The Cecil Whig. [volume] (Elkton, Md.) 1841-current, 1876-12-30
;Mhe Farm.
BEEFSTEAKS AND PIES.

Everybody, except cannibals and Asian
tee consumers of steaks from the living kline,
prefer well-prepared food to the other kind.
There is no farmers boy who eats greasy
lump of shoe-leather fried in pan and call
ed beefsteak, who would not prefer we'll
broiled porter-house from the hand of
good cook. Here, then, dear madame, is a
point of departure. Wellcooked food is
not only more toothsome, but it is more nu-
tritious. Your grandmother would have
scorned fried steak Pork fried in its
own juice is another thing. Yet the Amer
lean beefsteak, the national dish for break
fast is generally fried. 1t is often of a pale,
measly complexion. It's dry and hard sur
face is vainly irrigated with lukewarm
grease, in which Jumps of soft butter float
pardon madam, the unsavory details which
imperious truth imposes. Is that proper
food for human being? Yet the average
American human being is subjected toit in
the great multitude of honest homes. Can
you do nothing about it?
Then pies. Even that dismayed French
man could not deny that we have as many
pies as religions, and he would be bold
Frenchman also if he asserted til at we are
as fond of our religions as of our pies.
Pies, indeed, there must be. They are as
ancient as Thanksgiving, and the pie on
the table ofthat great day was as constituent
a part of it as the minister is the pulpit.
Nay, what is the festival itself but hum
BILE and piouS offering of thanks for the
copious harvest of pie-in its original mat
erial? Indeed, the more metaphysical in
quirer might justly ask, as he surveys the
ta1I dc xyit hn m
pumpkin, What is it there for except to
make piea 1t is as mamma fallen upon the
earth 1t is celestial hint of pie. 1t is
heavenly command of pie, There is time
in the life of the contemplative American
when he perceives in himself nascent doubts
of pie. He may even 60 so far as to protest
that heavy white dough, shortened" with
leaven and the lard pot know what, is not
wholesome food. But what said the learn
ed and eloquent Rufus Choate, when his
mouth fairly watered at the luxury of the
forcastle and galley of a half straved coast
ing smack? son Monday, gentlemen, the
wholesome and toothsome duff; on Tuesday
the nutritious and delicious dundy funk
and in the climax his rapt eye beheld in
vision the very TRANSPORTED material ofpie,
although he called it by kindred name,
when he exclaimed, "and on Wednesday,
gentlemen, with his own paternul hand,
the captain dealt out to them squash; not
the cold and shriyeed vegetable of our moth
ern climate, but the gorgeous, the luXuri-
ant, the exuberant squash of the tropics
Think, madame, that you deal with this
esculent-squash or pumpkin, it is all the
same: concede that the German will surren-
der his sauerkrat, the Scotchman his oat-
meal ''parritch," the Irshman his potato,
the Italian his macaroni, the Frenchman
his frog, as soon the American his pie;
waive all the arguments against pie as pie;
vet are YOU not morally bound to consider
the nature of crust and can you, as a friend
of truth, assert that the white, soggy slab
of "duff - that underlies your pie is either
wholesome or toothsome? The question
that comes home to you is: Can you brown
it? Can't you make it dry and crisp with
out too much reference to the lard poto
When it is apple with which you are con-
cerned, the responsibility is greater, for, so
to speak, your apple pie wears full suit:
it has a coat and trowser, an upper and
lower garment: and, dear madame, since
I" it is not always May, why should the
innocent fruit be always clad in white?
Brown it, madame, brown it.
These are simple hints. but they involve
health, comfort, and progress Let us re-
gard what has been said a first lesson
studies, if you please, for beginners. De-
vote your energy to securing "A juicy, broil-
ed steak, dry and mealy potatoes, brown
and not buttery pastry, and light, thorough
ly baked bIead-'only these and nothing
more and not your children only, madam,
but all wearied souls who have been long
watching for the dawn, will rise up and
call you blessed. Editors Easy Char, in
HQrDer's for December