BAKING out the bills of fare for the three hundred and sixty-five days of the year is a bugbear to many a woman. This feeling is apt to come from trying to plan at the wrong time. Few women can stand before an ice-box containing the remnants of " gone-before meals," immediately after eating one, and plan out the next meal with zest or any great success. But take your pad and pencil and all the cook books you have. First look through these and put down under their respective headings those dishes which seem to you practicable or desirable for any of the three meals. Then plan the meals for a week, making out the probable market lists at the same time. Then when you stand before the icebox with this week's bill of fare in your hand, you can adjust the meals to suit the exigencies of left-overs or lack of them, or to the incidents of company and unexpected changes.

By this plan you will soon find your meals more varied, the cost should be lessened, and it is actually easier to plan better meals for less money in this way than to do so each day by itself. Of course you must make yourself familiar with the market supplies, and know how to choose.

Knowing how to choose involves the whole subject of nutrition, and most housekeepers quail before its necessarily scientific rules and formulas. But there are little, common, everyday things which are great helps. For instance, there is an understood rule that any one food shall not be used twice in any form. That is, it is quite out of place to have chicken soup and boiled fowl in the same meal; the connection is too obvious. This rule is a good one to use in planning the day's meals at any time. Eggs, certain kinds of meat or fish, should not be repeated ; tomatoes stewed for luncheon should not be served again in that meal. This rule is applicable all through and leads to the oft-repeated one which calls for the disguising of left-overs. Every meal should be a creation.

Any one meal should not be colorless or flat. Do not serve more than one creamed dish. A cream soup, and baked custards for dessert is another example of this, for both would be white and creamy and as both in color and flavor the dinner would be flat and tasteless, it could not attract nor stimulate the appetite. Care always should be taken to aid digestion by the appearance as well as the flavor of the food. Within reasonable limits, dietetic errors do far less damage if the food is enjoyed when eaten.

With fish, especially the fat fish, should be served some vegetable, sauce, or condiment acid in its nature, or to which acid is added. When spinach is served with fish, the inference is that vinegar will be used with it. Hot slaw is preferable to creamed cabbage, and cauliflower should be served with a hollandaise in place of a cream sauce, when either accompanies fish. It is often very difficult to accomplish this proper serving of vegetables with certain dinner dishes, and this is especially true when no meat is used. Fish and meat substitutes are flat, and the feeling induced by the thought of them indicates a tart accompaniment.

Where there are no small children at the table a soup or a salad served with each dinner would be preferable to a dessert. Desserts are often unnecessary, taking more time, labor, and money than they return in food value. Often they add the extra proteid or carbohydrate which overloads the digestive organs. After a hearty dinner, an egg dessert, for instance, containing sufficient nourishment for the main dish of luncheon, is out of place. If, when planning, you can say to yourself, " There are two cupfuls of milk, three or four eggs, sugar, etc., in that dessert, and that is all unnecessary," you will find yourself planning more and more simple, wholesome things. Where the family at table consists of adults they are many times, far better off with two pieces of candy, or a sweet cracker with a cup of clear after-dinner coffee, than with any made dessert.

Detail of a Luncheon Service, with the Correct Appointments for Serving Fruit Cocktails.

One of the Newest Serving Trays. With Dresden China Bottom and Wicker Sides it is Most Attractive and Useful. A recipe for Ginger Mousse will be found on Page 363.

Baked or stewed apples, apple sauce, or apple dumplings are better and cheaper than apple pie, but most of us like apple pie, and should have it as a reward of virtue once in a while. But why take time, labor, and material to make an under crust for a custard baked Ml a pie tin, instead of in cups, without any crust? They are less expensive and more wholesome in the cup form. Where there are growing children at the table desserts are required as vehicles for the fats and sugar needed in their diet.

In planning the dinner the question of soups is an important one. Where fresh meat is to be served or dishes containing considerable food value, the soup should be a clear one. There is little food value to soup stock, but clear soup acts as a stimulant to the digestion and prepares the way for the rest of the dinner. Cream soups of any kind are nutritious, and should be employed for dinner when there is a lack in the rest of the bill of fare. This is why cream soups are suggested for luncheon so often and with little else. A well-made cream soup, with crackers or bread, followed by a dessert or fresh or stewed fruit with plain cake, cookies, or gingerbread is all that is needed for an adequate luncheon.

Any left-overs may often be used in the making of soups. Where the midday meal is merely luncheon, not a luncheon-dinner, planned for the children, the left-overs should be utilized and served then.

In no department of cooking is skill more needed than in making over dishes - hashes, in reality. The basis for most reheated meats, fish, and vegetables is a sauce of some kind. Master the making of sauces and one is master of the well-made entree. Remember, it is not the simplicity of the bill of fare, but how its dishes are cooked and served, that makes of the meal a feast.