pot, scatter whole cloves over the top,
mixed with peppercorns and mustard
seed, add another layer of fish, and then
spice, until the dish is filled. Have
spice on the top, and use discretion in
scattering over the top of the fishes.
Cover the fish with a mixture of vinegar
and water, twice as much vinegar as
water, and bake slowly until the liquid
is well absorbed. All bones will be so
softened by the acid that they will give
no trouble to the eater. This is a satis-
factory method of laying by any extra
fish. Larger fish may be cut in sections
and treated in the same manner. It is a
good thing to have in the house when
emergencies arise and one cannot go to
the market. Fish may be potted by the
rule given for potting meat, but bones
must be removed and great care taken
that no bits of bone remain in the paste.
MEAT AND MEAT SUBSTITUTES 219
Left-over fish is a good foundation for
a salad, or it may be warmed up in an
egg sauce, which is drawn butter or white
sauce with egg added. Egg sauce is the
proper accompaniment for a boiled fish
and the left-over of sauce and fish may
be made into a scallop with potato or
crumbs, and baked until brown. The
sauce should be the top. If it is a little
less than the amount needed, you can fill
up with milk. The effect is pleasing if
over the last layer of sauce you spread a
few fine crumbs. Everything in this
being cooked, not more than fifteen min-
utes in a hot oven will be required for its
baking.
" I don't like fish " will not be heard
in your family if you know how to cook
it, and that knowledge is a part of thrift.
Those who go camping near the ocean or
inland lakes find that fish is a very good
thing to eat, and they will like it if the
cook learns how to prepare it so that it
220 THRIFT IN THE HOUSEHOLD
has flavor. Bacon is an excellent fat to
use in nearly all ways of cooking fish
except the few oily kinds. It has so
distinct a flavor that it improves most.
Salt fat pork fried crisp was a favorite
part of a codfish dinner in New England
before its people became so prosperous
that they ceased to economize. The fish
was stripped into bits as small as they
could be pulled, freshened by having
boiling water poured over it several
times. If fish stands in water and boils
up much it toughens, but if soaked or
scalded in three or four waters it is
tender. The pork was cut in inch pieces
very thin, and fried out. It was per-
fectly crisp and the fat was a dressing for
the fish and the baked potatoes which
went with the dinner. In the land of
the codfish, beets and carrots always are
served with the fish and potatoes.
The Fish Commission of the United
States has done a wonderful but little-
MEAT AND MEAT SUBSTITUTES 221
known work (so far as the public is con-
cerned) in introducing new fish to the
people. The fish supply of this country
is enough to feed the inhabitants for a
long time and negatives any probability
of starvation though there become a
greater shortage of meat than is at all
likely. Not only have new varieties of
food fish been discovered, but a wide
range of methods of cooking them have
been developed, and this information is
practically free to any housewife who
wishes it enough to send to the Fisheries
Department at Washington for it. At
the outside, the bulletins will not cost
over five or ten cents and they give care-
ful directions for cooking fish in many
inviting guises. Eat more fish and the
meat problem will cease to be a problem.
The health will be improved, and the
pocket-book will have something always
in it, if you want it to have.
Thrift influences you to make the
222 THRIFT IN THE HOUSEHOLD
most of the possibilities that are at your
hand, and you want to make sure that
you are doing this before you groan too
much over the high cost of living.
Perhaps that bugbear is made stronger
by lack of knowledge how to use what
you have. In the days when the cost
of living was lower there were fewer
kinds of foods and the average family
ate dishes that only the poorest eat now,
codfish for instance with pork scraps, and
stews for supper. While you need not
do that to be thrifty, you will find you
can make your money buy to better ad-
vantage by knowing more about foods,
and what you can make with what you
can command of materials within your
financial reach. Learn that and you will
become past-mistress of thrift, and in-
dependent.
Try a Welsh rabbit some time for the
main dish of a luncheon. It is much more
than a light dish for a pleasure time. It
MEAT AND MEAT SUBSTITUTES 223
is a hearty dish and a valuable meat sub-
stitute. You should not serve potatoes or
rice with it, but turn it on toast, and
have with it a salad of green vegetables.
If you have any of the rabbit left do not
discard it. Spread saltines or soda crack-
ers with the mixture, brown in the oven,
cool, and wrap in waxed paper and you
will have excellent cheese-crackers that
will keep as well as those bought in boxes,
provided they are hidden. They are
rich in food value and may be added to
a meatless meal. Do not serve any other
cheese preparation with them.
Peanuts deserve a larger place in the
household dietary. There is enough
nourishment in a pint of peanuts for a
meal for a hearty, out-of-doors worker,
and if eaten with some less concentrated
food might be chosen once in a while in
place of meat.
Peanuts may be cooked very much
like beans, and when baked are very good.
224 THRIFT IN THE HOUSEHOLD
For a peanut roast, grind the nuts very
fine, mix with bread crumbs, and hold to-
gether with beaten egg. Season to taste,
and bake until brown. One may have
peanut soup, peanut roast, peanut salad,
peanut butter sandwiches, peanut cakes,
and thus have a peanut meal if one
chooses it. Brown bread is much the
best for the peanut-butter sandwiches.
CHAPTER XIV
DESSERTS
CHAPTER XIV
DESSERTS
I COUNT it wise to have desserts for
dinner even if one is trying to save to
the last penny. They add to the meal
certain elements that the system craves,
and which are well supplied as dessert,
and they make a pleasant finish to the
meaL Where children are they help
to form the manners of the well-bred
individual, and if the only dessert is a
bread and sugar sandwich, served on a
pretty plate, with the dishes of the pre-
vious course removed, it has helped the
child toward gracious manner to have it
given him. Having this conviction, I
should always have something for dessert,
however simple it might be.
As a rule, desserts should be very light,
227
228 THRIFT IN THE HOUSEHOLD
but this may vary according to the food
of the earlier part of the meal. In the
usual household there are only two
courses at dinner, the heavy or meat
course and the dessert. Economy really
would be better served by having three,
soup, meat or its equivalent, and dessert,
for no more food would be eaten, and the
soup is better in most cases for the indi-
vidual than more heavy food. Three
courses would be a factor for helping out
with the meat problem in the ordinary
home.
If the first part of the meal is meatless
and rather light, the sustenance needed
may be gained by a heartier dessert such
as a pie or pudding. We know of course
that pies have had much said against
them by dietists, but if dangerous, they
are so slow a poison and so good if good
at all that most of us will continue to
take some chances on them. As a gen-
eral statement, it may be said that fruit
DESSERTS 229
desserts are better than pies or puddings
except in cold weather, when the fuel
value of the latter makes them to be
liked more than the lighter food.
Any canned or fresh fruit makes a
tempting dessert if served with a spoon-
ful of whipped cream on it, and a little
cream is not as expensive or as thriftless
as you may think. It is one of the best
of foods. Fruit may have a meringue of
white of egg whipped to a froth with a
spoonful of sugar, or it may be served in
its original condition.
Any fruit whip may be made by mash-
ing the fruit, uncooked if soft enough to
whip, and cooked if hard like apple,
beating it with the egg-beater with the
addition of sugar as needed. Serve in
glasses. It is as pretty as it is good.
You may add a bit of whipped cream to
that for looks. Cream whipped will
" go " nearly three times as far with a
dessert as it will if served unwhipped.
230 THRIFT IN THE HOUSEHOLD
You may make three desserts from your
fruit whip, first as it is just made, then
with the cream, and lastly, you may
place it upon rounds of buttered toast, or
slices of stale cake or cottage pudding.
Boiled rice shaped into forms, crowned
with fruit, and served with sugar and
milk, will please children and adults.
Teacups may be used if you have no
regular molds. Make a food attractive
to the eyes and children will enjoy what
otherwise they will refuse to eat. You
can hollow out the top of the rice and
drop a cherry in the hollow and that
pleases the child. A delicious and very
inexpensive pudding is made of rice in
the following way : Into the baking-dish
in which the pudding will be served
(butter well) turn a quart of milk ; add
three heaping tablespoonfuls of rice and
the same amount of sugar. Stir when
placed in the oven and continue to stir
until rice is swollen. Season as you like
DESSERTS 231
it. Add raisins if you wish, but they
are not needed for excellence. Put into
a good oven, but as soon as the milk has
become thoroughly hot lessen the heat
of the oven as the deliciousness of this
pudding depends upon slow baking. It
should bake slowly for three hours and
the milk never bubble. This pudding is
to be eaten cold, and it will seem like a
jelly.
From biscuit dough you may have a
wide range of desserts ; cut in biscuit
rounds, bake, split, and fill with fruit :
there is the individual shortcake. You
may make a filling of raisins and dates
or raisins only, and you may cook the
fruit, one cup to one-half cup of water,
one-half cup of sugar, and when thick
turn over it the beaten white of an egg.
You can make this filling for the biscuit
shortcakes or for a layer cake in which
you will use the yoke of the egg.
Instead of cutting the dough, roll it
232 THEIFT IN THE HOUSEHOLD
very thin and spread with cinnamon and
sugar. Roll like a jelly cake, and from
the end of the roll cat in inch wide
slices. Bake in a quick oven, laying
each slice flat on the bake-tin. With a
cup of coffee these are nice for dessert or
for afternoon tea. Now you can roll the
dough thin for another dessert, but this
time you will not cut it. You will
spread it with some jelly that did not
thicken well when you made it. Then
start at the smallest end and roll to the
other side. Bake this roly-poly and you
will find it good. If you have no jelly
you can spread it with nuts and raisins
run through the finest grinder, or slices
of fruit, sweetened as needed. The fruit
must be sliced very thin and the dough
must be so thin that when rolled it has a
chance to bake through. The thicker
the roll, the slower must be the oven,
otherwise the outside will be burned be-
fore the inside is baked. Practise makes
DESSERTS 233
perfect, and is the only thing that does
make perfect the rolling of these bread-
dough desserts, but they are worth the
effort. When you have the knack you
can experiment and find something else
that rewards your efforts.
In England, griddle-cakes are served
as dessert. They are the thinnest cakes
imaginable, are rolled like jelly-cakes
after being spread with sugar or jelly,
and eaten without any other accompani-
ment.
At least once a week a tapioca dessert
should be served in a family where there
are children. It is not only very good
but it is one of the least expensive of
foods. Tapioca is excellent for little folk
and they always like tapioca desserts.
In cooking it, remember that it stiffens
considerably as it cools and is usually
eaten cold. You can give great variety
to the dessert of tapioca, and if you wish
to make it more of a food you can use
234: THKIFT IN THE HOUSEHOLD
milk and eggs in the composition of your
dessert, but you can have many delicious
puddings without either.
The old-fashioned tapioca required
overnight soaking, but the present can
be used without preliminary soaking,
which is a great convenience. You can
modify the following recipe in many
ways by changing the fruit and with
each you will like it. Drain a can of
peaches or use the equivalent amount
of the fresh fruit. To peach syrup add
enough boiling water to make three cups
of liquid. Heat to boiling point and add
tapioca, prepared according to directions
on package. These directions vary with
different makers. Add three-fourths cup
of sugar ; cook in double-boiler until
transparent. Line a pudding-dish with
peaches cut in quarters, turn the tapioca
over them, and bake in moderate oven.
Apples cooked in this manner are deli-
cious.
DESSERTS 235
Tapioca pudding may be made with
coffee, chocolate, jelly, or any fruit juice,
and the making is simple. Two table-
spoonfuls of tapioca, a scant quart of
boiling water, three tablespoonfuls of
sugar, make ample dessert for four per-
sons, in the form of either baked or boiled
pudding. If a coffee tapioca is made, use
the hot coffee left from breakfast in place
of water, and do the same with chocolate.
Treat as in the recipe given above. In-
stead of baking, after the tapioca has
boiled to transparency add the fruit and
cook until it is soft. It is equally good.
Corn-starch is also the base of many
good simple desserts, but they do not
quite equal those from tapioca. The sug-
gestions given for tapioca are as good for
corn-starch, and with either it is better
to have the pudding too soft than too
stiff. When it is too stiff it makes one
think of paste, which is not appetizing.
Banana or orange is a pleasant addition to
236 THRIFT IN THE HOUSEHOLD
either and at little cost. One banana
will flavor the pudding, but two oranges
are needed for an orange pudding.
Corn-starch may be the foundation for
blanc-mange, and an economical dessert
is cocoanut blanc-mange. Save enough
milk from a quart to mix with the corn-
starch and cocoanut, a little more than a
cupful, and put the remainder into a
double-boiler to heat. When the milk
is hot, add a quarter-cup of dessicated
cocoanut and five level tablespoonfuls
of corn-starch rubbed smooth with cold
milk, cook until smooth and done.
Sweeten with two tablespoonfuls of
sugar, and turn the whole into molds.
Set where they will be cold, and when
serving sprinkle with shredded cocoanut.
Puddings will not stick to molds that
have been wet and are well chilled when
the contents are added.
Junket tablets and Irish moss com-
bined with milk make desirable desserts.
DESSERTS 237
Rules for junket are printed with the
tablets. Irish moss is tied in muslin,
boiled with milk, and is the original
blanc-mange. It may be found by the
sea on the Atlantic coast, or bought
from the druggist.
Eggless puddings for cold days often
make a finish to a dinner that pleases a
man more than any fancy dish, however
nice it may be, and bring a satisfaction a
lighter dessert fails to give in winter.
When you want a pudding that supplies
nearly as much food as meat try this suet
pudding. Two cups chopped suet (if it
mats as you chop, sprinkle it with flour).
Two-thirds of a cup of molasses, a cup of
sweet milk, a teaspoonful of soda, four
cups of flour, a cup of chopped raisins.
Mix and steam four hours. Season with
spices if liked. This is better on reheat-
ing than at first.
Graham steamed pudding is better than
you might think it would be. For it
238 THRIFT IJSf THE HOUSEHOLD
take two cups of Graham flour, cup of
molasses, cup sweet milk, cup of raisins,
teaspoonful soda and a little salt. Steam
this pudding two and a half hours.
The nicest and whitest of the eggless
puddings is cranberry pudding. Take a
cup of sugar, a cup of milk, two cups of
flour, three tablespoon fu Is melted short-
ening if you use a cooking oil for short-
ening take only a spoonful two tea-
spoonfuls baking-powder, a coffee-cup of
cranberries. This is very light and good.
Substitute raisins for cranberries if you
wish, and lessen the sugar one-half, or
use dates, or both. Fresh berries make
a good addition, but the dough must be
made stiffer to balance the moisture of
the berries. Use for any of these the
pudding-sauce you prefer. Bake this
pudding.
Apples furnish material for many in-
viting and inexpensive desserts. Bake
them after they have been cored and
DESSERTS 239
stuffed with raisins and nuts. Serve
with cream. Any cook-book will give
you hints for using apples and making
desserts to be enjoyed. Take slices of
stale bread, butter them, and place in a
bake-dish in which they will be served.
Sprinkle them lightly with sugar, and
over each layer of bread put apple-sauce
generously. If it is moist, nothing more
will be necessary, but if the sauce is dry,
turn enough milk over it to moisten it.
Bake until it is done, and eat with milk
and sugar or with hard sauce. These are
simply hints for help in devising simple
desserts. It is safe to substitute one
fruit for another, and to experiment with
what you have, using your judgment for
such changes as should be made.
When you have tired of prunes in their
usual form, pit them and add to a custard,
or reheat them with some minced lemon
or orange-peel added to the water in which
you heat them. This makes them into
240 THRIFT IN THE HOUSEHOLD
quite a different dish. Add quartered
prunes to a lemon jelly ; for breakfast or
dessert, try a combination of prunes cut
in half with segments of orange added.
Uncooked prunes, pitted and each stuffed
with a nut-meat or raisin, make a good
and cheap dessert. Peanuts may be
chosen, and peanuts are a true food.
Any dish compounded largely with
milk will be nourishing. Milk is one of
the best of foods, and those who cannot
eat it cold or uncooked can generally eat
it in soup or other cooked forms. Let it
serve in that way if there are children in
the family. A simple milk dish is made
by adding milk to crackers. If you can
get the old-fashioned kind that splits in
halves, take them. Split, butter, place in
pan, and add milk to cover. Season
with salt only. Bake slowly until the
milk is entirely absorbed and the crack-
ers more than doubled in size. This may
be elaborated by adding an egg, well
DESSERTS 241
beaten, to the milk before covering the
crackers, or it may have slices of apple
or other uncooked fruit or raisins and
prunes, and in that case add sugar as
needed. It is good as a simple dessert or
as a breakfast dish.
CHAPTER XV
THRIFT AND TEXTILES
CHAPTER XV
THKIFT AND TEXTILES
BUYING covers all needs of the family,
and though the wastes are more numer-
ous in the kitchen than in any other
department of the household, it is equally
necessary to look after leakages in buy-
ing wearing-apparel, household linen, and
all such supplies. In these the best is
the cheapest, but it is not always true
that the highest-priced is the best. The
highest-priced are novelties which have
no merit above older patterns except that
of novelty if such it be. For service in
the household, a design that is ten years
old in table-linen, sheeting, towels, and
such things is just as good as the latest
and will cost one-third less at times. It
is thrift to renew these things when the
245
246 THRIFT IN THE HOUSEHOLD
yearly sales are closing out the novelties
that came in the previous season. One
can buy better at the sales than at other
times, and it is distinctly thrifty to satisfy
one's needs for the year then.
Thrift does not wait until everything
has been worn thin before buying new,
but gets a few things as the year goes by.
It costs much more to make good the
neglect of several years than to foresee
the wear and to replenish as one knows
wear is telling on household linen. A
pair of sheets and pillow slips, a few tow-
els, et cetera, make no great drain on the
family treasury, while buying them in
quantity does. It is easier to find five
dollars a year than to wait and have to
pay twenty-five.
If you do not feel that you can afford
to buy fine table-linen it is not necessary
to economize by using table oilcloth.
There are as pretty designs in mercer-
ized cotton as one need want to see and
THRIFT AND TEXTILES 247
at much less cost than for linen. With
these you can keep a table that you
need not be ashamed of. Treat yourself
to one fine linen cloth for the festal oc-
casions of the family, birthdays, Christ-
mas, and special guests, but use for every
day the napkins and cloths that you can
afford, and keep your table clean and
charming. You can do that even if dol-
lars are very few. Pretty dishes are not
costly and soap and water will keep
cloths clean. For breakfast and supper
let doilies take the place of the long
cloth. It saves work and is much more
attractive and is also the favored way at
the present day. It is poor thrift that
expresses itself in soiled table furnishings.
The table and its supplies are the heart
of the home, the expression of its highest
attainment in fineness of living, and for
the sake of all who gather about it let it
be as perfect as your means can buy, not
so much in high cost of cloth and food as
248 THKIFT IN THE HOUSEHOLD
in cleanness, smoothness of the cloth, and
the manners of your family. It is better
to have only bread and butter served
with the courtesy that is the charm of
personal intercourse than untidy abun-
dance and the personal bearing that cor-
responds.
The table is one place where one may
not choose what is easier if one does her
duty to her children, because the fineness
of the child's nature and his future out-
look are affected by the table training he
receives. One may have the manner that
a prince is supposed to have if from early
childhood he has lived graciously, for it
costs nothing in money to have the grace
of the well-bred, but it takes thought,
and constant attention. Let your child
have the simplest food he will be the
better for it but do not use economy on
anything that will make it possible for
him to grow up with an idea that he can
eat with his fingers, or on a cracked dish
THRIFT AND TEXTILES 249
at a coverless table or one with a dirty
cloth.
Treat children as you wish them to be
when the days of childhood are past. If
you can do it for no other reason, do it be-
cause it is an asset in business that increases
in value as business demands become more
intensive. The day of the successful boor
is nearly at its end. " Politeness is sur-
face Christianity," wrote Dr. Oliver Wen-
dell Holmes. It is the finest thrift, the
farthest-reaching, to insure its being a
part of your children. Those who have
learned in childhood the niceties of con-
duct will not forget them under the most
primitive conditions. They are a part of
the individual like his morals, but those
who get their good breeding after adult
years have come to them revert to the
habits of childhood at every opportunity
and often without knowledge of doing so.
Keep the table looking as it should even
if the children wear patches. There is no
250 THRIFT IN THE HOUSEHOLD
disgrace in patches but there is nothing
else than disgrace in bad manners.
Now let us return to the point of
digression. The rules of buying are in
general the same ; the principles of thrift
in the kitchen will be the same in the
parlor or the bedroom.
Buy the standards in quantity if
thereby you get reduction in price, if
not, you would better save your money
until the need comes and have the in-
terest on it. Never buy anything for
which you have not a real need. If
you can buy sheeting very cheaply at a
certain time and you are near the time
when sheets must be bought you do well
to get them, but buying what is not
needed is a snare and a delusion that
takes many good dollars out of some
pockets.
If your time has a marketable value or
if you are not able to sew you will find it
more economical to buy your garments
THRIFT AND TEXTILES 251
ready-made. A dress can be bought that
looks well and will be fitted to you prop-
erly for much less than the same garment
can be made, but not for as little as you
can make it if you know how to sew. If
every girl would take a course of instruc-
tion in dressmaking and millinery she
would save herself many dollars and dress
herself better than she ever did before,
while spending no more, and very likely
less. She would also have a business,
whether she ever followed it or not, in
which a really good worker is never
without profitable employment.
If one has a good dress that is worth
making over it pays her to have a dress-
maker at home. Never hire a poor dress-
maker, for she will spend half her time
correcting the mistakes she makes in the
other half.
Because they are wasteful, the thrifty
will not buy mixtures of cotton and wool.
They do not wear alike, and they shrink
252 THRIFT IN THE HOUSEHOLD
surprisingly. All materials about the
unshrinking quality of which there is a
doubt should be shrunken before they
are made up. Men's trousers should not
be bought without a guarantee that they
will not shrink. It is distinctly poor
economy to buy garments without such
warrant of good material. More than
one man whose dollars are limited has
bought clothing at what he considered a
bargain, only to find after being out in a
rain that he could no longer wear what
he had bought. That kind of buying is
extravagance at any price, as any worth-
less thing is. No woolen clothing to-day
can be sold at a low price, for wool is
scarce and therefore dear.
Men's clothing may be found ready-
made, following good lines, and men
wear ready-made garments without the
sense of being ill dressed that once was
taken for granted with such clothing.
Just as the home-made shirt is practically
THRIFT AND TEXTILES 253
unknown, and the custom-made seldom
worn, so now the entire wear of a man
is ready for him to don when minor
corrections have fitted it to his figure.
The same is becoming so much the case
with women's garments that it is really
an economy for the woman, whose time
or strength is limited, to get ready-made
gowns from a good house. She will have
them fitted to her, and the saving of time
and bother is a relief.
Whether it is cheaper to have a good
dressmaker come to the house, or take
material to her to make, or to buy ready-
made, are questions that have been de-
bated much. It is cheaper to buy a dress
ready-made than to buy the same ma-
terials and take them to a dressmaker,
counting in dollars and cents. There
are, however, times when there is no
question that it pays to have a good
woman, skilful with her needle, work at
your home. Turn it into an arithmetical
254: THRIFT IN THE HOUSEHOLD
problem and you will find your answer.
Here is a dress that with a little revision
will do good service for a season and save
the expense of another. If that revision
costs less than the new one would cost, it
pays to have it made. Into the cost you
must reckon the dinner of the seamstress.
There is no profit in hiring a workwoman
who makes mistakes. There is better
profit in hiring one who charges more
but is so competent that each stitch is
right, each line of the shears just as it
should be. The profit or loss in hiring
work done at home depends upon the
personal equation, which each must know
for herself better than it can be told by
another.
In the ordinary household it is thrift
to buy one's sheeting by the quantity
and make one's sheets on the machine.
It is folly to hem them by hand. One
gets a much better sheet for the same
money by making it herself. Life is too
THRIFT AND TEXTILES 255
short and too full to put any great
amount of it into hemming ordinary
things by hand.
Another point to consider in buying is
to get that which accords with your in-
come and position in life. If your in-
come warrants paying for good silk and
you want it, buy it, but if you cannot
pay for good silk do not be guilty of the
waste and sham of buying a poor quality.
Things that should be expensive look the
cheapest and commonest of everything
when bought in imitation or in cheap
quality, and are really very dear because
they do not last.
Cloth at fifty cents a yard which is so
mixed with cotton that it looks well only
three months is higher in price than ma-
terial at a dollar and a half that will
wear two years and look well longer when
remade.
Silk stockings at fifty cents do not look
well on any one. They are shabbier than
256 THRIFT IN THE HOUSEHOLD
good cotton ones and much dearer at the
same money. A fine hose at fifty cents
really looks better and will outwear four
pair of cheap, and cheap-looking silk at
the same price. No girl on a salary of
ten dollars a week is well-dressed if she
wears silk stockings at any price, or if a
gift. She is attempting to be what she is
not, which is not good taste. If women
could realize that imitations make one
look ill-dressed, and be content to clothe
themselves truthfully they would serve
the gods of propriety, thrift, and beauty
instead of those to whom belong waste
and vulgarity. " Simplicity is the high-
est art," and it is a characteristic of gen-
uineness.
CHAPTER XVI
CARE OF CLOTHING
CHAPTER XVI
CAKE OF CLOTHING
CARE of clothing is true thrift, and
more important to one who would look
well on a small amount than the original
buying, for it not only doubles the life
of a garment but keeps it looking well as
long as anything of it is left. This is
noticeably true of material of good value.
With cheap garments, good care is more
necessary if one is to have any satisfac-
tion whatever from them.
Nothing looks well when there are
spots to be seen on it, so keep on hand
always ready for use a good cleansing
preparation. An application will remove
the spot before it has become hard. Try
the following, adding one and a half
ounces of pure white soap to a pint of
boiling water. Shave the soap so that it
259
260 THRIFT IN THE HOUSEHOLD
will more quickly dissolve. Boil for ten
minutes after the soap has dissolved, and
then turn into a glass or china holder.
Keep closely covered. This was recom-
mended to me as being equal to the
needs of the family from taking out ink-
spots to cleansing gloves.
Fresh ink-spots may be removed by
soaking in milk. Old ink-stains that
have been dried in may be taken out by
washing in hot lard. Wash just as one
would with water, and wash again and
again, finally washing out the lard in
soapy water. I have known this to work
wonders with a bed-cover on which an
ink-bottle had been upset.
Paint on clothing should be treated
with turpentine and ammonia in equal
parts. Saturate two or three times if
necessary and wash out in white soap-
suds.
A mixture of Fuller's earth and pow-
dered alum, equal parts, is said to be
CARE OF CLOTHING 261
excellent for cleaning white suede gloves.
For the glace kid give different treatment.
Undressed kid may also be cleaned by
rubbing with the finest sandpaper. It
should not be scrubbed but lightly
rubbed. The effect is excellent. These
are better than gasoline for cleaning be-
cause they leave no odor. The paste first
mentioned will clean glace" gloves.
Clear, black coffee diluted with water
and containing a little ammonia may be
used for cleaning black cloth garments.
To renew thin black dresses, dip a cloth
in gum-arabic water quite a weak solu-
tion and lay over the cloth on an
ironing-board covered with black. Use
a black cloth to dip in the solution.
Pin the cloth smoothly to the board,
right-side down. Cover with the cloth
that was dipped. Over this have a dry
piece, and press with a hot iron. The
effect is very good. If you wish to treat
a white muslin use rice-water instead of
262 THRIFT IN THE HOUSEHOLD
the gum arable but pin it to the cloth,
cover with the wet cloth and the dry as
you did for the black muslin. It will
look like new. Never wring any thin
material. Pat it dry enough to press,
wrong-side up.
If you wish to remake a dress, rip it
carefully and pull out all the threads.
Take a good day for cleaning it and have
ready a bath of soap bark. Five cents'
worth from the druggist will give you
all you need. Put the dry bark in a
cheese-cloth bag and pour over it a gallon
of boiling water. Let the decoction stand
until dark colored. Put in a tub or pail
with your goods with warm water to
cover them and let stand overnight. In
the morning souse up and down, then
rinse thoroughly with warm water. Do
not wring. Hang in a shady place until
dry, or nearly dry, and if it has not dried
smooth press it under a clean cloth with
a hot iron. This treatment is like magic
CARE OF CLOTHING 263
for removing spots and can be used on
material of delicate colors without harm-
ing them in the least. There are women
who clean their woolen coats and dresses
in this manner without ripping them,
but that requires some expertness as it
does to wash them in gasoline.
A gasoline bath can be used for laces,
dainty wraps, and nearly anything,
though since the price of that cleanser
has risen so much it is about as cheap to
send them to a professional. A bath of
gasoline means three relays of it. In the
first the material soaks enough to loosen
the dirt, and in the other two it is rinsed
out. The cleanest things are first treated
and the " waters " are used until they are
dirty. No water must touch the gar-
ments. The cleaning must be done out-
of-doors because gasoline is dangerous to
handle in a house. I have a friend who
cleans feathers, hose, gloves, and various
little things including summer frocks
264: THRIFT IN THE HOUSEHOLD
that do not launder well in water. They
need no ironing when gasoline-cleaned.
Personally, my experience has never
been successful in the use of gasoline. If
I try to take out a spot with it, a bigger
one comes in the place of what I tried to
remove, but the fault is personal, not in
the method which many follow regularly.
Gloves may be cleaned with gasoline
by the most inexpert if she will do it this
way. Put the gloves in a quart glass
jar. Several pairs may be done at one
time. There must be gasoline to cover
them but not to fill the jar. Let them
stand half an hour, then shake the jar
fast. The dirt will fall out of the gloves.
Remove lid of jar and put the gloves
into another with an equal amount of
gasoline. Shake in this, and if after
standing ten minutes and the shaking
they are not clean, give them another
bath in a third jar. That will make
them as clean as ever they can be made.
CAKE OF CLOTHING 265
To do one pair of gloves this way is ex-
travagant, but the gasoline for one pair
may be used to clean a dozen pairs and
its price then is not excessive for the
return.
If you have a nice dress which has
been spotted with something that you
are not sure of, do not try to remove it.
Send it to a professional cleaner. Re-
moving stains is a regular business and
wonders can be wrought by one who
knows it. Never practise on expensive
articles. It is cheaper to entrust the
work to one who knows just what to do
and how it should be done.
One of the most profitable forms of
thrift is to have street gowns for the
street only, removing as soon as one gets
home. Nothing can demoralize a gown
more than lounging around in it, or
wearing it out about the kitchen when
preparing supper or dinner. Have a
well-made street dress of good material,
266 THRIFT IN THE HOUSEHOLD
remove it as soon as you get home, and
substitute a pretty house gown that you
can make for yourself by the help of any
dependable pattern. By house dress I
mean one that is daintier than is per-
missible for street wear. Under the term
house dress is not included kimonos,
wrappers, or any of the sloppy things
that are discreditable to a woman in her
home and enough to make matrimony
seem a failure to any husband. Even in
these days of high prices it is possible to
find material as low as a quarter of a
dollar a yard from which a woman can
construct attractive house frocks which
will make her look pleasant to the eyes
of her family, and her world will be
happy. A well-fitted and well-made cal-
ico house gown better becomes a woman
than a kimono of silk when occupied
with her duties, and far better than a
dirty, spotted woolen which can no longer
be worn on the street.
CARE OF CLOTHING 26T
Clothing for man, woman, and child
should be hung on hangers as soon as
taken off. It should be aired before be-
ing shut in a closet. All articles should
be dusted before being put away, should
have the needed stitches taken, or laces
freshened up, and everything done that
should be before it is worn again. One's
clothing should be kept in condition for
wearing, not left neglected until time to
wear it again. Care will keep it young
in appearance much longer than is other-
wise possible.
If you have a dress of good material
which has faded, or if you are tired of
its color, why not dye it? If you are
afraid to try it yourself, have it done by
a good dyer. It is not necessary to rip
anything to have it dyed. If an over-
coat is of all-wool and has become shabby
from wear it may be made to look well
by a good dyer's work on it, and save the
expense of a new one.
268 THRIFT IN THE HOUSEHOLD
Cottons that have become streaky have
been dyed so that they looked prettier
than new. I know a very charming
frock now pale green which began as a
lavender crepe, faded until it looked
more like a rag than anything else. The
owner boiled it in cream-of-tartar water
and made it white, then dyed it, changed
the neck, added touches of black velvet,
and at the cost of a few cents had a dress
that has been greatly admired. Had it
not been dyed it would have been worth-
less. She made it herself. It does not
often pay to hire such work done.
Shoes are so expensive that one likes
to know how to make them last their
longest. Two pairs worn alternately will
last nearly as long as three pairs, each
worn regularly until beyond repair.
When the shoes are removed from the
feet, every trace of dust should be wiped
from them, an old stocking-top being ex-
cellent for this purpose. Always air a
CARE OF CLOTHING 269
shoe before setting it in a closed place.
Keep strings or buttons in order, and to
do this have extra strings and buttons at
hand.
Vaseline with lampblack added makes
a good dressing for shoes, and well
rubbed, will make a shine. The oil pre-
serves the shoe and should be rubbed
enough to soften it. Vaseline must not
be used on light shoes because any oil
deepens the color.
If shoes have been wet until they are
soaked, the stiffness may be avoided by
stuffing them while wet with newspaper
rolled in little balls. Fill the shoes,
stuffing the balls into the toes, and fill-
ing out the shape as if the foot were in
the shoe. The leather will be pliable
when dry. It is not wise to set wet
shoes in a hot place to dry. Sometimes
that treatment ruins them. Shoes filled
with oats will keep their proper shape,
but to use oats in that fashion to accom-
270 THRIFT IN THE HOUSEHOLD
plish an end served as well by old papers
is not thrift. All articles of leather
which have become too stiff for use
through being wet may be softened by
vigorous rubbing with kerosene.
Corn meal is a very good cleaner. I
have used it to clean flannel collars and
cuffs, and it serves for many other things.
It is fine for taking dust from straw hats,
and whitens when used with lemon
juice. It is to be sprinkled on and
rubbed in with a brush. Any light
straw may be cleaned with a solution of
oxalic acid, rubbing it in with a small
brush. The solution should be made of
an ounce of the crystals to a quart of
water. See that the hat dries in the
shape wanted. For ten cents a Panama
hat can be cleaned to look like new.
Mix equal parts of oxalic acid and pre-
cipitated sulphur. Dissolve half a tea-
spoonful in half a tumbler of cold water,
remembering that you are dealing with
CARE OF CLOTHING 2T1
a deadly poison when you use oxalic
acid, and must be very careful where you
put it and how you use it. Dip a clean
sponge in the liquid and wipe the hat
until clean. Dry in the sun and the hat
will reward you by its appearance.
If hats instead of being dirty are dis-
colored by the sun, they can be bleached
with sulphur fumes. Country girls
sometimes braid the straw for their hats
and then bleach the straw or the com-
pleted hats by hanging to the bottom of
a barrel which is turned upside down
over a fire-smudge sprinkled with sul-
phur. This is a successful method of
bleaching, practicable only when one has
outdoor space. Sulphur fumes are unsafe
in enclosed spaces.
Faded hats can be colored with dyes
that come for hats. Sometimes they are
not fast colors and then as soon as a rain
comes the result is very unpleasant, but
others are rain-proof and will improve
2T2 THRIFT IN THE HOUSEHOLD
the hat greatly. You remember how one
of the " Little Women " painted her hat?
There is no patent on the idea and any
one who wants to try it can do so. Dyes
for hat-coloring are low-priced and of
many tints, so it is quite possible to turn
even a sailor old friend into a new one.
Laces also may be dyed to match a
costume if one cares for that trimming.
An old waist was metamorphosed into a
beautiful new one by being dyed brown,
with lace to match and only such changes
made in it as mode of sleeve necessitated.
Thrift will lead women to-day to look
over the put-away garments and revive
for wear those that may be done over by
any of these suggestions.
Pack away all garments where they
shall have no chance to get dusty. Wrap
silks and ribbons in blue paper and then
in brown. There is a tinge of chloride of
lime in white paper and that will discolor
them. Packed in the blue tissue and
CAEE OF CLOTHING 2Y3
then in brown, nice silk and satin dresses
will hold their freshness for a considera-
ble time. This is equally good for laying
away soft white flannels. Old blue silk
makes as good a wrapper as does the
paper.
Woolens and furs can have no better
preservative than turpentine and news-
paper. There is the advantage with this
that if any eggs have been laid in the
garments before putting away the turpen-
tine will kill them. Those who insure
goods against moths say the insects do not
get in after the goods are laid away but
the eggs are in them when packed, and
that moths lay eggs in articles hung in
the open air on the line. Professionals
whip furs with tiny, flexible rods and
then comb with a fur comb. Thus pre-
pared and rolled in a close cover of news-
papers they will keep in any receptacle if
turpentine is sprinkled about it. Cayenne
is better than any moth-ball except that
2T4 THRIFT IN THE HOUSEHOLD
the wearer of anything thus protected is
much inconvenienced on first wearing it
after taking from its box. I used it for
years and never had a moth touch fur or
woolen.
If one has a heavy, expensive overcoat
it should be sent to a cleaner before pack-
ing away. Perfect cleanliness is one of
the best protections from moths, and if a
garment has been well cleaned by a pro-
fessional it is almost certain to come safely
through a season even in a house where
moths are to be seen at almost any time.
By letting the sunshine in all the time
the moths will disappear. They are like
other evil-doers and have no desire to be
in the sunshine or to touch printers' ink.
Haven't you many a time cast away
your husband's discarded shirts with a
sigh that anything so good should be
worthless for any other purpose than for
cleaning? Finally I experimented with
what I had and first developed an apron.
CAKE OF CLOTHING 275
The shirts were white with a hair line, and
good except around the collar. From the
back came the front of the apron and the
fronts made side gores. A belt and ruffle
were found from sleeves and shoulder-
piece. The result was a very pretty apron
for home wear. This turned out so well
that next I made a shirt-waist, which is
very easy unless one is larger than her
husband. I planned it to use the same
buttons and buttonholes, fitting by draw-
ing up on the shoulders. Now all dis-
carded shirts form the basis of rompers or
Dutch suits for a three-year-old boy. It
is a very simple matter to get either out
by laying a pattern on the shirt. This
really is a saving worth practising, and
the garment can be planned so that the
buttons and buttonholes may close the
garment. If you do not need to study
thrift for yourself, why not do it for some
one else who would be glad of your
help?
276 THRIFT IN THE HOUSEHOLD
If you have an old carpet that is good
except in pattern you can bring it up to
date by painting it. Have it perfectly
clean and then use a paint that can serve.
Any painter can tell you the kind that
may be applied, but I may not advertise
it. Some paints will fail, but there are
several that will turn carpets into quite
new articles in appearance. You can
turn a rug into oilcloth. Tack it on the
floor after it has been washed clean.
Cover it with thick cooked paste put on
with a brush. Work it well into the rug.
When this is dry you must give it two
coats of paint and one of varnish. If a
border is wanted, use a stencil and another
color of paint. For coloring a carpet the
paste is not necessary.
CHAPTER XVII
THE FAMILY GARDEN
CHAPTER XVII
THE FAMILY GAKDEN
WE know experimentally that the fam-
ily garden is one of the largest sources of
saving of the family income. We started
our married life and our garden about the
same time, with equal ignorance on both
subjects. The garden was established in
our back-yard, a plot about 14x50 feet
in size, of very poor soil where never
had garden been. The Man dug it thor-
oughly, thus cultivating muscles never
before much exercised and learning what
it means to earn his food by the sweat of
his entire body.
The soil was very hard to spade, but
was finally dug to a good depth and left
to sun and ripen until planting time. As
gardening was an experiment, and our
279
280 THRIFT IN THE HOUSEHOLD
dollars were not numerous enough to
waste we decided not to buy fertilizer
but to enrich our ground with our waste
from the table and such wood ashes as we
had. Much of the garbage was burned
on the inside top of the stove which is a
good way to dispose of it and makes no
odor if drafts are open. Garbage prop-
erly treated in a compost heap becomes
good fertilizer but we did not know that
then, and there was no place for com-
post. Not buying fertilizer was a mis-
taken economy, but nature was very good
to us for all that. Some plants are greedy
eaters and thrive better for every mouth-
ful of food given them.
One of the encouraging things to the
amateur gardener is the will of nature to
have things live, and the tenacity of life
in the seeds and plants. They will resist
lack of proper food and water, but they
will not thrive after bugs begin to live on
them, and the only plants in our garden
THE FAMILY GARDEN 281
that did not have some kind of a bug
haunting them were okra and peppers.
Our seeds were given us by a sister
whose husband is a champion garden-
maker, and there was the expense of
thirty-nine cents for a small hand
sprayer, which was another mistaken sav-
ing. Spraying is so large a part of garden
making that it pays to provide one's self
with as large a sprayer as one can work.
Bordeaux mixture cost seventy-five cents^
and we bought tomato plants to the ex-
tent of thirty cents, a total cost of one
dollar and forty-three cents. The time
cost after the seeds were in the ground
was about half an hour daily. The aver-
age would be higher if digging and plant-
ing were included. Most of the work
was done early in the morning, and oc-
casionally some little in the evening.
We made the mistake of all beginners
and planted enough in that small space
to have supplied an acre of ground, and
282 THRIFT IN THE HOUSEHOLD
the seeds were so thick together that they
had no chance to grow. We planted
peas, beans, onions, summer and winter
squash, carrots, Swiss chard, spinach,
radishes, peppergrass, corn, cucumbers,
tomatoes, both seeds and plants, beets,
turnips, cabbage, lettuce and okra, these
not in rotation but all as nearly at once
as we could get them into the ground.
Peppergrass was the first return. It is
like watercress and we used it for salad
and sandwich rilling. There was a sec-
ond crop of that and we combined with
lettuce. We gave away pecks of it, and
at the market price of cress it had a
money value of a dollar and a half. The
peas did not thrive and we had only a
quart, worth eight cents ; the beans be-
came rusty and we did not get half as
many as we should have had, but we
sold four quarts at twelve cents each, and
canned six quarts. We had ten quarts to
eat so our beans brought us two dollars
THE FAMILY GARDEN 283
and forty cents. Of shell-beans there
were four quarts, price twenty cents a
quart. Onions made sets for the second
year, but were worthless to us except for
the flavoring value of the tops. There
were two quarts of little carrots from
thinning the row, and they were deli-
cious but not worth more than six cents.
There were sixty large ones, the price of
which at that time would have been fif-
teen cents. The Swiss chard was the
most profitable article raised. It fur-
nishes a very delicate greens not often
found in the market because it wilts very
quickly. We had twenty-six pecks, sold
five at forty cents a peck, canned a dozen
jars, gave away three pecks, and had it
often on the table. At the market price
of spinach it brought ten dollars and
four cents.
Four plantings of radishes gave us 361
heads or thirty-six bunches at five cents
each, total, one dollar and eighty cents ;
284: THRIFT IN THE HOUSEHOLD
there were thirty-five cucumbers, valued
at one cent each ; from the tomatoes we
got a peck of ripe ones and four pecks of
green ones, the ripe valued at thirty
cents, the green at sixty ; we had one
hundred heads of lettuce from three
plantings, and that summer lettuce never
went below ten cents. Part of the time
the price went to sixteen cents, but we
did not sell any of ours and reckoned its
value, at the lowest cost, to be ten dollars.
There were five summer squashes, worth
ten cents, and six winter squashes worth
fifty cents.
Three kinds of bugs worked hard all
day and night to make a living from the
squash and cucumbers and finally des-
troyed the vines in spite of efforts with
the sprayer. The amount destroyed was
several times greater than the crop se-
cured. From the beets were gathered
twenty-one quarts of tops with the little
beets, and five quarts were canned. The
THE FAMILY GARDEN 285
marketman told me these were worth
four cents a quart, total eighty-four cents.
Of the roots there were two pecks, worth
twenty-five cents ; out of all the corn, only
one ear grew to maturity, but it was per-
fect. I sold twenty-five cents' worth of
young turnip greens, and three turnips
(two cents) were eaten at home. From
the green tomatoes six quarts of pickles
were made. The okra yielded a pint of
so little value it was not counted, and
the peppers had no selling value, as they
were too small, but they served as season-
ing.
There is another side to the story. Not
one seed of spinach sprouted; the cabbage
label blew off and when the young plants
appeared I thought they were weeds and
pulled up all but three before the Man
told me what they were. These were
finally devoured by cabbage-worms. The
bugs devoured the squashes and cucum-
bers, but enough fruit was gathered from
286 THRIFT IN THE HOUSEHOLD
them to pay for having planted and
tended the seed.
Owing to business necessities we were
obliged to move to another city at the
end of August and as our garden was
late, there was more left in it than we
had gathered from it. The bed of chard
was still in full bearing, the tomatoes only
beginning to ripen, and those from seed
planted by us were heavy with green
fruit ; in the ground ungathered were
beets, carrots, turnips, beside chard, toma-
toes, lettuce, and peppergrass. In giving
prices I have given those common in
Baltimore markets that summer, and they
are much less than present prices.
It is wonderful how generous Nature
is to those who give her a chance, and if
she gives thus liberally to two ignorant
beginners, what will she not give to those
who plant properly, and feed fertilizers
with full hand ? We might have had
twice as much for our work had we not
THE FAMILY GARDEN 287
economized at the source of profit. You
must remember that every cent paid out
that does not bring a return is loss. It was
waste to plant twice as much as there was
space for, because the plants that grew
did not accomplish nearly as much as was
natural to them. If one pays a man by
the hour or day, from the garden must
much more profit be gained.
We made a great profit because we had
practically no expense and all that came
to us after one dollar and forty-four cents
was gain. We sold to persons near by
who came for the vegetables that could
be bought fresh from the ground. Had
we tried to sell, we might have sold much
more. Some things we would not sell
at all because we wanted all there was.
We felt that with $30.14 to our credit our
investment paid, and we are enthusiastic
advocates of the pleasure and profit in
one's own garden. Beside the practical
side of abundance of fresh vegetables,
288 THRIFT IN THE HOUSEHOLD
there is the delight of seeing things push
up their little green heads, put out new
leaves, yes, it surely pays to have a
garden. It was not by accident that
Eden was a garden.
THE END
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DEC 9
1942
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tie
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