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- thosethat
Dr. Kitchiner's Rules for Marketing. - The best rule for marketing is to pay ready money for everything, and to deal with the most respectable tradesmen in your neighbourhood. If you leave it to their integrity to supply you with a good article at the fair market price, you will be supplied with better provisions, and at as reasonable a rate as those bargain-hunters who trot "around, around, around about" a market till they are trapped to buy some unchewable old poultry, tough tup-mutton, stringy cow-beef, or stale fish, at a very little less than the price of prime and proper food. With savings like these they toddle home in triumph, cackling all the way, like a goose that has got ankle-deep into good luck. All the skill of the most accomplished cook will avail nothing unless she is furnished with prime provisions. The best way to procure this is to deal with shops of established character: you may appear to pay, perhaps, ten per cent. more than you would were you to deal with those who pretend to sell cheap, but you would be much more than in that proportion better served. Every trade has its tricks and deceptions; those who follow them
can deceive you if they please, and they are too apt to do so if you provoke the exercise of their over-reaching talent. Challenge them to a game at "Catch who can," by entirely relying on your own judgement, and you will soon find nothing but very long experience can make you equal to the combat of marketing to the utmost advantage. If you think a tradesman has imposed upon you, never use a second word, if the first will not do, not drop the least hint of an imposition; the only method to induce him to make an abatement is the hope of future favours; pay the demand, and deal with the gentleman no more; but do not let him see that you are displeased, or as soon as you are out of sight your reputation will suffer as much as your pocket has. Before you go to market, look over your larder, and consider well what things are wanting - especially on a Saturday. No well-regulated family can suffer a disorderly caterer to be jumping in and out to make purchases on a Sunday morning. You will be enabled to manage much better if you will make out a bill of fare for the week on the Saturday before; for example, for a family of half a
dozen -
Sunday - Roast beef and pudding.
Monday - Fowl, what was left of pudding fried, or warmed in the Dutch oven.
Tuesday - Calf's head pie, apple pie.
Wednesday - Leg of mutton.
Thursday - Ditto broiled or hashed, and pancakes.
Friday - Fish, pudding.
Saturday - Fish, or eggs and bacon.
It is an excellent plan to have certain things on certain days. When your butcher or poulterer knows what you will want, he has a better chance of doing his best for you; and never think of ordering beef for roasting except for Sunday. When you order meat, poultry, or fish, tell the tradesman when you intend to dress it: he will then have it in his power to serve you with provision that will do him credit, which the finest meat, &c, in the world will never do, unless it has been kept a proper time to be ripe and tender
- thosethat0
450. Hints for Home Comfort.
i. Eat slowly and you will not over-eat.
ii. Keeping the feet warm will prevent headaches.
iii. Late at breakfast - hurried for dinner - cross at tea.
iv. A short needle makes the most expedition in plain sewing.
v. Between husband and wife little attentions beget much love.
vi. Always lay your table neatly, whether you have company or not.
vii. Put your balls or reels of cotton into little bags, leaving the ends out.
viii. Whatever you may choose to give away, always be sure to keep your temper.
ix. Dirty windows speak to the passer-by of the negligence of the inmates.
x. In cold weather a leg of mutton improved by being hung three, four or five weeks.
xi. When meat is hanging, change its position frequently, to equally distribute the juice.
xii. There is much more injury done by admitting visitors to invalids than is generally supposed.
xiii. Matches, out of the reach of children, should be kept in every bedroom. They are cheap enough.
xiv. Apple and suet dumplings are lighter when boiled in a net than a cloth. Scum the pot well.
xv. When chamber towels get thin in the middle, cut them in two, sew the selvages together, and hem the sides.
xvi. When you are particular in wishing to have precisely what you want from a butcher's, go and purchase it yourself.
xvii. One flannel petticoat will wear nearly as long as two, if turned behind part before, when the front begins to wear thin.
xviii. People in general are not aware how very essential to the health of the inmates is the free admission of light into their houses.
xix. When you dry salt for the table, do not place it in the salt-cells until it is cold, otherwise it will harden into a lump.
xx. Never put away plate, knives and forks, &c., or great inconvenience will arise when the articles are wanted.
xxi. Feather beds should be opened every third year, the ticking well dusted, soaped, and waxed, the feathers dressed and returned.
xxii. Persons of defective sight, when threading a needle, should hold it over something white, by which the sight will be assisted.
xxiii. In mending sheets and shirts, put the pieces sufficiently large, or in the first washing the thin parts give way, and the work is all undone.
xxiv. Reading by candle-light, place the candle behind you, that the rays may pass over your shoulder on to the book. This will relieve the eyes.
xxv. A wire fire-guard, for each fireplace in a house, costs little, and greatly diminished the risk to life and property. Fix them before going to bed.
xxvi. In winter, get the work forward by daylight, to prevent running about with candles. Thus you escape grease spots, and risks of fire.
xxvii. Be much at pains to keep your children's feet dry and warm. Don't bury their bodies in heavy flannels and wools, and leave their knees and legs naked.
xxviii. Apples and pears, cut into quarters and stripped on the rind, baked with a little water and sugar, and eaten with boiled rice, are capital food for children.
xxix. A leather strap, with a buckle to fasten, is much more commodious than a cord for a box in general use for short distances; cording and uncording is a tedious job.
xxx. After washing, overlook linen, and stitch on buttons, hooks and eyes, &c.; for this purpose keep a "housewife's friend," full of miscellaneous threads, cottons, buttons, hooks, &c.
xxxi. For ventilation open your windows both at top and bottom. The fresh air rushes in one way, while the foul air makes its exit the other. This is letting in your friend and expelling your enemy.
xxxii. There is not any real economy in purchasing cheap calico for gentlemen's night-shirts. Cheap calico soon wears into holes, and becomes discoloured in washing.
xxxiii. Sitting to sew by candle-light at a table with a dark cloth on it is injurious to the eyesight. When no other remedy presents itself, put a sheet of white paper before you.
xxxiv. Persons very commonly complain of indigestion: how can it be wondered at, when they seem, by their habit of swallowing their food wholesale, to forget for what purpose they are provided with teeth?
xxxv. Never allow your servants to put wiped knives on your table, for, generally speaking, you may see that they have been wiped with a dirty cloth. If a knife is brightly cleaned, they are compelled to use a clean cloth.
xxxvi. There is not anything gained in economy by having very young and inexperienced servants at low wages; they break, waste, and destroy more than an equivalent for higher wages, setting aside comfort and respectability.
xxxvii. No article in dress tarnishes so readily as black crape trimmings, and few things injure it more than damp; therefore, to preserve its beauty on bonnets, a lady in nice mourning should in her evening walks, at all seasons of the year, take as her companion an old parasol to shade her crape.
- Redmond0
Fascinating!
- Bunkum0
Why did you have to be so beefy?
- inspiration0
heh...
he said:
shade her crape