et tired of seeing the same thing, that it has to be
thrown or given away. With these condiments and others I have yet to
mention you will have no trouble in using every scrap; not using it and
eating it from a sense of duty, and wishing it was something better, but
enjoying it. With your store-room well provided, you can indeed go for
gravy "as if to the pump."

Besides the foregoing list of articles to be bought of any good grocer,
there are others which can be made at home to advantage, and once made
are always ready. Mushroom powder I prefer for any use to mushroom
catsup; it is easily made and its uses are infinite. Sprinkled over
steak (when it must be sifted) or chops, it is delicious. For ordinary
purposes, such as flavoring soup or gravy, it need not be sifted. To
prepare it, take a peck of large and very fresh mushrooms, look them
over carefully that they are not wormy, then cleanse them with a piece
of flannel from sand or grit, then peel them and put them in the sun or
a cool oven to dry; they require long, slow drying, and must become in a
state to crumble. Your peck will have diminished by the process into
half a pint or less of mushroom powder, but you have the means with it
of making a rich gravy at a few minutes' notice.

Apropos of gravies--that much-vexed question in small households--for
without gravies on hand you cannot make good hash, or many other things
that are miserable without, and excellent with it. Yet how difficult it
is to have gravy always on hand every mistress of a small family knows,
in spite of the constant advice to "save your trimming to make stock."
Do by all means save your bones, gristle, odds and ends of meat of all
kinds, and convert them into broth; but even if you do, it often happens
that the days you have done so no gravy is required, and then it sours
quickly in summer, although it may be arrested by reboiling. In no
family of three or four are there odds and ends enough, unless there is
a very extravagant table kept, to insure stock for every day. My remedy
for this, then, is to make a stock that will keep for months or
years--in other words, _glaze_. So very rarely forming part of a
housewife's stores, yet so valuable that the fact is simply astonishing;
with a piece of glaze, you have a dish of soup on an emergency, rich
gravy for any purpose, and all with the expenditure of less time than
would make a pot of sweetmeats.

Take six pounds of a knuckle of veal or leg o