HOME INTERESTS.

Otago Witness, Issue 2513, 14 May 1902, Page 63

HOME INTERESTS.

BEEF STE^V. Cut 2ib of beef from the bones into inch pieces, roll in flour and fry brown in a saticepan, with a little fat and a sliced onion. Put the bores into cold water and heat slowly to boiling; add the meat und half a teacupful of tomatoes. Simmer an hour, then, add a carrot cut in squares. Cook until the meat ia tender, adding a few potatoes, also cut in squares. Serve with a garnishing of toast cut in pieces around the meat dish. MOCK SAUSAGE. "Chop very fine lib of cold beef, add to it four tablespoons of mashed potatoes, a beaten egg; season highly with salt, pepper, and sage ; mix well. Shape into small flat cakes, and fry in a little fat iike pork sausage. ROAST BEEF WITH YOEKSHIEE PUDDING. Take the roast beef from the pan, skim off all the fat dripping into a pan in which the pudding is to be baked; make a batter with two egg 3 beaten separately (very light), salt, one cup of milk, one cup of flour. Bake in the beef dripping for 10* minute 3in a hot oven. BEEF STOCK. Get a knuckle of beef, cut the meat all off the bone 3 into small pieces, break the bones, put them into a kettle with the meat; allow one quart of water for every lib of meat. "When it begins to boil, skim as long as any scum rises. Set the kettle on the back of stove, so that the meat will cook slowly for five hours; then add salt to season, and skim out meat and bones. Strain the rest and set away to cool ; then skim all the fat off and yon will have a firm jelly ready for soups. JUGGED HARE OR RABBIT. Cut the rabbit into joints, dredge with flour and fry in boiling butter. Then put into a stewpan, with ona teaspoonful of thyme, two onions, six cloves, three whole allspice, halfteas^oonful pepper and salt to taste, cover with water; let it pimmcr gently till tender, which will be about one hour and threequarters, or longer, should the rabbit be old. Add quarter pint of port wins and two tablespoonfula red currant jelly about 10 minutes before taking from the fire. This should be properly cooked in a jar closely covered, inside a stewpan of boiling water, taking four hours to cook. SHREWSBURY CAKES. One quarter pound each of butter and sugar, 602 flour, one teaspoonful grated lemon peel one egg; mix and roll as thin as possible. Cut out with cutter, and bake. SPOTTED DICK. Chop Sib suet, and rub into lib flour, mixed with one teaspoouful of baking-powder and a pinch of salt. Make into a, stiff pasta with milk, rolL out one-half inch thick, and spread Jll> currants or raisin 3 over it. Roll it up and wet the edge 3, then tie up m a wet pudding cloth floured on the side on which the dough is laid. Leave room for pudding to swell, then tio tight, plunge into boiling water, and boil oca hour and a-half. This pjiste will also do for any fruit or " roly-po.'y " "yuddi:»gs. THE BEAUTY OP WRIITELES. WITHOUT THEM THE FACE WOTJLD BE MEANINGLESS .VXD VOID. In a recent number of the Weekly .Scotsman, a lady gave full instructions on "Hew to Remove Wrinkles.'' Why should one try to remove them? Wrinkles may mean the "first approach of old age," but that "they make sad havoc with a woman's beauty" is a statement not to be tolerated for one instant. What makes the wrinkles, and why are they there? We all love the soft, chubby face of the baby because it is pait of its very helplessness. All is smooth and clear as a blank tablet, but as the mind of the child develops, Nature, the only perfect' artist, pencils softly and delicately, day by day, lines which become an index of the mind, lines without -which the face would be meaningless and void. But Nature is not self-willed over her traceries. The great mother allows the individuality of each one of her children to guide her hand to engrave, ha tliav tlie jziaceiul unward curves

of the happy, contented mind, which, makes j the most out of life and sees its best and | purest side, or the harsh downward strokes of discontent and bad temper, which but rarely catch a rosy glimpse of the sun through the long or short avenue of years down which all must pass. What nonsense to say that Avrinkles make havoc with, beauty ! Fancy our sweet old grandmothers with all their wrinkles obliterated — those lines graven deeply by happiness, by madness, by pain and suffering endured and hidden with smiles, by trials conquered and overcome ! Could we spare one wrin^e from their beautiful old faces? The .stages between babyhood and old age have each their separate charms, and no woman need fear to become less attractive by growing old as long as fhe grows old gracefully. Time steais frcm the complexion the soft, peachlike bloom of girlhood, 'but adds in its stead an indefinable something which tones in exquisitely with the firmer lines of the face, with the silvern strands which discover themselves glistening among the raven or golden locks, and with other but more subtle changes. The writer wonders to what clats of women such advice as "How to remove wrinkles" appeals. Certainly nol to the young girl in the first blush "of youth and "womanhood, nor to the unmarried woman of to-day, wiio is known for her sound common sense ; nor to the happy wife and mother, whose face becomes more beautiful day by day, as she in retiring forgetfnlness of self lives again in her children ; nor to our peerless old grandmothers, whose sweet faces revel in the profusion of wrinkles. There may be some women who might take the advice seriously, and go through the ape-like gesticulations recommended, but surely these would be the freaks of womankind, and not the average daughters of Eve. Nature brooks no quacks in her domain, and to tampar with her work is simply to mutilate it and to produce ludicrous caricatures. Oar great masters in painting, Sir Joshua Reynolds, Velasquez, and Rembrandt, for instance, how them admired strongly-lined faces of both men and Aronien. Tliey did not spend their time portraying smooth, inane face? of the chocolate-box order. They saw the real beauty and meaning of Nature's tracery, and strove humbly to imitate, not to alter. Why should old age be treated so discourteously as soon as his shadow falls on ths pathway of life? When he is far away, hidden in the long vista of years and of uncertainty, we woo him, and "exert our utmost to drive his dreaded adversary away. Yet when he favours us, and comes to meet us, we turn our backs on him to bar and efface his advent, which, after all, is only by favour, for it is not on the many that he smiles, but on the few.