From Milady's Boudoir

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXXI, 24 June 1937, Page 13

From Milady's Boudoir

Vegetable Ways. When cooking green vegetables take the lid off the saucepan directly the water starts to boil. The vegetables will then keep a good colour. For white vegetables, add a tea-spoon of lemonjuice to each quart of water. A little sugar should be added to the water for peas. A general rule is that all vegetables grown-above the ground should be boiled with the lid off the saucepan, while those grown under the ground should have the lid kept on. Many green vege-

tables, especially marrows, will keej. fresh .’or a day or two if the stalks are put in water. Left-over vegetables can be used to make a pie. They should be cut up and seasoned. Put them ii. layers in an earthenware dish with the potatoes as the last layer, and on top a little fat. Heat under the grill until brown. Avoid odour from the water in which vegetables have been cookeu by pouring it away down the drain outside the kitchen and not down the sink. If, when making fruit pies, the

edges of the dish are damped with milk the juice will not boil over. In making a custard, slightly warm the milk before adding to eggs; cook slowly. Cheese can be kept in good.condition by placing a lump of sugar ii the cheese dish. When the sugar becomes damp, replace. Pastry Essentials. It is a matter of preference whether you use a short, flaky or puff pastry when a “paste” is called for. The difference lies in the amount of fat to the weight

of flour, and in the method of combining the-fat and flour. Short pastry has by weight half as much fat as flour, and the fat is all rubbed into the flour. Flaky pastry has a proportion of 3 : 4 or fat to flour, and the first third of the fat is cut in and the last to portions added in dots to the paste made with the flour and water. Puff pastry has equal quantities of fat and flour, and all the fat cut ii. in large pieces. Essentials for all the pastry types are that the ingredients should he as cold as possible to make the paste, and

that the oven should be very quick. The more fat, the hotter the oven. Queen Cakes. They are fruity and buttery, so what more can be asked of r. little cake? You will surely want to make them, and having made them once to try them again. The recipe is just: Four ounces butter, soz. flour, 3oz. currants and loz. peel, 1 level teaspoon baking powder, 4oz. castor sugar, salt, 2 eggs. Cream the butter and sugar, beat it the eggs one at a time. Add

the flour and baking powder, currants and lemon peel. Half-fill greased patty pans and bake in a moderate oven. Chocolate Nut Blancmange. Mix two tablespoonsful of unsweetened cocoa to a smooth thick paste with a little milk. Make a pint of cornflour blancmange to the directions on the packet, add the cocoa before this has thickened, and stir well till smooth and sufficiently cooked. Have ready some chopped nuts—any kind will do —and sift them into the corn-

flour. Stir well, turn into a mould, and leave to set. When required, turn the chocolate blancmange out of the mould into a glass dish, and sprinkle the top with chopped nuts. If this is to be a party sweet, a few chocolates may be placed round the mould to make it look pretty. Lemon Sticks. Put the juice of half a lemon into a tumbler. Cut the yellow rind from half the lemon and put it into a saucepan with six lumps of sugar and half a tumbler of

Home and Fashion Gossip Historical Colours. Human nature always rejects in the end that which it does not like, and this is the case with the names of colours. A new name dies unless it satisfies something mysterious in humanity, and is applied to a really new colour.

When a certain brownish-drab cotton cloth was made for uniforms intended to be worn in hot countries, a name had to be found for it, and somebody called it khaki, from the Persian word meaning dust. An uneasy sort of word, yet obviously right, because khaki has become a definite colour with a very definite meaning of its own.

A more beautiful name, peculiarly suited to a beautiful colour, is magenta. The brilliant red due made from coal tar was discovered by the chemists in the year 1859, and was regarded as a great achievement, but no name could be invented to describe it. At this time the French and Sardinians were fighting against the Austrians, and when the latter were defeated at the famous battle fought at Magenta, in Italy, the new red dye was named after the town.

Another lovely red colour, known as damask, takes its name from the city of Damascus. To the ancient world Damascus was a magic city, and everything coming from it was tinged with enchantment. So the famous deep red rose, which eventually found its way from Damascus to Europe, was known as the damask rose, and when Dr. Linaere, physician of Henry VIII., took it to London, its name went with it. Silks and linens were first woven at Damascus and afterwards copied by the Dutch, and they are still called by their ancient name no matter what colour they may be. The damson also takes its name from its native place, Damascus.

One of the most lovely colours in the world is cobalt blue, the unfading blue seen in ancient Chinese porcelain, Persian tiles, and old paintings. The people of the East kept the secret of the metal from which they extracted the colour for many centuries. In Europe it was called cobalt, from the German word kobold, the goblin who works underground and is always up to some mischief. The deep brown colour made from the cuttle fish was called sepia, the Greek word for cuttle fish; and when another shade of brown having a yellow or orange tinge was made in Italy, at Siena, it was named sienna. Maroon comes from the French word, marron, the'chestnut, and it applies to the bright reddish brown which is not often seen* to-day. Perhaps the most peculiar historical colour is that which used to be called Isabella, a shade of dirty yellow.. It is a fact Isabella of Austria vowed at the siege of Ostend not to change her linen till the place fell. The siege lasted three years and her linen assumed a strange hue in consequence. Shell Flower Craft. • f

With the help of the assorted centres, foliage, buds, seeds, wires, gutta percha, stems, tubing, piercing board, piercer and specimen, sold for the purpose, it is easy to make dainty flowers from a good collection of shells of various sizes.

The shells, must be well washed until there is no trace of sand, then dried, and dropped into hot water to which a little alum has been added. Leave them for a while, take out, dry, and polish with a soft cloth. Place a shell on the piercing board and make two holes with the piercer in the narrow part. Thread a piece of thin wire about four inches long through the holes and twist the two ends securely on the inside of the shell. Treat the other shells necessary to represent the flower petals in the same way. Dab each one with a soft rag or cotton wool well saturated with methylated spirit.

Now comes the painting of the shells, which must be done as delicately as possible inside and outside. Leave them to become thoroughly dry, then , varnish them to give •a. waterproof finish and enable the flowers to be washed without damage.

The centre’of the flower must have the petals wired around it, and the wires must be firmly twisted. A piece of thicker wire forms the stem, which is fastened securely to the petal wires, and bound with a strip of gutta percha. Buds and foliage must be wired to the stem, which is finished with the rubber tubing. Small Talk.

It is now deplored that the art of conversation, like the art of letter writing, is dead. The wireless, the hurry-scurry of modern existence, the lending libraries, and a whole host of other factors are said to have assisted at its funeral. And it is a fact that conversation, as understood at the time of Dr. Johnson and Miss Fanny Burney, is no longer current, or even esteemed.

But is this altogether a matter of regret? People who remember pre-wireless and precinema days recall with pain the lengthy and verbose talk of grandparents and their cronies. Reminiscent, it was, for a great part, ponderous and exceedingly wordy. We, in our youthful impatience, regarded it as wearisome, and, in the light of modern ideas, there is little doubt that we were right. Also, opinions were apt to be delivered with the air of an ultimatum. Free discussion of ideas was looked upon as something hardly to be encouraged, and to be a good and docile listener was lone of the finest accomplishments. It was Certainly the mark of fortitude ! ; We do not want to go back to those days. Yet it is undoubtedly a good thing to acquire the knack of filling in a few. odd moments in our busy lives with pleasant exchange, of chitchat. The highbrow often inclines to regard such talk as beneath notice, while the lowbrow hesitates so long over the choice of subject as to allow the opportunity to pass. I n between comes the individual who mistakes gossip and hearsay as substitutes for conversation proper.

Youth is the time in which to teach the art of intelligent conversation.

hot water. Boil, stirring all the time, for three minutes, and then remove the rind. Add one pound of granulated sugar to the water, let it dissolve over a slow heat then add the lemon juice and boil the syrup until a little tried in cold water hardens at once. Have ready a large dish, slightly oiled and pour the mixture thinly on to* this. When sufficiently cool, cut it into strips, and twist the strips fc give them a good shape. Oil the fingers slightly to prevent the warm toffee from burning them.