Living on a Little by Caroline French Benton

Author:Caroline French Benton
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781620136706
Publisher: Duke Classics

Chapter VIII - The Game of Menus

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"Now for our game," said Mrs. Thorne, after looking in the refrigerator the next day. "I have been thinking about what it is like, and I have decided that it is not so much like chess or whist as it is like anagrams. But though it may not be as great an intellectual feat to master it as though it were one of the famous games, it takes brains, nevertheless. So take heart and try and learn it."

She took one sheet of paper and gave Dolly another, and went on.

"You know already that the refrigerator plays a large part in our housekeeping and we must be guided in our planning by what we find there morning by morning. But still there is always a place for new dishes after combining the old ones. So first we see what we have and then decide what will best go with it."

"Do you always write down what you are going to have? Why?"

"Oh, no, of course I do not write every meal down, but I keep a lot of possible menus on hand and turn to them for inspiration when I feel stupid. Or if I have a maid, I hand her over a few and have her follow them, and so be sure—that is, tolerably sure—that the meal will come out as I planned it. Besides these good reasons, there are more which apply especially to you. One is that when you have once learned to make up menus rapidly, you will save yourself a lot of mental storm and stress. Often young housekeepers groan over thinking out meals, especially dinners, of course, since they are the most difficult, and declare that they have had every known meat and vegetable again and again. Instead of that sort of thing, if they had at hand a number of dinners written down, they could select one and save bothering.

"And one thing more. You might often go on having the same thing over and over without realizing it. Now, in writing down the dinners for a week at a time you soon see if you are repeating yourself. If the words 'beef stew,' for instance, appear frequently you presently grasp the idea that you are having too much of that festal dish, whereas if you did not see the words in black and white, you might not guess it."

"I still do not see how you can plan a second day's meals at the same time you plan the first day's, unless you can gauge with accuracy the size of the family's appetites. Suppose some night, instead of each one's taking one helping of meat all around, we should all take two helpings; that would smash your written menu to bits."

"Yes, of course it would, and such things have happened. But written menus are not binding contracts, but only suggestions, and when you and Dick recklessly eat up all the meat between you some night,—personally I should know better than

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