"Well, we have, just about. But for breakfasts I should cut out fruit altogether for a time, and make a breakfast of hot cereal, coffee and toast, or some good sort of muffin that did not take too many eggs. In winter you can have a hearty meal of fried corn-meal mush; you can either make that the day before you want it and slice and fry it in the morning, or you can stir it up and boil it freshly just before breakfast and fry spoonfuls of it while it is soft. I like it best that way myself, but you can try both ways. In summer you can have an excellent breakfast of cold cereals."
"They sound horrid."
"They are not horrid at all, but very good; we will begin to have them ourselves as soon as it gets warm enough. And besides cereals, I should see if I could not have some cheap hot breakfast dish to alternate with them; I suppose milk toast, or if you live where milk is plenty, cream toast, and codfish in lots of ways, especially in baked potatoes, or mixed with mashed potato in small dishes. Sometimes I should have codfish in fritters; brown puffy fritters, not flat greasy cakes. And I should have clams in that way, too, if they were cheap."
"How about luncheons, now? Did you say you could or could not cut down on those?"
"I think we cannot do much better than we have done, but I should keep trying all the time. I should have fried bread with jelly to eat on it, and baked beans, and farina cakes, and minced vegetables, hot or in salad. And in summer I should have creamed corn or peas on toast, and lots of salads of plain cooked vegetables. But be very careful not to try and cut down on your luncheons by doing without substantial dishes. No woman who does her own work can long keep up on bread and tea at noon without getting sallow and thin and anaemic; you simply must not try and economize on nourishing food, even though you cut down on everything expensive. Starvation is poor management."
"Well, leaving meals for a moment, do you try and cut down on other things, such as coffee, for example? Do you have a poorer quality to save money?"
"Never. I must have good coffee at any rate. But I will tell you what I do right along. I go to a very good grocery, one of the largest and most expensive sort, and there I ask for a good kind of coffee which is not as expensive as their highest grades. You will be astonished to find that all such places make a specialty of coffee which actually costs less than you can buy it for at your regular grocery, and it is infinitely better, too. One famous place keeps coffee for thirty-five and forty cents a pound and even more, and at the same time recommends what they call their 'best' coffee, at nineteen cents! It seems absurd, but that is a fact. I always use it, and it is the best I can buy. Never use cheap coffee, Dolly; it is horrid, just as bad butter is, or bad tea, or bad eggs. Go without, or have them good."
"Mary, did you ever think what you would do if you had to live on just a few cents a day? I have often wondered whether I could manage or not. Suppose for a time you had practically nothing at all, how would you manage then?"
"I suppose I should plan to have things to eat that would give the maximum of nourishment for the minimum of cost. Let me see. I should have corn-meal mush for one breakfast, because that contains fat and is very nourishing. For another, I should have boiled rice, I think. For luncheons I should have split pea purée, or a thick bean soup. For dinner I should have a dish of creamed codfish, let us say; or, I should have whole wheat bread and a baked apple instead of the fish. And I should have macaroni and cheese, too. I know people who have tried these things say you can live easily on beans and lentils and whole wheat bread and a certain amount of fruit, apples or bananas or figs, and I can quite believe it. Of course, if only one could have plenty of milk, the rest would be easy."