LADIES' COLUMN.

Wanganui Herald, Volume LIII, Issue 16038, 31 January 1920, Page 9

LADIES' COLUMN.

USEFUL HINTS.

Pot a little salt in the water in ■which you wash new potatoes before scraping. It prevents them staining your hands.. When you serve fresh chippedj potatoes with fish, wash the slices well in cold water before dropping them into the pan of boiling fat. The starch in potatoes often causes them to stick and burn. Dry the slices well before frying, or course. Tinned peaches and apricots are often canned in an unripe condition. Such fruit can be vastly improved by baking gently in its own juice for an hour in the oven. The fruit should be turned out of the tin before cooking. If mirrors be very dull and speckled, the following method is excellent. Take a small portion of whiting and add sufficient cold tea to make a paste; rub*the glass with warm tea, dry with a soft cloth, Tub a little of the paste well on mirror, and polish dry with ' tissue paper. To darken tan boots and if the boots have any stains on, rub with a little benzine and a soft rag. Then clean with dark tan boot polish two or three times a day, and the hoots will soon become darker. To get rid of cockroaches, mix together equal parts of plaster of paris and common flour on a slate, and lay the mixture about where the cockroaches run. After one or two nights the pests will disappear. Hard cold water does not tend to create a soft, smooth skin, which is every woman’s desire. If you cannot obtain rain water, put a lump of rough Fuller's earth into your water-jug over-night. This will make the water beautifully soft. To clean a feather boa, procure a cake of carbonate of magnesia at any chemists and rub or powder it well over the boa. Wrap it up in a cloth for two or three days, then shake it well and hang out In the air for a few minutes, when it will be found nice and white. To make soup from green pea pods, choose only fresh crisp pods, and after rinsing place them in a saucepan. Almost cover with boiling water, allow them to boil about 20 minutes, then strain off the greenish water. Add to it an ( K equal quantity of milk, boll up again, salt and pepper to taste, and • a nut of butter. When ready to serve, thicken slightly with cornflour mixed with a little cold milk. To keep milk fresh, add a lump of sugar to every pint as soon as it comes from the dairy. When making a pudding, should the milk be slightly sour, dissolve a saltspoonful of bicarbonate of soda in a little warm water, and add to the milk. This will prevent the milk from curdling. Milk which Is quite sour makes light cakes and batter. Four milk mixed with egg-powder can be used instead of eggs when making cakes. When boiling milk wet the saucepan and lid before putting in the milk. The milk will not burn, and it saves the saucepan at the same time. To remove the odour of stale smoke from a room where much tobacco has bean smoked, all ash and cigar ends should" be removed and burnt at once; then if a large howl of water he put at night Into the room, all the noxious smell will ho absorbed by the water, and the air freed from other impurities. A little coffee thrown on a hot shovel carried through a room at any time /will remove the odour of tobacco "jl smoke, and a few drops of oil of /Jr sandalwood is equally efficacious ; dried lavender stalks have a like effect.

On the virtues of water a French physician writes thus: “Every woman who values her digestion and her complexion should drink at least six glasses of cold water a day. If desired, the glass taken before retiring and the first thing in the morning may be hot, with a pinch of salt in it. Have appointed times for this water drinking, and take it at those times. The first thing in the morning, the last thing at night, half an hour before each meal, and in the middle of the morning and afternoon, will diride the day nicely.” Rhubarb juice is an excellent spring medicine, and very refreshing, too, as a beverage. Cut up some stalks of rhubarb, and pour over one and a-half pints of water. Allow the fruit to stew just under the half-hour, then strain through a muslin, and add a few drops of essence of lemon to the liquid and sugar to taste. Stains caused by heated dishes on ■polished tables can be removed by the application of a thin paste made

of salad oil and salt; spread it on the marked place and leave for an /hour or more. Then rub off with L ' =>o£t cloth. "Vhen using the whites of eggs (»iy in the preparation of a dish, slide the yolks into a bowl without breaking them, and put cold water on them. They will keep for several days, and may be used in cooking as well as if they come from, newly-broken shells. RECIPES A NICE LITTLE SUPPER DISH. —Cut about y* lb of stewing beef into slices and cut these again in strips about inches wide, and 3 inches long. Now mix together 3 tablespoonfuls of bread crumbs, 1 teaspoonful chopped parsley, a little thyme, some minced suet, a seasoning of salt and pepper, and a little water Just enough to moisten. Put a little of this mixture on each strip of meat, roll up and tie into shape. Brown them in a little hot dripping, and put them on a plate; brown a minced onion in the same and moisten % tablespoonful of flour with a teacupful of water, add this, and stir till it boils. Put in the rolls of meat an simmer all for 2 hours. APPLE AND OATMEAL PIE. This is something the children will li£e.—3 ounces medium oatmeal, 2 ounces sugar, 6 or 7 apples, according to size, 1 pint boiling water. Ponr the water over the meal, and leave it in a warm place for quite 4 hours. Then add the apples, peeled, cored, and sliced, stirring them well into the meal; stir in £he sugar; mix well, and bake in a rather slow oven for an hour. k RICE CAKES. Boil some nee, ■ not too moist; mix with it some ■ minced onion, previously boiled, ■ and also some tomato. Season ■ with salt and pepper, form into I balls, dip them in beaten egg, and

cover them with flour, and fry in hot fat; there should be enough fat to quite cover them. CANARY PUDDING. Quarter lb flour, 2 ounces butter or suet, 2 ounces sugar, 1 egg, a little milk, 1 teaspoonful of baking powder. Rub the butter into the flour, and add the other ingredients. Put two tablespoonfuls of treacle, syrup or jam Into a greased basin, pour in the 'mixture, and steam for an hour —if suet is used, 2 hours. PATTY CAKES. For the little cakes take three teacupfuls of flour, four tablespoonfuls of butter, four tablespoonfuls of castor sugar, three tablespoonfuls of sultanas, a piece of candied peel, finely shredded, two eggs, a teaspoonful of baking powder, a little milk. Sift the flour and baking powder together. Beat the butter and sugar to a cream, add the eggs one at a time and beat well, then add the flour by degrees, mixed with the fruit and peel. After about half the flour has been added, add enough milk to make the mixture quite easy to heat, then add the rest of the flour. Butter and flour the patty pans, and put a little of the mixture in each, and bake in a fairly hot oven for about 15 minutes. I find that cream puffs are much better if made on the day they, are required. If it is necessary to keep them, they should he baked rather more than if they are to be used quickly. They should be allowed to cool without opening them, and, wiien quite cold, should he packed at once in an air-tight tin. LEMON JELLY. Half a pint of lemon juice, 1% pints of water, 20 sheets of gelatine, the rinds of four or six lemons, one and a-half teacupfuls of loaf sugar, one inch of cinnamon stick, four cloves, two shells and whites of eggs. To make the jelly use a scrupulously clean enamel saucepan that will hold at least two quarts. Put into it water, gelatine, lemon juice, very thinly pared lemon rind, sugar, spice, the shells of the eggs washed and crushed, and the whites whipped to a fairly stiff froth. Take a clean egg whisk, and whisk the mixture over the fire until it is almost boiling, then leave off whisking and let the jelly boil well up in the pan. Draw the pan aside, let the jelly sink, then boil it up once more. Draw the pan to the side of the’ fire, cover it, and let the jelly settle for five minutes. Arrange a jelly bag with a basin underneath it. Carefully pour the jelly into the hag. When all the jelly is in the bag get a second basin, make it hot, and place, it quickly underneath the jelly bag, removing the first basin. Pour the contents of the first basin back into the jelly bag.. The reason for doing this is that the first of the jelly that comes through the hag is always a little cloudy. Let the jelly run through without touching either the bag or its contents, as if these are disturbed the jelly will not be clear. The object of using the shells and whites of eggs is to clear the jelly. WOMEN MAGISTRATES. FIRST SEVEN APPOINTED. LONDON, Dec. 23. In view of the coming into force of the Sex Disqualification Removal Act, by which women will he eligible to act as magistrates, the Lord Chancellor has selected seven women having a wide acquaintance with the careers of their countrywomen, to assist him in making appointments. These seven women, namely, the Marchionesses of Crewe and Londonderry, Mesdames Lloyd George, Humphrey Ward, and Sidney Webb, and Misses Elizabeth Haldane and Gertrude Tucker will themselves become the first women magistrates. As the magisterial bench is at present full, only a few others will he appointed in the near future, chiefly for the children’s courts, but thereafter the claims of women will he considered equally with men. A ROMANTIC WEDDING. The rescue by a land girl of a male fellow-worker from an attack by a savage hull had a romantic sequel in the marriage on November 8 of rescuer and rescued at the parish church of Pletching, Sussex, The bride was Miss Peggy Fisher, who was employed as a land worker at Barkham Manor, and the bridegroom Mr A. S. Marshall. The event created widespread interest in the district, and the parish church was thronged with well-wishers of the happy pair. The employer of the' bride and bridegroom did them full honours by sending his farm waggon, dressed with sheaves of wheat any ivy, to bring the bride from her residence at Pittdown.' It was drawn by six horses, ridden by farm hands as postillions dressed in white smocks. DRESS AND PERSONALITY. A great many girls do not always wear the colours that suit taem, the colours that seem to tone with their personality, says “A City Girl/’ writing in the Star. A woman needs to study herself, as well as the shades of her hair and eyes, in order to know the right colours to wear. Bright or light colours are so much more noticeable than dark ones, and for that reason alone are more expensive. A girl cannot continue wearing, say, a red coat so long as she can a dark blue one, for in the case of the former her friends would easily remember the length of its term of service. Among the great array of working girls who throng to tbe City every morning—a dark, sad-looking army because of their clothes—there are many doubtless who realise that neutral colours do not become them, hut for reasons of economy they have to wear them. With some an irrepressible" love of colour is shown in vivid jumpers or blouses, and sometimes the colour chosen is the right one for the wearer. ?eot always, unhappily. All of us, at this season especially, delight in manifesting our after-war feelings in gorgeous colours, but not every woman hns learnt in connection with dress exactly the colours that blend with, or,- rather, help to express, her personality. This knowledge usually only comes through experience and by careful study of the effect that various colours have upon her feelings, and also of the effect they, when worn by her, have on-people with whom she is friendly.

SHELL-SHOCK AND CEEEGEN. Shell-shock demonstrates how dependent the health of the body is upon the nerves. Overtaxed by war strain, the breakdown occurs in the thunder of bombardment, the nervous system reaches breaking strain, and collapses. Nervous complaints are the same, but in lesser degree. All arise from overtax and failing energy. Ceregen is the cure. Cere* ■ren is a Nerve Food that supplies th© essential proteid —preteid, the very essence of nerve, strength and poise. British military and naval hospitals use Ceregen. Doctors recommend it. Get this food that builds new strength—2s 6d, 4s 6d, 6s 6d, 12s, at chemists. The 12s size contains eight times amount of 2s 6d tin.