Living on a Little

by Caroline French Benton

"A delightful company way of serving turnips is this: boil or steam them whole and scrape them; scoop out the tops till you have a little white cup of each one, and cut a slice from the bottom, to make it stand evenly; put butter, salt, and pepper in each and fill with drained and seasoned canned peas. You can't think how pretty they are; you can have those with mutton or lamb. The inside bits you mix with the carrots the next night, as I told you.

"Speaking of carrots, they are considered one of the most wholesome of vegetables, because they are full of iron; so have them often. Just boil them, cut them up and cream them, or drain them dry and put a little butter on them if you are short of milk; they are especially good with Hamburg steak or beef in any shape.

"Beets you boil, scrape and dice and put in a very little white sauce; any left over make a good milk soup the second night. Or, for company you fix them exactly as you did the turnips; make them into cups and fill them with peas. I am not sure which is the prettier dish.

"Onions you have once in awhile for a change; they are certainly good for you, and they need not be odoriferous. Cut them up and simmer them in just enough water to cover them, adding a bit of soda. Drain them,—and, by the way, do not 'throw away the water,' as cook-books say, but save it for soup; put the onions in a baking-dish with white sauce and crumbs and bake them. I think with a dinner ending with black coffee no one will suspect you of having eaten them. If ever you find any especially large onions in market, or can pick out several from the quart of the ordinary kind, boil these whole, and when they are soft take out the middle part and fill them with bread crumbs and bake them, basting them occasionally.

"Salsify or oyster-plant is really an extremely good vegetable if only it is well cooked, which it isn't, as a general thing. Try this way: simmer it till it is very tender indeed; take it up and drain it and scrape it well. Then cut off the little end and also the top, so that what is left is like a croquette in shape; of course the rest can go in soup, so it will not be lost. Dip each piece in crumbs, then in egg, then in crumbs, exactly as you do croquettes, and let them dry; fry in deep fat in a wire basket, and you will be astonished to see what a nice new dish you have.

"As to cabbage, there you have a real treasure. If every woman could only cook it in the hygienic way she would find she had one of the greatest helps in winter. It is so cheap, so good, and so easily digested when it is right that it is a pity every one does not know how to do it. You cut the cabbage up in quarters and take out the core; the four pieces you put in a pot of hard-boiling water, dropping in one at a time gently, so as not to stop the boiling. Then put in a small plate or anything to keep it under water, a piece of soda as large as the end of your little finger, and some salt, and boil as hard as you can for twenty-five minutes, being careful to keep the pot uncovered."

"Think of the horrid odor, Mary! It would just fill the house."

"That is exactly what it would not do, my dear. If you cover the pot, the cabbage will make itself known at once, but if you boil it hard and keep it uncovered, it will not; if you don't believe me, try for yourself. At the end of the time take it up and press the water out in the colander and cut it up. Put it in a hot dish and cover with white sauce; and then bless your kind sister who taught you how to make one of the best things you ever ate.

"Now the canned things come next. There, as I said, you must economize, and the best way to do that aside from buying few of them, is to always make two meals of each canful. That is not difficult to do with a small family. For instance, when you have tomatoes, serve half stewed down with bits of toast in them; the next time scallop what is left with crumbs, to help out. Canned corn you also divide, having two-thirds as it is, drained and freshly creamed, of course, with lots of seasoning; and the next night you have the left-over third in corn fritters. By the way, Dolly, try the grated corn; it is better than the other kind, and you can have another change by sometimes serving the first part in a baked corn custard. If you use the ordinary kind, you will also make one can go farther by adding some beans and serving it as succotash.