"MAKING DO" IN THE HOUSE

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 19218, 6 January 1926, Page 5

"MAKING DO" IN THE HOUSE

A small household does not, usually, boast sets of all tho correct glass and china services, plate and cutlery, which are considered appropriate to each course at an expensively-furnishod table, but to all intents and purposes, perfectly served little meals can be devised with quite a limited range of table utensils. Oystors may be eaten with dinner forks if three-pronged oyster forks are not available. Soup is as correctly served in wide teacups standing in their own saucers, as in soup plates. When china dishes run short, plated entree dishes come in useful, for vegetables nnd extra sweets, besides entrees and savouries. In lieu of the properly-shaped salad plates, ordinary cheese plates may bo arranged to the left of every place for the purpose, or, to be very up-to-date, have a little bowl of salad specially prepared for each person. Glass dinger bowls do very well, or bowls of some quaint pottery ware. Where silver bon-bon dishes are not to hand for the chocolates and sweets handed round at dessert, little glass or dainty pbrcelain saucers are used. Small brass bowls of Benares workmanship strike a novel note. Serve custard, jelly, fruit salad and ices in claret or champagne glasses substituted for custard cups and glass plates. At dessert ornamental bowls usually devoted to flowers, and artistically-arranged baskets, frequently take the place of the more ordinary fruit dishes. It is quite permissible to hand crystallised fruits in the wooden or cardboard boxes in which they are packed, accompanied, of course, by a silver fork, to help them. Jam spoons and silver fruit forks mjy be placed for use with pickles, chutriby, etc. For tho condiments, salt, pepcr, and mustard, so many people now use tho dainty glass cruet sets in preference to the once universal silver, that they hardly come under the category of "making do." As to wine glasses. No ordinary household should feel tho need in these days of more than a set of good claret and port glasses, which, according to size, answer all requirements not covered by tumblers. At tea time entree dishes apain come in tiseful to take the place of silver cake baskets when daintily lined: with lace doyleys.