If you have nothing else of which gravy can be made, boil the ham-bone or a few slices of ham in a little water; thicken with flour; add a little butter, parsley, pepper and a beaten egg; boil up until it thickens.
The above is a simple, but very good preparation of potato. You will not grudge the little additional time and trouble required to make pretty and palatable the remnants of ham and potato, that, served plain, would tempt no one except a very hungry man.
For many other ways of cooking this invaluable vegetable, for breakfast and luncheon, as well as for dinner, the reader is referred to the section—“Potatoes,” in “Common Sense in the Household,” page 210.
LUNCHEON.
————————
A young friend of mine who had not long been a wife and housekeeper, on returning from a morning drive, one day, was met at the door by the intelligence that her widower brother, who was a member of her family, had brought three gentlemen home with him to dinner. Her husband had not yet come in, and although not naturally nervous, she repaired forthwith, and in some trepidation, to the kitchen, to see for herself that the early dinner, which was then customary in the household, because more convenient for the master’s business, was in satisfactory progress.
The range was hot and the top empty; the tables clean and also empty; ditto the cook’s hands, while her terrified face had the hue of her whitest dish-towel.
“Don’t you think, ma’am,” was her salutation, “that the marketing has never come home at all, at all, and not a bit of meat, nor so much as a pertater in the house! Whatever will we do? and lashin’s of company in onexpected!”
The mistress was equally dismayed when a glance at the clock showed that it was past twelve. The market-house closed at noon; her residence was out of the region of butchers’ and green-grocers’ shops. It was evident that the plethoric hamper, she had seen filled by her usually careful provision merchant and left at his stand in the market to be delivered at her door early in the forenoon, had miscarried, or been overlooked.