Each of beef weighs on an average 2 pounds hen it has been shortened and trimmed ready for roasting. Our 2-rib roast weighs 4 pounds and takes an hour to cook well done. Roasted meat is at its best when it is but just done, when the gravy flows freely, as soon as it is cut. I make it an invariable practice to hold back the roasting until the last; a cut that will take 2 hours goes in just 2 hours before dinner time, and if there is no gravy on hand and the pan is required to make some, change the meat into another pan 15 minutes before dishing up - which gives time for the gravy making.

Some comical wordy encounters take place at times through the difference of menus of quantity between hotel and private house people. "Four pounds of beef for twenty-five people's dinner!" says one, "why, that would not be more than enough for my family at home." "Two pounds of meat to make an entree for a dinner for fifty!" exclaims another - "and even when it is chicken meat nicely fixed up, still only two pounds! Nonsense, you can't tell me, I know that one hungry man could eat up the whole business. ' At the same time Mrs. Tingee, who knows far more about saving than ever I can tell her would think we were giving ruinously large rations if she could see. It is a curious study, this bill of fare plan with its small amount of each of many viands, I have not time to attempt to explain how it is that the one hungry man does not eat up the whole business, nor a dozen hungry men either. These little bills of fare are truthful records of stubborn facts and they may explain it all. If not, we shall find out how well fed all these people have been when we count up the sum total at the end of the book.