LADIES’ COLUMN.

Wanganui Herald, Volume LIII, Issue 160692, 3 July 1920, Page 6

LADIES’ COLUMN.

USEFUL HINTS. Never use soda-water for washing gilt-edged china, as the soda injures the gilt. Salted water softens lettuces and salads, but borax makes the green-stuff crisp and cleaner. Paint may be removed from windows with hot vinegar. The same will soften paint brushes which have become hardened. When the collar of a coat becomes shiny, try sponging it with a cloth moistened with ammonia or vinegar. A good polish can be obtained on furniture if the wood is first rubber over with a cloth wrung out in hot water. A' piece of old velveteen is an excellent substitute for chamois leather for nil polishing purposes, and is much cheaper. All locks and hinges and the castors on chairs and sofas should be oiled once a year to prevent rusting and to make them work more easily. Greasy frying-pans <.c saucepans should be well rubbed with plenty of soft paper while still hot. The papers will absorb every particle of grease, and will lie useful for lighting the fires next morning. ’ Cauliflowers often break when removed from boiling water. If they are cooked in a clean muslin bi*g, however, such trouble does not occur and the vegetable can be lifted from the pot without fear of spoiling. After cleaning brasses in the usual wav, buy a little clear varnish, which can be obtained for a few ponce. Tako a camelhair brush, and go lightly over them. Treated in this manner they will keep clean for months. A preparation of one ounce of .sulphur and one quart of water, repeatedly used during intervals of a few hours, will cure dandruff. If the head is saturated every morning with the-liquid, in a few weeks every trace of dandruff will be removed from the scalp, and the hair will become soft and glossy. A cheap and easily prepared cement for broken china is lime mixed with the white of an egg. Only take sufficient white of an egg to mend one article at a time, and mix thoroughly ; with a small quantity of lime. Apply the mixture to the place where the article is broken, and in a -short time the cement will set and become quite hard.

USES OF VINEGAR. The following uses of vinegar have all been tried, and can be recommended with confidence. It brightens brass and copper, and when mixed with salt will remove stains from china and glass flower vases, and water bottles, or inkstains from the fingers. The addition of three tablespoonfuls of vinegar to a hot bath will make it much more refreshing, and a few' drops of vinegar in a tumbler of water provides an excellent mouth-wash.

A mixture of vinegar and linseed oil. in equal parts, gives a splendid furniture polish, while if vinegar is added to blacklead the polish will be more lasting than if water alone is used.

Hot vinegar removes paint stains, and a mixture of equal parts of vinegar and water will clean gilt picture frames.

A teaspoonful of vinegar added to the water in which salads and vegetables are washed will make them fresh and c~isp, besides destroying any lurking insects which they may contain.

RECIPES. An English Cake.—lib of flour, a tea spoonful of carbonate of soda, a pinch of salt, a pinch of grated nutmeg, naif a teaspoonful of ground cinnamon, 2oz of lard, Jib °f stone raisins, a tablespoonful of golden syrup, loz of sugar, a small tumbler of water. Method.—Melt the lard in a saucepan, add the syrup, sugar, raisins, and salt. Bring to the boil, and let it boil for a minute. Then set aside until, cold. Mix the spices with the flour, work them into the other ingredients together with the carbonate of soda dissolved in a tablespoonful of hot water. Mix well. Turn into a cake-tin lined with greased paper and hake iu a moderate oven for about one hour and a-half. Dough Cake.—lib of dough, 2oz of sugar, 2oz of lard or dripping, 2oz of candied peel. Jib of currants, sultanas, or raisins, 1 egg. Work the grease into the dough, add the fruit and sugar, and the. beaten ogg. Bake for one hour. The oven should be very hot when the cake is put in, or it will not rise. Once it has risen it only needs a modern heat. The egg can be omitted if a very economical cake is desired. This recipe can be used for making a seed cake if you substitute seeds for currants.

Yorkshire Tea-cakes.—3oz of lard, 11b of flour, a pinch of salt, 1 egg, Joz of yeast, a tablospoonful of sugar, 2oz of currants. Method.—Sieve the Horn with the salt, rub the lard into it, mix into the egg, well beaten, and the yeast; let it stand in a warm place for twenty minutes, then add the sugar and the currants. Knead lightly for ten minutes, then put in a warm place to rise. In an hour’s time form into round cakes, stand, then bake in rather a hot oven for twenty minutes. Splitters.—lib of flour, loz sugar, 4oz of lard, loz of sultanas, a pinch of salt, water to mix, 1 small teaspoonful of baking-powder. Method.—Mix together flour, salt, spice, and bakingpowder, rub in the fat, add the sultanas. Mix to a firm paste with cold water. Roll out an inch thick, cat in rounds with a wine-glass, and bake in a moderate oven for twenty minutes. Split through the centre, butter and serve hot. Economical Shortbread.—Jib of flour, 2oz of lard, 2oz of butter, 2oz of

white sugar, a teaspoonful of milk, a pinch of salt, six drops of flavouring essence. Method.—Warm a basin, put the butter and lard in it, and knead them together until they are blended. Add the sugar, salt and flour, and knead them all together. Mix the flavouring with the milk, and add a few drops at a time whilst you are kneading. When you have kneaded it to a soft paste, roll it out on a board, and cut into fancy shapes or form into one or two cakes, pinch the edges, ,ahu put them on a well floured or greased tin. Bake in rather a slow oven, quarter to half-an-hour, according bo whether yon have made small or large cakes." They should be pale golden, not brown, when done. As well as being eaten plain, this shortbread mixture is an excellent foundation for fancy cakes. Chocolate Shortbread.—Make some small shortbreads with recipe above, then melt a stick of plain eating chocolate, put a little on each shortbread. Sprinkle with cocoanut and leave till set. Or bake some small thin shortbreads, melt a stick of icing sugar, so that it is fairly thick, spread it on half the shortbreads, put one of the plain shortbreads on the top, press it on slightly. Leave until set.

A “WIDOW BRIDE.” Women in Florida, California, and Chicago are describing Mrs Helen Prindiville Griffin Bastado as “the Widow-Bride.” The hyphen between the two marital states is represented by a legacy of £2,000,000 inherited from her late husband, whose death occurred less than 24 hours before she married again. Mrs Bastado was formerly the wife of Mr George Francis Griffin, one of Chicago’s wealthiest men, who died on a Monday in a yacht near Miami, Florida. On the Tuesday, Mrs Griffin, who had been separated from her husband for two years pending, a divorce action brought by her, married Lieut.-Com-mander Baul Henry Bastado. U.S. Navy, of San Diego. According to the announcement of the attorneys administering Mr Griffin’s estate, his widow’s marriage will not affect the provisions of the will, which leaves the entire estate to her and her three children. The (marriage preceded Mr Griffin’s burial.

“DECADENT ENGLAND.” PLEASURE PANDERING KILLS TRADITION. Father Vaughan, who at Leeds one Sunday unveiled a memorial to the fallen ’in the Catholic Cathedral, deplored that this generation was breaking away from the tradition of England. Anglican loaders were in despair and Free Church leaders had been saying there was more religion in the Hindoo and the Kaffir than in the average Englishman. It had been said we were too English. The fact was that we were not English enough. If we held to our own traditions it would be better than going to Paris to learn the tricks of race suicide, to New York to learn about divorce, or to Russia to pick up the latest trait in Bolshevism. We were becoming in a measure a decadent race. Me had lost grip, push, endeavour. The cry was for money for pleasure, and pleasure was a readymoney business. “Let us,” he appealed, “grow onv own race on our own traditions ol freedom, justice, fair play, God, King, and Country.”

WOMAN’S STRANGE DREAM. A widow 7 named Elizabeth Brown was found dead in bed in her room at Carlton Road, Nottingham, on May 7, as the result of gas poisoning, while her two children. Annie, aged 8, and William, aged 3, were unconscious. They were taken to hospital, the condition of the girl being precarious. A curious feature is that Mrs Miles, of Crown Street, Nottingham, sister of the dead woman, who is believed by her friends to be able to foretell events by dreams, stated that she dreamed the same night that she was engaged in trying to restore life to two inanimate children, and that in !»•<• dream she saw the ghost of a wo nan pass before her. She said that she woke from the dream about midnight, about which time the tragedy may have occurred, as. according to medical evidence, Mrs Brown had been dead from 12 to 24 hours before she was discovered.

SUGAR SCARCITY. So scant is the sugar ration allowed by the Food Controller for jam-mak-ing, says an English paper, that homemade jam is likely to be either scarce or sour unless koine manufacturers resort to one of the tricks of the trade. If they do so by introducing carrots into the home product they will bo agreeably surprised at the result. Great are the sweetening powers of this despised vegetable, and experienced housewives find it can be used as a partial substitute for sugar with such success that its presence in the finished article, jam or marmalade, cannot be detected except by those whose palates are of a most subtle sensitiveness. Here is an excellent recipe for blackberry, cheapest of jams:—To one pound of ripe blackberries add hall

a pound of sugar or slightly more, and half a pound of carrots, the last having been well boiled and pulped before being mixed with the fruit. The English writer who tested the result at his breakfast certifies that he fed on a sweet, palatable and cheap substitute for butter at 5/- a pound, and that the presence of carrots in this excellent relish could not be detected. In place of blackberries melon could be substituted, and an experiment of a few pots tried.

SAVING GAS. The subject of saving coal and gas is paramount in the mind of every housewife, and some experiments made in Gisborne may be of interest. A local paper says:—“ Boiled meats and stews of all kinds can bo cooked this way. Boil the mutton, corn beef, tongue, or whatever it is you require, for twenty minutes and then take the saucepan off the fire, but on no account remove the lid, and wrap it up and put it on a table or any convenient place. This “wrapping up” process is done as follows; Fold a piece of brown paper over tbb saucepan ana then cover it with mackintosh or waterproof sheeting, and layers of blankets and materials of thickness, such as an old eider down quilt or rugs, etc. The steaming will cook the meat. A very nice haricot at a recent little Gisborne dinner was cooked this -way, the flavour being good and the carrots and meat thoroughly cooked. To be ready for a six o’clock dinner put the contents into this made-up cooker at about 10 o’clock in the morning, not later. It is worth while to try this experiment, and there should he no difficulty iu doing it.' Remember the mackintosh is tiie first layer of material which is wrapped round the brown paper covered saucepan. Stews should not be thickened until just before serving, so they can be boiled up for a minute or two on the stove for this purpose.