HOUSEHOLD HINTS.

Kaipara and Waitemata Echo, 20 November 1914, Page 4

HOUSEHOLD HINTS.

Cook cauliflowers in milk and water ;it gives them a better rlavour, and they look whiter than when cooked in water. If potatoes are watery, scrub them and score the skin all the way round but not deep ; then boil in salted water, keeping on the skins. The cracked skin lets out the moisture, and the potato is dry and floury. Sometimes boot polish becomes quite dry with keeping. Moisten it with a little turpentine. it softens the polish, making it usable at once, and also gives a good gloss to the leather. When using oil stoves, to prevent them from smoking, dissolve one tablespoonful of common salt in every pint of paraflin oil that you use. This also gives a much clearer light, and it prevents the oil vessel from rusting. Never have linen starched if you are going to put it away for a longtime. It is apt to crack and even to rot. Rinse the articles quite free from starch, dry, and fold up in blue paper, as this keeps them from turning yellow. A capital cleanser for varnished and stained woodwork is tea-water. This may be made by pouring boilinp; water on spent tea-leaves, straining the liquid afterwards through a cloth or muslin. The tea-water loosens the dirt quickly. | To free the hands from disagreeable odours such as that of onions, cod-liver o:.l, etc, mix a little ground dry mustard with warm water and wash the hands well with it. The saucers of scales or vessels used in cooking can be freed from odours by the same method. if you possess a stone hot-water bottle that is cracked, fill it with sand and then place it in the oven two or three hours before it is needed. You will find it is quite as useful for warming a bed as when jit was new. A The sand retains the i heat longer than- water does, and j there is no bother in emptying the I bottle in the morning.