_Light Loaf._—One cup milk, one tablespoonful sugar, one tablespoonful butter, two eggs, two cups flour, two teaspoonfuls baking-powder, saltspoonful salt. Beat the eggs light; add the butter, melted, the sugar, salt, milk, and, last, the flour sifted with the baking-powder. Bake in one loaf, and serve hot.
_Hashed Potatoes._—Chop cold potatoes fine, have ready in a pan a tablespoonful of bacon dripping made very hot, stir into this two cupfuls of the potatoes, and toss about until well browned.
Properly treated, luncheon may be the pleasantest meal of the day. Simple or elaborate, as the housekeeper's taste may dictate, always informal, it is more comfortable than the breakfast because less hurried, more agreeable than the dinner because less ceremonious.
The table at luncheon may either be set as for breakfast, with a pretty colored cloth to cover it; or a prettier way, if one has a table with a handsome top, is to spread on this a large luncheon napkin that only partially conceals the polished surface. One or more of these napkins may be used, according to their size and the amount of space you wish covered. A fringed doily or a crocheted or netted mat may be laid at each place to protect the table-top from the heated plate. Other mats should be laid under the hot dishes of meat, etc., while a tile or a trivet will hold the chocolate or teapot.
A writer on household decoration in a recent article in a popular magazine enlarged upon the charming effect produced by painting a table-top white, and thus producing a good background upon which to display old blue-and-white china. This would doubtless be extremely pretty, but in the practical mind the suspicion arises that, by the time the bare white table had held hot dishes during half a dozen meals, its surface would be marked with yellow rings that would leave no choice to the housewife but to conceal the whole of the defaced expanse with a table-cloth. A good furniture polish, or a simple mixture of sweet-oil and turpentine, applied with a piece of flannel, will restore the beauty of a hard-wood table-top, but it is questionable if the white paint could be so readily renovated.
The flowers that should have freshened the breakfast board must not be lacking at luncheon-time. The table may be spread with a luncheon set of china, or, if one does not own this, with the same plates, etc., that are used at breakfast and at tea. The tea-tray, with its burden of sugar-bowl, cream-pitcher, tea-caddy, and dainty cups and saucers, may stand in front of the mistress of the house, while at her elbow may be the five-o'clock-tea crane bearing its kettle of boiling water; or a smaller hot-water urn in brass, copper, or silver, with a spirit-lamp under it, may be on the table near her right hand, with the teapot beside it. If the small hot-water pot is used, and the table is bare, a tray should hold the kettle and stand, lest a drop of blazing alcohol should blister the polished surface of the wood. When cocoa or chocolate is drunk at luncheon, the paraphernalia of kettle and spirit-lamp is, of course, unnecessary.