Homely Plenty by Mary Esther Miller

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Feb 21, 1884

Homely Plenty.

By Mary Esther Miller

"CAN you tell me," said my friend, "how to grow poor gracefully? I do not feel that we can sacrifice our pleasant home and go to a humbler one, because of associations with this which money could not buy. But when I try to reduce our table expenditure, the meal looks so stingy and the children are so dissatisfied I am sick at heart."

"There is only one way," I replied, "to reduce expenses in a satisfactory manner, and that is to keep in mind that there must always be a homely plenty. If one article of food is too dear do not stint it to a meager dish, but give it up altogether and descend to plainer and cheaper fare; always bearing in mind to have the food as nutritious as possible."

"Why, how do you do it?"

"I think if I had been living in a luxurious way, with my roasts and my game, my ice-creams and puddings, my foreign fruits and rich cakes, I should at once sweep my board of these. Soups and stews flavored with a French delicacy, and a variety of vegetables nicely dressed, should still give abundance of good food. For dessert the great variety of prepared cereals offer us simple puddings, and for fruits our own apple orchards are not to be despised."

"But how if you must step a little lower down the hill?"

"Then I would discard meats altogether. Milk, at less price, used freely in the cooking and lavishly on the table, should supply the nutriment. How good the fare seems where milk is plentiful! How nice the cracked or parched wheat, the oat-meal, the steam-cooked food with cream, or even plain milk! When I left off the use of meat, I would also lessen the quantity of vegetables and depend more on grain food. Vegetables have in themselves little nutriment, and are only useful with concentrated food like meat. At the same time I would change my white bread for brown, for two reasons: one, its expensiveness; the other, that white flour has been robbed of the very elements that make bone and muscle. Look at a family of children fed mainly on white bread and butter, and their pale and flabby faces tell the story. To get the tough, hearty, rosy children of old time we must go back to old-time fare. And here one is reminded how, through Mrs. Stowe's New England stories, shine the warmth and glow of this same homely plenty."

"The bread of our ancestors was made from the whole grain of rye, ground fine, mixed with one-third Indian meal, and sweetened with molasses. It was then baked several hours in a moderate oven. We bake it too little,

True, it had a crust almost needing an ax to part it, but keeping it a day or two in the cellar remedied that. These very crusts, how toothsome they were and grateful to the stomach! They were perfect antidyspeptics."

"Butter and sugar, I find, make enormous bills, yet I do not like to say continually, 'Square the butter; stint the sugar.'"

"The way to manage the butter question is to leave the article off the table entirely at some meals. By dressing the dishes with what is necessary beforehand, it can be left off always at dinner and frequently at breakfast. And as for sugar, when you cease from rich desserts and from cake or pie, when you use baked apples or stewed prunes or dried peaches for sauce, you will find a vast difference in the amount consumed; and really, though sugar is a good thing, it in some measure hides the individual flavors of things. I have sometimes wondered at the sense of taste which can discern the separate flavors of all the apples in a great orchard. As with the sense of smell, there is no confusion, and each flavor may be a distinct pleasure. Baked apples are a homely dish, but to the unperverted taste what variety of flavor may be found in them; and served with cream they need not be despised in a royal household. Plenty of fruit in its time. Plenty of milk at all times. Variety of breadstuffs well and plainly cooked; this is my outline of a homely abundance, with which the heart may overflow with gratitude to the Giver of every good gift, and the tongue may bless his name."—Mary Esther Miller.