HOME NEWS and VIEWS

Bay of Plenty Times, Volume LX, Issue 10885, 11 August 1932, Page 4

HOME NEWS and VIEWS

HOW NOT TO CRY OVER SOUR MILK. THE POLITE CHILD PROBLEM. Milk sour? Never mind. Make a cake. You may not have tried these that follow'. This is a white cake. Cream onchaif cup of butter with one cup of granulated sugar, and add one cup of sour milk in vyhicb has been dissolved one teaspoonful of salt. Sift two-and-one-fourth cups of flour with onefourth teaspoonful of ground nutmeg and salt, and add this to the first mixture, -also stirring in onehalf cup of large seedless raisins. You will observe that no eggs are used in tins economical recipe. When mixed, this batter should be the consistency of ordinary plain cake mixture, so add or use less flour, if you heed. Turn the mixture into a buttered loaf pun, and bake for thirty to thirty-five minutes in a moderate oven. When the cake begins to shrink from the sides of the tin, it is done. Here is a ginger cake. Cream onehalf cup of granulated sugar with one-half enp of butter, add one beaten unseparated egg, one-half cup of treacle, and stir in one cup of thick sour milk in w’hich one teaspoonful of baking soda Itas been dissolved. Sift tw'o cups of flour with one teasspoonful each of ground ginger and ground cinnamon and a pinch of salt, then add this dry mixture to the first mixture. Bake in a greased flat pan for about twenty-five minutes in a moderate oven. And if you w r ant to prevent the milk from going sour again, remember that you can always make a large flower-pot into an excellent cooler by soaking it for an hour in cold water, stuffing up the top with, cotton wool, also moistened, and placing it over the milk, which is best kept in a shallow vessel. NEAV GAY RUGS. Manufacturers of modern fibre rugs have taken a leaf out of the book of the ancient Persian rug-mak-ers. They insist that the jew r el-like colourings keep their true gleam till the last! These rugs are particularly encouraging to the housewife at the moment. When the sun is shining -—making the carpet look dusty and the entire room just a little “stuffy” —one or tw r o of these rugs show up in its gleam like flowers, and have the effect of making all the room look new’, if you substitute them for any heavier rugs you may have been using.

Whether you lay them on stained wood or on linoleum, they are just as useful. And if you have a stone floor in kitchen or scullery, fibre rugs are the most practical floor covering to use there. There are colour combinations to suit all tastes and surroundings. For the spacious veranda which looks out directly upon a velvety lawn, one of the new—very new—plaid rugs would be charmingly appropriate. There is one of green plaided in black and orange. Or would you prefer tan combined with green and black and orange, or grey criss-crossed in light-blue, black and ivory, or grey with interminglings of red, ivory and black. Then there are solid colour centres with contrasting colour bands used as a border, the colour combinations in these rugs being very much like those of the plaid rugs. Any one of these would look particularly smart with rattan or willow furniture. , The comfortable cushions of these are filled with springs, and covered with a fabric that is as waterproof as the rugs, just in case, perhaps, you should wish to take a siesta in the garden. TEACHING THE CHILDREN POLITENESS. I suppose, of course, that the worst sort of mother is the neglectful mother. But there is another sort who is difficult to bear with. Perhaps you recognise the type I mean—the woman who, when she meets you in the street, takes up five minutes making little Johnny say, “How do you do?” quite oblivious of the notion that this may not be so interesting for you as it is for her. This is the type of woman who makes the whole world a ‘child-rear-ing laboratory!” She never misses an opportunity to make a child apologise, to make it say some stereotyped things, something she imagines to be good manners. She never relaxes her assiduity.. She never allows her children to relax. She never allows her guest to relax. In my modest opinion—she is something' of a public nuisance. I have a notion—it may be all wrong of course —that the only way to teach children good manners is to be polite to them in one’s dealings with them. “Example is better than precept.” Whether the anxious mother admits it or not, a. very large percentage of her admonitions to her children go unheeded. The youngsters get used to hearing them. They don’t “sink in.” But —on the other hand —everybody knows that children are great imitators. And the first people children imitate are their parents. Mothers and fathers who are consistently polite to their chldren, who never forget to say “thank you,” who add, “Please” to their behests, who smile graciously.—that graciousness is awfully important—when they tell Johnny or Kitty to do this or that are the parents who get “real results” in this matter. Everlasting naggings about politeness from people who are often negligent in such matters is one of the most tiresome and stupid mistakes they can make. In a family where good breeding prevails, children automatically grow' up well mannered —But where good breeding is absent, all the theorizing and disciplining in the world will still be ineffective.