Household Hints

King Country Chronicle, Volume IV, Issue 225, 15 January 1910, Page 3

Household Hints

MEAT PIES. A meat pie served hot, or cold, is very much relished, and an admirable stand-by to have in the larder. It is only necessary to put it into the oven if a hot pie i i desired, and with a piece of well-greased paper on the top, the crust will not get burnt, although twice baked. Every cook thinks she knows how to make a beef steak pie, but without suggesting here any lack of her culinary capability, I believe that many excellent cooks are not aware that the stock or water put into the pie to make the gravy should be boiling hot, cold water draws the substance out of the meat and makes it hard. When making soup, you put cold water with the meat to get every atom of good out of it to enrich the water. Remembering this, the converse, will be apparent at once.

A GOOD CAKE. There are few persons who do not like cake if it is light and properly mixed. A very excellent cake recipe follows: —Take a pound of flour, half a pound of brown sugar, half a pound of butter, a quarter of a pound of citron peel sliced, half a cup sultanas or currants, half a cup wine, (or milk will answer), half a pound of golden syrup, a teaspconful of carbonate of soda, a pinch or two of ground cinnamon and ginger mixed. Work soda, spices, and sugar into the butter, then put in the other ingredients, and stir in the dry flour. Combine the whole thoroughly. Butter a tin, put in the cake mixture, and then bake as usual. When creaming sugar and butt'.r for a cake, add a pinch of salt, as this brings out the flavour of the cake. A ceaspoonful of cream put into the butter and sugar, will make any cake mixture smoother, and less time to work it together will be needed.

COOKING NEW POTATOES. Place them in boiling water with two or three sprigs of mint. When they are cooked and drained, pour over them some melted butter.. The mint adds a more delicious flavour. New potatoes should have the skins removed by rubbing them with a brush. When rubbed they will be white and smooth. PERSERVED WHOLE GOOSEBERRIES. Make a strong syrup, two pounds of sugar to a pint of water. Pierce gooseberries in several places, and put them in the syrup, then take them from the range and let the gooseberries remain in the syrup all night. Repeat twice, re-heat, stopping just short of boiling point, again letting berries stand over night in syrup. While still cold place them in bottles and pour the syrup over them; place bottles in water. Should the berries seem to be cracking before the water boils, remove the bottles at once and seal, otherwise let stand until water is at boiling point.

HOW TO COOK PEAS. Take the outside leaves of lettuce and lay them in the bottom of a saucepan ; then put the peas on top of the lettuce leaves and gradually bring them up to a boil. The juice from the lettuce leaves is sufficient to cook them without the aid of water and gives them a delicious flavour. Cook them over a slow fire.

Before serving them put a piece of butter on top of the peas—almost the size of a nut-meg.

TO RESTORE DISCOLOURED ENAMEL. Dissolve the contents of one small box of chloride of lime and one small package of baking soda in a tubful of water. Let your enamel ware stand in same over night, thoroughly rinse and dry. It will look like new. THE BATH. The bath can be made very refreshing by using "a powder bath bag. They can be easily made and are very inexpensive. To make one take a yard of cheese cloth, cut it into squares and make into bag large enough to be nicely handled. Leave one end open. Mix a pound of finelyground oatmeal, half-a-pound of pulverised Castille soap', and the same quantity of orris root. Put the- mixture into the bag and..sew the end securely. When finished use as a washing glove, and you ■will find it softens the skin and leaves a delicious odour.

Dark rooms bring depression of spirits, imparting a sense of confinement, of isolation, of powerlessness, which is chilling to energy and vigour; but in light is good cheer. Even in a gloomy house, where walls and furniture are dingy and brown, you have but to take down the heavy curtains, open the window, let light stream in,and gloom vanishes, and care and sadness flee.