Another dish for a convalescent is made by treating a chop in the same way as a steak as regards the pepper, salt, and flour. It is then put on a plate with a tablespoonful of water, covered with another plate exactly the same size, and put into a slow oven for more than an hour. When cooked, the top plate should be turned down to the bottom, so the chop is hot to the last, and has not been disturbed, and is so tender and thoroughly cooked it does not need masticating, and it is also so nice that many clergymen are glad to find this ready for them after leaving church, instead of the orthodox cold supper. It literally cooks itself, and is therefore no trouble on Sundays; while for a country doctor, whose hours are uncertain, and who all too often subsists on either sodden or scorched-up food, it is a perfect dish, and should be recollected by all those good housewives who are often enough at their wits’ end to find something nice for the bread-winner when he returns home after a long and fatiguing drive over country roads and open moors. So, that I may not be utterly condemned for dragging in my invalids, I will just mention that a very nice dish for a small evening party is made by simply grating raw chestnuts up very finely into a dish, and covering them thickly with whipped cream, sweetened and flavoured to taste; while tins of American peaches, placed in a deep dish and sweetened to taste and covered with good whipped cream, are also things most useful to the country housewife, who is often called upon to provide a good _extra_ dish in a hurry, despite her distance from shops and the impossibility of getting anything decent in her village; while Edwards’ desiccated soup is an excellent ‘standby’ in any country house, for with its aid soup is always forthcoming; and with soup and a pretty-looking sweet the simplest dinner may be made to pass off with sufficient _éclat_ to satisfy a guest who may have been cajoled into sharing pot-luck, despite the fact that the nearest butcher is four miles off and that it is not the game season--a species of entertaining most trying to any one, especially in the country, but which even there can be faced with equanimity if we have sense, a few tinned provisions in our store-cupboards, and a cook who does not become flurried and who has her stockpot always going. A very good dinner can be extemporised by adding some of Edwards’ desiccated soup to the ordinary soup; a side-dish can be made from poached eggs on spinach, from tinned lobsters made into cutlets, from any remains of cold meat made into croquettes; while pancakes and tinned peaches and cream add sufficient variety to whatever had been prepared for the late dinner, which can be furthermore supplemented and helped out by some of the cooked cheese prepared in one of the ways given in the menu receipts; but a welcome must be forthcoming too, else no amount of dinner will make the unexpected guest feel as if he were being entertained.