THE PHILOSOPHY OF CHEAP LIVING

[Welland Tribune, 27 September 1878]

It is said there is enough substance thrown away and squandered in American families to keep the moderate French or English family; and although that is probably an exaggerated statement, there is a moral in it. The American marketer buys usually the best; it appears upon her table once, is sometimes warmed over for a second dish or for a breakfast, sometimes not, and Bridget does as she pleases with the fragments, either giving or throwing them away. An Englishwoman buys, let us say, a roasting piece of beef; she too buys the best, because as she will use it, it is the cheapest. The upper cut makes one day’s dinner handsomely; the under cut in thin slices, carved across instead of up and down, fried in butter, and served on mashed potatoes or on rice, garnishing the dish to make it seem like something choicer, and add to appetite, makes a second dinner; then the long end piece, which has remained untouched, makes an excellent stew with tomatoes or carrots and potato balls for a third dinner, being cooked and cooled so as to remove the grossness, and then warmed up again; the various fragments either make a pie, or hashed and spiced or curried answer for a fourth dinner, which will be pieced out, as one may say, by a rather daintier dessert than usual, as the case will be also with the fifth dinner-a soup of the bones that remain, made hearty with vegetables; and after all there is left a store of invaluable dripping. The American housewife in comfortable circumstances who should make five dinners for a moderate family from a roast of beef would until recently have considered herself a scrimping and shabby woman, and would fear being held by her neighbors, well-informed by the servants, as a niggardly skinflint. Now on the contrary she is inclined to look about and see if she cannot better instruction, and procure a sixth dish from the same source.

But there are various other ways in which the Englishwoman can give us lessons in economy. It is safe to say that nothing is wasted under her care. Even her stale beer is saved to rinse her bronzes in, to boil with other material and make her old plate look new, and to clean her soiled black silks; and the lemons, whose outer skin has been grated off, and whose juice has been squeezed out, if they are not laid aside to boil in any compound, are given to the cook to clean her saucepans. If she keeps fowl, every egg brought in is dated with a pencil, and those of an earlier date are used first; if there are any to be spared, she lays them by for winter provision by passing over them a camel’s hair pencil dipped in oil, which hermetically seals and preserves their contents; and where she uses only the whites in one dish, she contrives another in which she shall use the yolks. If the bread has become dry she does not immediately throw it to hens or dedicate it to a pudding; she dips the loaf in hot water and sets it in the oven, and finds it sufficiently fresh for family use. Nor does she often indulge in the doubtful luxury of baker’s bread, since she has learned that she hereby loses in bread just the weight of the water used in compounding it, besides running the risk of deleterious ingredients. And when the bread is really dried past refreshing, then it answers for stuffing, is grated for crumbs, or is soaked with milk and beaten eggs for puddings; none of it is thrown away. She is equally economical concerning the ham; when no more slices can be cut, there is still a quantity of dried meat upon it that that would seem to most of our housekeepers as something rather worthless. Not so to this good woman; it is dried a little further and then grated from the bone, and put away in jars to be taken out and seasoned on requirements for the enrichment of omelets, for spreading upon savory dishes of toast, which make a nice addition to breakfast or lunch, for stuffing olives, and making sandwiches, after which grating the bone serves to flavor soup. In the same way she grates her cheese that is too dry or near the rind using it afterwards as a relish, or as a dressing to macaroni or other substance. All bones, meanwhile, as well as the ham bone, are objects of care with her, or with the servants whom she has trained to her will, and are regularly boiled down to add the result to the stockpot for gravies and soups, by which means she procures the latter at almost no cost at all. Whenever she has a few slices of heterogeneous cold meats, she has countless palatable ways of using them-deviled, broiled in a batter, scalloped, minced in to croquets or mayonnaises.