Most for your money cookbook

Bran may not be as good for you as the blowers-up of cheap cereals to sell us at fancy prices say — and doctors tell us it's dangerous in systems that can't stand any more roughage than they already get. But it does make a mighty tasty muffin. So if you can take it, and can still find at a fair price this stuff they used to feed the cows, by all means try the above recipe. Life gets mighty dull on rations of the same cottony white bread every day, so if you've got the time to make hot breads such as this you'll find the family whooping with pleasure; for freshly cooked grains are hot stuff for a change. And if you haven't much time before breakfast buy them from the baker and at the same time get some good juicy rye bread, oatmeal, whole wheat, or anything more real and chewy than that chalky white loaf which only fattens the big baking companies. And don't buy bread already sliced. It may taste as good as the kind you cut yourself, but you're sure to waste some of it, and that's the manufacturer's intention. He cuts it thick so you'll either eat more than you want or leave some uneaten to be thrown away, and when it comes to those end crusts he's clever as the devil; they're cut too thin to make toast and too thick to nibble unless you're a crust-hound, so the result nine times out of ten is that these leathery little heels, which comprise anyway 30% of the weight of the loaf, are thrown away. At a dime a loaf that's io% gone — to excess profits, and bakery dividends. We always save these heels, dry them crisp at any time when the oven is cooling, roll them fine and store them in a jar which is dipped into many times a day. Cookbook recipes for stuffings say to cut off crusts of bread, because, perhaps, it is usually so fresh that the crusts are tough. If properly dried this is an unnecessary waste, for the crusts crush to crumbs and lend a nutty toasty flavor which improves a dressing and helps it to fulfill its purpose of enriching the taste of any food it goes into. Whole wheat, cracked wheat, and oatmeal breads make more appetizing stuffings that plain white, and a mixture of several is better still, while way-down-South corn bread is so prized for dressings that cooks bake up a specially big batch of it and let it grow stale when a turkey or something special is to be roasted. So many crumbs are used in France that bakers supply them at a very cheap price by weight, thus marketing their leftover loaves, crusts and all, just as our biscuit companies furnish us with packages of cracker crumbs much cheaper than we can make them from whole crackers. So precious is stale bread in the kitchen that not a slice should ever be wasted. Broken bits thrown into the soup pot are the best sort of thickening. Sifted crumbs are more tasty than flour for gravies; they make grilled and fried dishes delicious, form tempting crisp tops of baked ones, and furnish the base of a dozen wholesome economical puddings, of bread omelet, bread and butter fritters, special bread soup, bread sauces, and even bread ice cream. And toasts of any sort give a family the feeling that they are eat- HOT stuff! 127 ing at a luxury table, especially if creamed vegetables or gravied hashes are poured over while the toast is still hot and crunchy. CINNAMON TOAST