Rice Muffins+

1 cup cold boiled rice.

1 pint of flour.

2 eggs.

1 quart of milk, or enough to make thin batter. 1 tablespoonful lard or butter. 1 teaspoonful salt. Beat hard and bake quickly.

Hominy Muffins+

2 cups fine hominy - boiled and cold.

3 eggs.

3 cups sour milk. If sweet, add one teaspoonful cream tartar.

1/2 cup melted butter. 2 teaspoonfuls salt. 2 tablespoonfuls white sugar. 1 large cup flour. . 1 teaspoonful soda.

Beat the hominy smooth; stir in the milk, then the butter, salt, and sugar; next the eggs, which should first be well beaten; then the soda, dissolved in hot water; lastly the flour.

There are no more delicious or wholesome muffins than these, if rightly mixed and quickly baked.

Belle's Muffins

3 pints of flour. 1 quart of milk.

2 eggs.

2 tablespoonfuls cream tartar.

1 tablespoonful soda.

Sift the cream tartar with the flour. Beat the eggs very light. Dissolve the soda in hot water. Bake in rings in a quick oven.

Corn Bread

There is a marked difference between the corn-meal ground at the South, and that which is sent out from Northern mills. If any one doubts this, it is not she who has perseveringly tried both kinds, and demonstrated to her own conviction that the same treatment will not do for them. An intelligent lady once told me that the shape of the particles composing the meal was different - the one being round and smooth, the other angular. I am inclined to believe this. The Southern meal is certainly coarser, and the bread made from it less compact. Moreover, there is a partiality at the North for yellow meal, which the Southerners regard as only fit for chicken and cattle-feed. The yellow may be the sweeter, but I acknowledge that I have never succeeded in making really nice bread from it.

Indian meal should be purchased in small quantities, except for a very large family. It is apt to heat, mould, and grow musty, if kept long in bulk or in a warm place. If not sweet and dry, it is useless to expect good bread or cakes. As an article of diet, especially in the early warm days of spring, it is healthful and agreeable, often acting as a gentle corrective to bile and other disorders. In winter, also, it is always acceptable upon the breakfast or supper table, being warming and nutritious.. In summer the free use of it is less judicious, on account of its laxative properties. As a kindly variation in the routine of fine white bread and baker's rolls, it is worth the attention of every housewife. " John and the children" will like it, if it approximates the fair standard of excellence ; and I take it, my good friend - you who have patiently kept company with me from our prefatory talk until now - that you love them well enough to care for their comfort and likings.

"My husband is wild about corn bread," a wife remarked to me not a hundred years ago, "but I won't make it for him; it is such a bother! And if I once indulge him, he will give me no peace."

Beloved sister, I am persuaded better things of you. Good husbands cannot be spoiled by petting. Bad ones cannot be made worse - they may be made better. It seems a little thing, so trifling in its consequences, you need not tire further your aching back and feet to accomplish it - the preparation of John's favorite dish when he does not expect the treat - to surprise him when he comes in cold and hungry, by setting before him a dish of hot milk-toast, or a loaf of corn bread, brown and crisp without, yellow and spongy within, instead of the stereotyped pile of cold slices, brown or white. If he were consulted, he would say, like the generous soul he is - "Don't take one needless step for me, dear." And he would mean it. But for all that, he will enjoy your little surprise - ay! and love you the better for it. It is the "little by little " that makes up the weal and woe of life.

May I make this digression longer yet, by telling you what I overheard a husband say to a wife the other day when he thought no one else was near enough to hear him. He is no gourmand, but he is very partial to a certain kind of cruller which nobody else can make, he thinks, so well as his little wife. It so chanced that in frying some of them, she scalded her hand badly. After it was bandaged, she brought up a plate of the cakes for luncheon. He looked at them, then at her, with a loving, mournful smile.

"I can understand now," said he, "how David felt when his men-of-war brought him the water from the well of Bethlehem."

Then he stooped and kissed the injured fingers. Yet he has been married twenty years. I was not ashamed that my eyes were moist. I honored him the more that his were dim.

This is my lesson by the wayside apropos to corn-bread.

And now again to business.

Receipts for Bread made of Northern Indian Meal.