Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1890-11-08
UNEXPECTED COMPANY.
How to Keep House and Dress OF
Nothing . Year.

NOtAAhk Ao6As |
Ny husband had gone to town to be
gone all day, the children were at school
with their lunch baskets, and l had de-
cided to put in good day sewing, and
take a lunch at noon myself. As | sat
stitching away, with no thought Of mis-
fortune or calamity, the clock struck IL
and simultaneously I heard the crunch"
of carriage wheels on the gravel drive at
the side door, writes Bruneflle, in Michigcn
Former. / looked out the window and to
my CONSERVATION saw FIVE persons alight-
ing at my door. They had driven twelve
miles and must have some dinner.
welcomed them, explained the situa-
ton, and after brief chat excused myself
to prepare a meal for them. In the pantry
/ took account of stock. There was one
slice of cold bacon left from breakfast, and
the drumstick and wing of yesterdays
chicken; there was also one cold boiled
potato, hard boiled egg, two slices of
bread in the bread jar and one cookie and
half OF another IN the steamer. Fortified
by these resources l cheerfully built fire,
and in fifteen minutes had made lovely
chicken pie, scailoped the potato, adding
one cracker to make more of it, and had
toasted the two slices of bread, and cut
them in strips so as to make them go round.
l quartered the cookie and half, and laid
on each quarter slice of the hard boiled
egg, making novel and attractive relish.
At the last moment | found a sauce-plate
full of jam that had been set away from tea
the night before; this / turned into my
cut-glass preserve dish, feeling as if it were
quite treasure. Then, just fifteen min
utes from the time left the parlor, sum-
moned my guests to dinner, first running
out into the garden for cabbage plant and
few graceful onion tops for bouquet, for
our roses were all gone and the ANIMALS
were not yet in bloom. was quite proud
of my menu, and the quickness with which
I had prepared it, but though fifteen min
utes seems a short time in which to build
a fire and bake a chicken pie, yet when
one plans her work carefully she can ac-
complish great deal in short time. Ny
guests ate heartily, saying the long drive
had given them great appetites, and con-
graduated me upon my excellent dinner.
The above is all lie, every word of it;
but it is exactly as true as the nonsense Of
the same kind one reads in housekeeping
treatises and domestic columns of some
newspapers. 1t makes me downright mad
to have such stuff written for practical
housekeepers by women whom l know
never cooked a meal in their lives. and
who aspire to teach those who have prac-
ticed all their lives how to live economi-
cally. You cannot make something out of
nothing in the culinary line any more than
you can in any other way; and the idea of
getting up meal for three or four out of
ohla h1J.aI could Gil
up on makes me sick. If people must
write fiction, | wish they would choose
something else than cooking-something
they know little about, something not
quite so hopelessly prosy and common
place-as theme for their romance.
Nine-tenths of the stuff one sees in pa
pers, household magazines, ETC., protesting
to teach women how to keep house and
dress well on nothing year, how to fur
nish room with blue denim carpet and
cheese-cloth ceiling how to make chicken
pie out of slice of cold ham, is written
by women who never put their fingers in
dough, drove a tack or hung picture in
their lives. A canary bird with a good
appetite could not live on the thin soups
and dainty "croquettes" they seem to
consider so "fillin," and their economies
make one think of the story of the
man who was always nagging his wife
because she could not cook as economi-
cally and at the same time as pala-
tably as his neighbours wife. "Why,"
said he, "we had boiled carrots with some
sort of sauce the other dav, and they were
delicious. When have we had carrot,
I'd like to know! And so cheap! Mrs.
said enough for dinner only cost her 2
cents" Madam had boiled carrots at 2
cents for next days dinner and her lord
and master would not touch them. Why
couldn't she have made sauce for them
like Mrs. -? So next day she got the
recipe for the sauce, and they had carrots
again, this time meeting the full approval
of the man of the house. Then she showed
him the bill Carrots, cents; ingredients
for sauce, including taragon, curry and
half bottle of French dressing, IS cents
Then he shut up.