You have often asked me what we have to eat, so this will be a good
opportunity of introducing our daily bill of fare, prefacing it with
my recorded opinion that here is no place in the world where you can
live so cheaply and so well as on a New Zealand sheep station, when
once you get a start. Of course, it is expensive at first, setting
everything going, but that would be the case in any country. I will
begin at the very beginning:--Porridge for breakfast, with new milk
and cream _a discretion_; to follow--mutton chops, mutton ham, or
mutton curry, or broiled mutton and mushrooms, not shabby little
fragments of meat broiled, but beautiful tender steaks off a leg;
tea or coffee, and bread and butter, with as many new-laid eggs as
we choose to consume. Then, for dinner, at half-past one, we have
soup, a joint, vegetables, and a pudding; in summer, we have fresh
fruit stewed, instead of a pudding, with whipped cream. I was a
proud and happy woman the first day my cream remained cream, and did
not turn into butter; for generally my zeal outran my discretion,
and I did not know when to leave off whipping. We have supper about
seven; but this is a moveable feast, consisting of tea again, mutton
cooked in some form of entree, eggs, bread and butter, and a cake of
my manufacture. I must, however, acknowledge, that at almost every
other station you would get more dainties, such as jam and preserves
of all sorts, than we can boast of yet; for, as Littimer says to
David Copperfield, "We are very young, exceedingly young, sir," our
fruit-trees, have not come into full bearing, and our other
resources are still quite undeveloped.

However, I have wandered away terribly from my first intention of
telling you of the daily occupations to a description of our daily
food. After I have finished all my little fussings about the house,
I join F--- who has probably been for some time quietly settled down