It is in the very nature of emergencies that they cannot be forseen or prepared for. They are things like those encountered by the knight-errant as he rode through the unknown forest--things which are never twice the same and which must be met and dealt with, without forethought or consideration. And they are most successfully dealt with in an adventurous spirit, as things to call out one's courage and address, and put them to the proof.
I know that is a difficult spirit to attain. Mistakes and failures and the remarks which families feel themselves at liberty to make about such things are disheartening and painful. "The funny side" is the best defense always against one's own distress and the thoughtlessness of other people. I have found that a person who sees the funny side of a calamity or of a difficulty gives more help in housekeeping than any one else. Happy the home which contains such a person, thrice happy one in which that person is its mistress.
A woman who is inclined to take household failures and accidents too seriously may comfort herself with the thought that what she fails to do to-day, she will probably succeed in to-morrow; and also with the reflection that an occasional uncomfortable accident is good for her family. A few spoonfuls of scorched soup eaten for courtesy's sake is valuable food. Likewise, household accidents can be used to plant in the family mind that calamities are to be shared by all. It is not merely a reproach to the housekeeper that the _family_ maid does not set the table correctly, or that the _family_ potatoes are burned.
Probably if a husband remarks, "Your gravy is cold," it is just as well for his wife to reply delightedly, "No colder than _your_ beans."
Not awfully clever perhaps, but better than hurt feelings.
Stale bread or cake can be freshened by plunging it into cold water and then setting it in the oven for a few minutes. It must be used at once.
Pieces of stale bread may be thoroughly dried in the oven, then put through the meat chopper and kept in a glass jar for covering croquettes, fried oysters, etc.
Pieces of meat which in appearance and quantity will not be suitable for a meal may often be used by arranging some vegetable on the same dish. The pieces can be warmed in gravy and wreathed with carrots or peas. Or they can be put through the grinder, packed into a mould lined with boiled rice and the whole heated. Or they can be chopped, put into ramakins, covered with potato crust and slightly browned. These are merely samples of the many ways in which vegetables can be made to conceal the fact that there is not meat enough for a main dish.