774 
THR RURAL NEW-YORKER 
i EATING FOR THE FUN OF IT 
C 
! WHAT HEALTHY MEN WANT 
■ . 
I :¥¥¥ THE FARM SUPPLIES IT ALL 
Good Meal for a Fruit Grower. 
I WILL suppose the time is August, 
and the orchards and gardens are 
teeming with fruit and vegetable prod¬ 
ucts ready for harvest, and it may be 
that the cook would prepare something 
like the following: Corn bread, butter, 
fried chicken and gravy, mashed pota¬ 
toes, sweet potatoes, sliced tomatoes and 
cucumbers, Country Gentleman sweet 
corn on the cob, Lima beans, apple sauce, 
soft peaches and cream, apple pie, milk 
and water to drink, ice cream and cake. 
That would suit me, and if one is so 
dyspeptic he could not do justice to that, 
I am not able to provide it. 
Lawrence Co., Ohio. u. T. cox. 
Some Ohio Substantial. 
imitation of spinach, and later the ma¬ 
tured leaf stalks boiled like asparagus. 
I am fond of sweets, and always like a 
dessert of some sort, just now rhubarb 
puffs. As a regular drink I use the fer¬ 
mented Bulgarian milk, and find it splen¬ 
did, but still I drink some coffee. The 
various food faddists make me tired. It 
is not what a man eats usually, but how 
much he eats. A man can gorge on any 
sort of food and ruin his digestion, while 
he can eat in moderation what he likes 
and keep well. I have always done so, 
and now in my seventy-fifth year I am 
still doing so. have a very comfortable 
stomach and sleep like a baby, walk four 
to five miles a day, and work in my gar¬ 
den to rest from the desk work. I should 
say that I slip in a baked apple for 
breakfast. Now. I am fond of honey, 
and, like a bear, would go a long way 
to get it. So, the morning in question, 
I did not waste much time in getting to 
the pasture, but, much to my disgust, I 
could not find the cow. The longer I 
searched, the hungrier I got, until the 
visions of honey and hot biscuits became 
fairly maddening. I finally found the 
old cow, and got her home, my appetite 
whetted by the cold morning and two- 
hour tramp, and I found the biscuits 
awaiting me, ready to be popped into 
the oven. The curtain may come down 
on a hungry boy, a pitcher of cold, sweet 
milk, plenty of fresh butter, hot biscuits 
and honey, real honey with the aroma of 
clover blossoms clinging to it like a 
breath of June, beverly t. galloway. 
My Most Difficult Meal. 
NCE upon a time long years ago I 
lived on a Western ranch in Mon¬ 
tana. My husband was dairy foreman, 
and I did the cooking for the men. The 
number varied from five or six in Win¬ 
ter to 25 or 80 in Summer. The season 
had been excellent, and the Alfalfa was 
like a green sea in the sandy desert; 20 
I T is the plain and simple foods that one 
likes best and remembers longest, 
such as Graham or buckwheat griddle 
cakes with butter and syrup, bacon and 
eggs, an occasional roast of beef, veal or 
pork, baked potatoes, eaten with butter, 
and baked sweet potatoes and squash 
should be included, too. Then there are 
flaky baking powder biscuits eaten with 
butter spread with some fruit butter or 
jams; baked sweet apples eaten with 
cream, properly cooked peas fresh from 
the garden, or some corn boiled on the 
cob, and spread with butter, and eaten 
the way it was intended to be eaten; 
some nice sliced ripe tomatoes, sprinkled 
with sugar but without vinegar, or per¬ 
haps some well-ripened peaches with 
cream. Mush made of Graham or corn- 
meal and eaten with cream or whole 
milk is fit for anybody. The so-called 
fancy things are not important, and usu¬ 
ally are more costly to prepare than they 
are worth, but for a warm weather des¬ 
sert some home-made ice cream, made 
from real cream, is really worth while. 
Water or milk drank at meal time is all 
right and far better than coffee, cocoa 
or tea. Now it should not be difficult to 
pick out enough articles from the above 
list to make a good dinner, and I have 
but little choice which ones should be 
selected. w. E. duckwall. 
Ohio. 
May 30, 
out to the field. I flew to the store¬ 
room, hoping to find I had overlooked 
something, but no; two solitary cans of 
tomatoes and a bottle of cherished relish, 
made the year before of tender radish 
pods with vinegar and cayenne pepper, 
were all the empty shelves held. 
There were about two pounds of mac¬ 
aroni left, and 29 hungry men to feed 
from it. The stove was full; not an 
inch of available room left. I poured 
boiling water over the macaroni and 
popped it in the oven to cook. I opened 
the cans of tomatoes, and put them in 
the oven, too, and when the macaroni 
was done placed them together. The long 
table, capable of seating 30 men. was 
covered with white oilcloth. Think of it, 
my friend, and I had been brought up in 
the East, where to entertain a U. S. 
Senator the very best linen and the 
choicest china would be used, and the 
most delectable of eatables furnished. I 
set the table with our dishes and the 
polished steel knives and three-tined 
forks, placing a napkin, made of a neatly 
hemmed sugar sack, at our guests’ places, 
for they had asked to eat with the fam¬ 
ily, so I was taking them at their word. 
A tin spoon and a vegetable dish com¬ 
pleted the dishes, and this was our 
menu : 
Potatoes, boiled whole; hot boiled 
sliced ham ; greens; peach pickles; brown 
bread (?) ; macaroni and tomatoes; rad¬ 
ish relish; great pitchers of icy butter¬ 
milk; tapioca pudding; coffee, with thick 
cream. 
I always kept a sweet pickle made of 
various kinds of dried fruit, and at this 
time happened to have peaches, and one 
of the greatest blessings we had was a 
well-filled ice-house. These men laid all 
the small conventionalities aside, and the 
ride had given them ravenous appetites, 
so they did full justice to the dinner. 
They enjoyed the simple greens without 
any garnish, and ate slice after slice of 
the brown bread. The Senator told me 
he was raised in New England, and it 
tasted as it did years ago when he was 
a boy on a farm and ate it fresh from 
his mother’s brick oven. They sat at the 
table long after the men left for work, 
and told us many interesting stories of 
their life-work. Before they left they 
came to say good-bye, and the physician 
said when he finished his work he would 
take a vacation and visit us again, but 
after spending some time in the valley he 
was taken a victim of the fever and 
died. And this, I think, was the most 
difficult meal I ever served. 
Ohio. MRS. JAMES LAMPMAN. 
Singing the Wife’s Praises. 
M Y wife is descended from old Virginia 
and Kentucky stock, and knows how 
to cook in a way I have never seen 
equaled even by my mother, and she was 
one of the best cooks in the world. One 
of the best things, and also the rarest, al¬ 
most impossible to find it anywhere, is 
home-made cheese and the curd made 
from sweet milk, of which the cheese is 
made. Mrs. Allis has found out she can 
make any amount, no matter how small, 
of milk into curd and save it until she 
has enough to make a small cheese. It 
is as easy as making butter. I will tell 
you one meal that is not to be sneezed 
at: Young spring chicken, Kentucky 
style, and creamed gravy, mashed pota¬ 
toes (no one but Mrs. Allis knows how 
to mash potatoes), bread which beats 
angel food, and such butter! Some kind 
of pie, of which the best is apple, cus¬ 
tard, lemon custard, grape, black rasp¬ 
berry, etc., and Jonathan apple jelly and 
home-made cheese all through the meal 
and with the pie. c. allis. 
Maryland’s Wide Bill of Fare. 
HEN I was a boy I thought that 
the height of good eating in Spring 
was a dinner of boiled turnip greens with 
smoked hog’s jowl and cornmeal dump¬ 
lings, all boiled together. I still like the 
dish, but of late years seldom get it, and 
in fact find that less hearty food is 
better, and now I am satisfied with roast 
chicken as the meat dish, and a good 
variety of vegetables, never less than 
three. At this time of the year we use 
green onions, sweet potatoes roasted 
(never steam them as Northern people 
are apt to) and spinach. When the spin¬ 
ach is over we use the young tops of the 
chard as a substitute, and a very good 
dessert as often as anything, and always 
eat an orange or half grape fruit for 
breakfast. w. F. massey. 
Virginia Home Farm Dinners. 
HERE are two dinners that appeal 
to me, and I will mention them in 
order of preference. First (and prefer¬ 
able), the dinner in early Summer, com¬ 
pany expected and we are going to give 
of our best, all home-grown. Fried Spring 
chickens, green peas and snaps and new 
potatoes creamed, followed by strawber¬ 
ries and cream (real thick cream), 
washed down by buttermilk during the 
meat course; cake and ice cream. Sec¬ 
ond, for Winter—roast turkey and Vir¬ 
ginia boiled ham. cranberry sauce, pota¬ 
toes, salsify, followed by baked apples 
and cake. Coffee or buttermilk. The 
turkey tastes better if stuffed with oys¬ 
ters, which can be obtained easily in 
most parts of this State of Virginia. 
Virginia cheroots, made of Virginia to¬ 
bacco, are a good postprandial digestive. 
WALTER WIIATELY. 
Sec. Va. Hort. Society. 
The Best Meal I Ever Ate. 
T HE best meal I ever ate! Do I re¬ 
member it? Well, I should say I 
do, the same as if it were yesterday. It 
was this way. One of my jobs, as a 
boy, was to get up early, go about three- 
quarters of a mile to a pasture and bring 
our cow in for milking. As the chilly 
Fall days came on, I would frequently 
get to the pasture soon after daybreak, 
and, being barefooted, it was one of my 
great joys to make the cow get up and 
warm my chilly feet on fhe spot vacated 
by the cow. On one of these frosty 
mornings I was told to hurry back, for 
there would be honey and hot biscuits for 
men wore working to secure it. For help 
I had a girl of 16, who had come out 
during vacation, and a blue-eyed baby a 
year old. After a troublesome night with 
the teething babe, four o’clock found me 
tired enough to stay in bed. However, 
this was not to be thought of. The sup¬ 
plies were a day late, and after break¬ 
fast I found I had on hand two loaves 
of bread and about a quart of flour, and 
no supplies due till after dinner. On a 
3,000-acre ranch you cannot telephone the 
grocer, neither can you borrow from 
your neighbor, for you haven’t one nearer 
than four or five miles. So I was puz¬ 
zled how to feed those men on two loaves 
of bread. I found I had about two 
quarts of bolted cornmeal (the real ar¬ 
ticle was not to be had). A frantic 
search in the granary revealed a sack 
o'' bran. With the flour I had and the 
thick buttermilk I made brown bread. 
The buttermilk rose nobly to its duty, 
and it came from the oven brown, fra¬ 
grant and tender. Left from the dinner 
the day before were onion and radish 
tops, carefully saved for greens, and a 
generous amount of spinach added. Early 
in the day I had put a home-cured ham 
to boil, and had planned on a 20-pound 
lard pail of tapioca to furnish dessert. 
About 10 o’clock the thermometer was 
standing at 90 degrees, and I picked the 
baby up and stepped out on the porch. 
I saw a livery rig turn in at the drive¬ 
way. They stopped at the door. It was 
a U. S. Senator and two prominent phy¬ 
sicians from New York on their way to 
Missoula to study the dread spotted fever 
that had broken out there. And they 
wanted to stay to dinner! They were 
to watch the men make hay and look 
over the sleek Ilolsteins. I tried to keep 
the consternation out of my face and tell 
them they were welcome, and they drove 
A Plain Meal Best. 
Y 
I HAVE no recollection of any best 
meal as a single meal, although some 
time there may have been one which ap¬ 
peared “the best” for some local reason. 
I suppose what you really would like 
to know is what combination one likes 
best, makes the person feel best, and is 
a possibility. With me it is a 4 per 
cent milk, about one pint, with bread a 
couple of days baked, long enough at any 
rate to lose its freshness and will crum¬ 
ble, about three ounces of full cream 
cheese cured at low temperature for six 
months, a few crackers and two baked 
sweet apples. The ration is balanced, 
contains a variety, and “sets well” on 
my stomach. I mix the milk, bread and 
apples together, and eat the cheese on 
the side. Try it. h. e. cook. 
He Remembers Baked Apples. 
F course something depends on the 
season, dosen’t it? When, as now, 
you can have asparagus ad lib., or, as 
later, strawberries, green peas, or corn 15 
minutes from your own bushes, you could 
not leave such things, and there are 
many more, out of your bill of fare. 
But if I must make up a real good din¬ 
ner out of things that can almost always 
be had or are in the house, here goes: 
There is nothing quite so compelling to 
the board as the smell of good ham com¬ 
bined with a little onion in the frying 
pan. So I bid for some choice fried, or 
even boiled, ham, with potatoes fried 
with onions, homemade bread with plenty 
of sweet butter, three large baked Bald¬ 
wins with the syrup cooked down and 
poured over them so that it jellies, 
plenty of cream and a nice bit of a cooky 
or ginger snap to end up with if there’s 
any room. w. C. demixg. 
