Cooking for profit

The majority of those who board where the oatmeal or cracked wheat mush is made regularly and made good soon find they cannot make a satisfactory meal without it. ^ It is an article of diet especially desirable for children. I believe, moreover, that more hard work both of hands and head can be done, particularly in hot weather, upon a diet of oatmeal and cream than upon any mixed diet of meat and vegetables. There are two ways of cooking it and the best way is difficult and more or less wasteful. There is no waste in cooking the oatmeal in a farina kettle — as the double kettles are called — but there is a loss of something still. We cooks know by various signs when a dish strikes the peoples' fancy, and know that the oatmeal and cracked wheat that is eaten to the last grain and for which the disappointed "help'' after the meal want to scrape the kettle clean for a dish for themselves is not that which is cooked in a farina kettle or steam chest, but that cooked in a thick-bottomed saucepan slowly at the back of the range, where a crust bakes under and around it and the mush gets a baked flavor. I think the best way to cook oatmeal mush would be the same as Boston baked beans, in a jar in the oven, but have never been sufticiently interested to try it. A cup of oatmeal costing two or three cents requires four cupo of water to cook it, and makes a quart or two pounds of good food. If we make up our minds that it is cheap enough to throw away tiie crust that forms in the kettle every time k is made, the best quality tan be secured that way, provided there is a slow place on the range for it to simmer for a couple of hours. Such, however, is not the case here. The thin stove fired up with light wood causes the mush to burn at the bottom every other day and the fine baked flavor and the fine theories go up in smoke together. This will never do. So having no farina kettle and there being none to buy at eithervillage, my sec and I have hit upon the plan of taking a live-pint milk pail vviih a tight lid and setting it with the oatmeal, previously steeped in the requisite quanticy of water, inside a deep iron pot containing water and so boil and steam ic, covered with a lid. These tea-kettle cooks steam many a loaf of brown bread very well by the same plan, and could steam a variety of good puddings in the same contrivance if they only knew how to make them. the Graham, about half of each. Otherwise they are made the same as the other kind. No. 535. Dinner. Vegetable soup (No. 140; cost nominal, say 16 cents.) Roast loin mutton (3 lbs, 30 cents.) Potted beefsteak (village bought, rough, 30 cents.) ■ Macaroni with creamed cheese (12 orders, 12 cents.) Green peas (from garden, worth 20 cents.) Lima beans (dried, 1/2 lb, and seasoning, 5 cents.) Tomatoes (1 can, 15 cents.) Potatoes (plain steamed, 3 cents.) Pies (No. 593; 3 pies, 19 cents.) I Old-fashioned rice puddmg (2 qts, 13 cents; sauce, 3—16 cents.) Condiments, crackers, nuts, raisins, cheese (average, 25 cents.) Butter 15, milk and cream 30, coffee, tea, bread 10. Total, $2 46; 25 persons; nearly lo cents a plate. 591— Potted Beefsteak. 589— Buttered Eggs.