id="id00036" style="margin-top: 2em">Boiled Rice

1 cup of rice. 2 cups of boiling water. 1 teaspoonful of salt.

Pick the rice over, taking out all the bits of brown husk; fill the outside of the double boiler with hot water, and put in the rice, salt, and water, and cook forty minutes, but do not stir it. Then take off the cover from the boiler, and very gently, without stirring, turn over the rice with a fork; put the dish in the oven without the cover, and let it stand and dry for ten minutes. Then turn it from the boiler into a hot dish, and cover. Have cream to eat on it. If any rice is left over from breakfast, use it the next morning as—

Fried Rice

Press it into a pan, just as you did the mush, and let it stand overnight; the next morning slice it, dip it in flour, and fry, either in the pan or in the deep fat in the kettle, just as you did the mush.

Farina Croquettes

When farina has been left from breakfast, take it while still warm and beat into a pint of it the beaten yolks of two eggs. Let it then get cold, and at luncheon-time make it into round balls; dip each one first into the beaten yolk of an egg mixed with a tablespoonful of cold water, and then into smooth, sifted bread-crumbs; have ready a kettle of very hot fat, and drop in three at a time, or, if you have a wire basket, put three in this and sink into the fat till they are brown. Serve in a pyramid, on a napkin, and pass scraped maple sugar with them.

Margaret's mother used to have no cereal at breakfast sometimes, and have these croquettes as a last course instead, and every one liked them very much.

Rice Croquettes

1 cup of milk. Yolk of one egg. 1/4 cup of rice. 1 large tablespoonful of powdered sugar. Small half-teaspoonful of salt. 1/2 cup of raisins and currants, mixed. 1/2 teaspoonful of vanilla.

Wash the rice and put in a double boiler with the milk, salt and sugar and cook till very thick; beat the yolks of the eggs and stir into the rice, and beat till smooth. Sprinkle the washed raisins and currants with flour, and roll them in it and mix these in, and last the vanilla. Turn out on a platter, and let all get very cold. Then make into pyramids, dip in the yolk of an egg mixed with a tablespoonful of water, and then into sifted bread-crumbs, and fry in a deep kettle of boiling fat, using a wire basket. As you take these from the fat, put them on paper in the oven with the door open. When all are done, put them on a hot platter and sift powdered sugar over them, and put a bit of red jelly on top of each. This is a nice dessert for luncheon. All white cereals may be made into croquettes; if they are for breakfast, do not sweeten them, but for luncheon use the rule just given, with or without raisins and currants.

Hominy

Cook this just as you did the rice, drying it in the oven; serve one morning plain, as cereal, with cream, and then next morning fried, with maple syrup, after the rest of the meal. Fried hominy is always nice to put around a dish of fried chicken or roast game, and it looks especially well if, instead of being sliced, it is cut out into fancy shapes with a cooky-cutter.

After Margaret had learned to cook all kinds of cereals, she went on to the next thing in her cook-book.

EGGS

Soft Boiled

Put six eggs in a baking-dish and cover them with boiling water; put a cover on and let them stand where they will keep hot, but not cook, for ten minutes, or, if the family likes them well done, twelve minutes. They will be perfectly cooked, but not tough, soft and creamy all the way through.

Another way to cook them is this:

Put the eggs in a kettle of cold water on the stove, and the moment the water boils take them up, and they will be just done. An easy way to take them up all at once is to put them in a wire basket, and sink this under the water. A good way to serve boiled eggs is to crumple up a fresh napkin in a deep dish, which has been made very hot, and lay the eggs in the folds of the napkin; this prevents their breaking, and keeps them warm.

Poached Eggs

Take a pan which is not more than three inches deep, and put in as many muffin-rings as you wish to cook eggs. Pour in boiling water till the rings are half covered, and scatter half a teaspoonful of salt in the water. Let it boil up once, and then draw the pan to the edge of the stove, where the water will not boil again. Take a cup, break one egg in it, and gently slide this into a ring, and so on till all are full. While they are cooking, take some toast and cut it into round pieces with the biscuit cutter; wet these a very little with boiling water, and butter them. When the eggs have cooked twelve minutes, take a cake-turner and slip it under one egg with its ring, and lift the two together on to a piece of toast, and then take off the ring; and so on with all the eggs. Shake a very little salt and pepper over the dish, and put parsley around the edge. Sometimes a little chopped parsley is nice to put over the eggs, too.

Poached Eggs with Potted Ham

Make the rounds of toast and poach the eggs as before. Make a white sauce in this way: melt a tablespoonful of butter, and when it bubbles put in a tablespoonful of flour; shake well, and add a cup of hot milk and a small half-teaspoonful of salt; cook till smooth. Moisten each round of toast with a very little boiling water, and spread with some of the potted ham which comes in little tin cans; lay a poached egg on each round, and put a teaspoonful of white sauce on each egg.

If you have no potted ham in the house, but have plain boiled ham, put this through the meat-chopper till you have half a cupful, put in a heaping teaspoonful of the sauce, a saltspoonful of dry mustard, and a pinch of red pepper, and it will do just as well.

Scrambled Eggs

4 eggs. 2 tablespoonfuls of milk. 1/2 teaspoonful of salt.

Put the eggs in a bowl and stir till they are well mixed; add the milk and salt. Make the frying-pan very hot, and put a tablespoonful of butter in it; when it melts, shake it well from side to side, till all the bottom of the pan is covered. Put in the eggs and stir them, scraping them off the bottom of the pan until they begin to get a little firm; then draw the pan to the edge of the stove, and scrape up from the bottom all the time till the whole looks alike, creamy and firm, but not hard. Put them in a hot, covered dish.

Scrambled Eggs with Parsley

Chop enough parsley to make a teaspoonful, and mince half as much onion. Put the onion in the butter when you heat the pan, and cook the eggs in it; when you are nearly ready to take the eggs off the fire, put in the parsley.

After Margaret had learned to make these perfectly, she began to mix other things with the eggs.

Scrambled Eggs with Tomato

When Margaret found a cupful of tomato in the refrigerator, she would take that, add a half-teaspoonful of salt, two shakes of pepper, and a teaspoonful of chopped parsley, and simmer it all on the fire for five minutes; then she would cook half a teaspoonful of minced onion in the butter in the hot frying-pan as before, and turn in the eggs, and when they were beginning to grow firm, put in the tomato. In summer-time she often cut up two fresh tomatoes and stewed them down to a cupful, instead of using the canned.