From Kitchen to Garret: Hints for young householdersPanton, J. E. (Jane Ellen)
General
From Kitchen to Garret: Hints for young householders
Panton, J. E. (Jane Ellen)
Home economics
half so likely to be slurred or omitted as they are in a house where
_any time_ does for _anything_. Therefore Saturday, immediately after
the orders have been given, is an excellent time for seeing to the
drains. Saturday morning most people are at home, and a quarter of an
hour takes little out of the morning, while a good deed has been done,
and the house has been purified for Sunday.
And here let me just for one instant dwell on the great necessity of
regularity, order, and, above all, early rising, in a small household.
If you lie in bed, _Sundays_ or weekdays, things cannot possibly prosper
with you; you cannot possibly either keep beforehand with life if you
live in a muddle or breakfast late; and should you be late on Sundays
you not only hurry to church yourself, or stay away altogether--a
wretched habit--but you prevent your servants attending, or allow them
to go when the service has begun, and they are too hurried and worried
to properly appreciate the weekly rest that should be such a help to
them. Every member of the household and every visitor should be punctual
at the breakfast table, and nothing save real illness should excuse a
breakfast in bed. A headache is more often cured by getting up than by
remaining in the bedroom atmosphere; and be sure of this, lying in bed
upstairs means waste, laziness, and unsatisfactory behaviour generally
in the regions of the kitchen. Hence I feel I cannot say too much
against it, or in favour of regularity, punctuality, and early rising,
without which excellent qualities no household can get along practically
or become anything save a place of hopeless muddle.
Though it would be waste of space to write out an exact list of kitchen
utensils in these days, when every respectable firm publishes one at the
end of their catalogue, and which, by the way, may generally be halved
as regards the quantities with advantage, it may not be out of place
here to give a few general hints on the subject. And we may begin by
stating that ‘plenty makes waste,’ and that ‘enough is as good as a
feast,’ and then we will make up our minds to purchase only just
sufficient kitchen articles for the cook’s use, at all events until we
know our cook and learn if she be to be trusted; though even then I see
no reason why she should have more material at her command than she can
use; for I believe this idea of superfluity has done more harm in the
kitchen than enough, no servant being sufficiently strong-minded to
resolutely put aside anything she can do without.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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