VARIETY IN FOOD.

Western Star, Issue 1077, 30 October 1886, Page 2 (Supplement)

VARIETY IN FOOD.

Often a sickly, waning appetite can be stimulated by some exceedingly simple change in the commonest articles of daily food. Slices of dry bread are uninviting, but the same bread, slightly browned, with a delicately poached egg resting on the toast, becomes altogether another item in the bill of fare. Cold beef or mutton have become standard dishes for wash-day or other slim dinners, but an accompaniment of pickles for the one and jelly for the other makes all the difference in the world between tasteful and bald utilitarian housekeeping. Oatmeal porridge is a most excellent breakfast dish, yet it is well to occasionally substitute in its place berries or other fruit, or even a change to pearl hominy, or cracked wheat, or cornmeal mush,

I know there are forty different ways in which to prepare potatoes, and I should not be surprised to learn that there may be fifty more, yet how few are the tables, especially in the country, where one sees this vegetable except in the stereotyped boiled whole, mashed or fried. A great variety of delightful dishes can be made with apples at all seasons of the year, whether one has fresh or canned fruit. Breakfast, dinner or tea need not lack a healthful relish if one has a dozen or so of apples within reach. I do not enumerate the host of what are known as “ made dishes,” which can be so quickly and easily concocted out of remnants. I know it is worth the trouble to set on the family table, not courses of elaborate dishes, but a wholesome, agreeable, yet economical diversity of food.