Fried Hominy.
Boil hominy—the fine-grained—the day before you want to use it. When perfectly cold and stiff, remove the skin from the top, and cut the hominy into neat squares. Flour and salt these, and fry to a nice brown in hot lard or dripping. Drain well, and eat hot.
Sweet Potato Pie.
Parboil; skin; cool, and slice crosswise firm sweet potatoes. Line a pie-dish with a good crust; put in a layer of sliced potatoes; sprinkle abundantly with sugar; scatter in four or five whole cloves, and cover with more slices. Fill the dish thus: put in a liberal tablespoonful of melted butter; pour in a little water and a teaspoonful of lemon-juice; cover with puff-paste, and bake. Eat cold. This is a Virginia dish, and very nice.
Third Week. Sunday.
Ox-tail Soup.
2 ox-tails; 1 onion; 2 turnips; 2 carrots; bunch of sweet herbs; 6 whole cloves; 2 tablespoonfuls of catsup; 1 glass of wine; pepper and salt; ½ lb. of lean ham; butter; water.
Joint the tails, and slice the vegetables and ham. Put two tablespoonfuls of butter into the soup kettle, with the tails, ham, vegetables, herbs, and a pint of water. Cover closely, and simmer half an hour after they begin to smoke. Add, then, six quarts of water, if the tails are of a fair size, and simmer four hours, or until the vegetables are boiled to pieces and the tails very tender. Do this on Saturday; season the soup, and turn all into the stock-jar. On Sunday take off the fat, and strain the soup, pulping the vegetables, and taking out the pieces of tail. Put these into the stock-jar, with all the soup you do not need for to-day; also the bits of ham. Heat the portion left out for to-day; stir in a good spoonful of browned flour wet in water, the catsup and wine, and boil up fairly before serving.