Principles of cookery

The store closet should be kept well stocked, and this is less expensive and far easier than buying things as needed. One order a week ought to be enough for the staple groceries, and two orders a week in winter and three in summer for meats, fruits, and fresh vegetables. Do not order by telephone, but at least once each week visit the market and make the order according to what is available there. The time often spent in a daily visit to markets or a daily call from the store-man can be used to better advantage in an average home. A fair supply of good-grade canned goods should be kept in the house for emergencies ; but as a whole these are more expensive than fresh cooked meats and vegetables; but where fuel is expensive and labor high, they may be used more freely. Milk should be used generously. Many families would do well to double their present milk supply. Where milk is abundant and canned vegetables at hand, it takes but a few moments to prepare a nourishing and attractive cream soup of corn, beans, peas, or tomatoes. If the top of the milk has been used for cereal and coffee, the remainder will be quite as satisfactory as whole milk for soups or puddings, when butter or other fat is added. If our home is at a distance from markets and we have an abundance of one type of food material and little of others, then it may be necessary for us to devise many ways of serving this one, and then we must use different forms and flavors that we may not tire of the monotonous diet. But when the season of any fruit, vegetable, or meat is brief, then we need serve it only in its natural form or cooked in the simplest manner. As the seasons change, cold merging into heat and heat into cold again, we let our fires go out, then we kindle them, and we decrease and then increase our clothing. But few households make a corres- pondingly marked change in their food, adapting it to the differing needs of the body as the external temperature changes. All of us know places where pork and pies occupy as prominent a position on the tables in July as in January, though their heat-giving qualities make them out of place in summer, even if admissible in winter. [illustration: Some Ways of Serving Oranges.] "Pork and beans," where the fat predominates, may be suitable for midwinter, while "baked beans," with a small amount of fat — be it pork, beef, butter or olive oil — are not out of place at any season. Another phase of this matter is the improvement in nagging appetites, which is accomplished by a change in food. The city dwellers are often better off in the spring than the country family. From the South to the city markets come greens of several kinds, asparagus, lettuce, cucumbers, and radishes, while the country garden is still bare. A small bunch of asparagus as a garnish around some inex- [illustration: Lambs Heart with Asparagus.] pensive meat like lamb or calf hearts will give relish when a larger quantity would be an extravagance. Those who prepare the food for the family deserve a change of labor from season to season, and many women in the country would do well to strike from pie making and spend the time so saved out of doors. It is no harder to care for a strawberry bed than to [illustration: Apricot or Peach]