variety should not come within the day or meal but within the week or month. Surprise always helps to induce appetite and this fact is as applicable to the menu in the children's home as to that of the tea room.
It is good business practice as well as good dietetic practice to plan meals according to the weather and the time of year. Hot, heavy foods sell best in cold weather. Cool, crisp, fresh foods sell best on the hottest days. The public is very susceptible to weather conditions. Holidays give a popularity to certain foods which they enjoy at no other time of the year. It is good business to make the most of these foods by serving them on appropriate days.
There are definite relations between the menu and the equipment available for its execution. For instance, a menu which calls for oven cooking to the exclusion of the use of the top of the stove or supplementary steamers will be impossible to carry out. The menu should be planned in order that the cooking may be divided between all the available equipment, such as ovens, steamers and top space on stoves. In the kitchen, as in the industrial plant, it is good management to give space only to efficient equipment and to use that equipment to its maximum capacity.
Again, incomplete equipment may have to be considered in planning the menu. If there is no power machinery the amount of hand work or heavy physical preparation called for may have to be cut down in accordance with the equipment at hand. In serving large numbers power machinery will often pay for itself in a few months through the saving in labor. It will not only do the work better and more humanely but will allow a much greater variety of food. In the matter of equipment the institution must get away from the idea that it is a large home, with working
