They Come To Guess And Stay To Learn

New Zealand Listener, Volume 8, Issue 208, 18 June 1943, Page 8

They Come To Guess And Stay To Learn

O you know how best to clean a very stained overall? Do you know what you can use as egg substitutes in a cake? Or how you can remove rainspots from velvet and "fingermarks from polished furniture? How can a bad washing-blue stain be removed quickly? And which end of a’ preserved egg do you break if you want to keep .the yolk intact? These are some of the questions that housewives have been asked in the "Housewives’ Wartime Quizz" session which has recently begun at 2ZB., But it isn’t just a test of general knowledge stored up, perhaps rather uselessly. The quizz isn’t just a test of how good as housewives you and Mrs. Brown over the road are. Even the best housewives go on finding more that they can learn. In fact, they wouldn’t be good housewives if they weren’t learning all the time. Nor is the quizz just a way by which you and Mrs. Brown can earn a little more money. It is a way in which every woman who has a house to keep in wartime and children to feed, clothe, and keep clean may learn a multitude of things that she might not need in normal times, but which she would be glad to know now. * % HREE anxious housewives were seated round the 2ZB studio. "It isn’t the questions,’ one of them was saying as The Listener representative came in, "it’s answering them all in a moment that gets me flustered." "I’m sure I'll forget everything I ever knew," said No. 2. "My sister was asked what noodles were, and she said ‘dumb clucks,’ and do you know that was wrong! They are really something that goes in soup. I

don’t like that sort of question, but I do like hints-you ‘know, how to take off stains and what to do for a sore throat, or what substitutes to use when you can’t get things!’ é "Talking about substitutes, when we were away these holidays, I made a gingerbread cake, only I hadn’t any ginger, and I hadn’t any soda, and I forgot the butter. It turned out a sort of spice bread. Everyone liked it. There’s nothing like trying out new ideas." * * * HERE are three housewives at each session, and four questions each at 2/6 a question if the answer is right. So a right answer may mean the pictures, and four right answers a family treat. In this particular case, there was one who answered all questions correctly, and none who did not bring away something. "If I answered those questions they would be worth a lot more than half-a-crown," said the only male in the room. "I couldn't have given a single right answer myself." "Housewives’ Wartime Quizz’ is heard from 2ZB on Tuesdays and Thursdays at 11.15 a.m.