As the legend goes, Monday is the “tug of war” for housekeepers. Admit that the dinner is the secondary thing and that it must be late in starting. But if you have an understanding with your butcher to send a piece of beef for boiling and you put it on at 10 o’clock with a few carrots and an onion to flavor it, you will have some deliciously tender stuff at 12 o’clock, with enough _bouillon_ to set away for to-morrow, and if you have horse-radish to eat your beef with, and some macaroni _a la creme_, or baked tomatoes or sweet potatoes (one, not all three), with a good salad (an indispensable article), your Monday dinner will not be so dreadful, although it has cost little or no time in the preparation. See that your husband makes the salad dressing if he is well disposed to do his part, at the table. A woman has enough to look after of such details. Dispense with the dessert on Monday, but let fresh fruit never be absent from your table if you can afford it. Oranges, bananas, apples, grapes, pears, peaches; how lavish Nature is in this direction! For our Tuesday dinner we have the _bouillon_ set away from yesterday—so that a roast is essential—always alternating between boiling and roasting, and never letting a dinner be roasted throughout, or _vice versa_. A roast of lamb or mutton with mint sauce, and turnips boiled, and apple jelly, will perhaps answer, as we have had the soup to begin with. A good plum pudding would taste well after this and some acid fruit, with your coffee to finish with. Of course, Europeans begin every dinner with soup, and their recipes are innumerable. But we are here endeavoring to get up inexpensive meals that almost any family can indulge in. Wednesday: Chickens or squirrel fricasseed, or boiled with rice and seasoned with East India curry, makes a very inviting dish, if the rice is laid around the chicken and garnished with parsley. Give us peas, or lima beans, or Saratoga potatoes with this meat. Saratoga potatoes served when the chicken is brought on, and later a course of tongue and peas—if the gentleman of the house complains that chicken is too delicate a fowl for him to make a dinner from. Dessert, a lemon pie or pudding, etc., etc.