Domestic

New Zealand Tablet, 23 November 1911, Page 2385

Domestic

■ By Maureen.

Filling a Hot Water Bottle. The proper way to fill a hot water bottle is to run it only half full of water, then, when screwing in the top, catch tip the bottle so that the water comes right up to the neck of the bottle. By thus keeping the air out of the bottle is not only made more pliable, but it will remain hot longer. Flesh-making Foods. Cereals, bread, and potatoes are exceedignly valuable food as flesh-makers, as are also fats and sugar, but these latter must not be taken in too large quantities, as they are so highly concentrated that a comparatively small bulk furnishes many units of heat and energy, and the body chemistry is soon disordered by more than can be conveniently handled. This explains the harm of giving sweets, in immoderate quantities, to children. Cure for Tainted Meat. If when boiling or baking meat you find it is smelling somewhat tainted, take a small piece of stick, put the end of it in the fire, and burn it just enough to make it black. If baking, place the burnt end in the dripping pan. If boiling, place the end in the saucepan. The taint will be found to have disappeared. Worth Knowing. When a fishbone is stuck in one's throat, lemon juice will remove it (says the English Matron). If the lemon is sucked for a little while the bone will move on. In one case it succeeded after the bone had been in the throat two days. Another use for lemon juice is to remove warts. This is done by dropping it on twice a day. To retain the color and gloss of a white silk blouse after washing put a teaspoonful of alcohol into the rinsing water. This keeps it from turning yellow, and gives it when ironed the gloss of new silk. When mixing starch, the addition of a few drops of turpentine will give a fine gloss to collars and cuffs. All traces of mud can easily be removed from black clothes by rubbing the spots with a raw potato cut in half. Chow Chow. 'Mountcain.'—You will find the following a good recipe for chow chow:Cabbage, cauliflower, young French beans, button onions, sliced cucumbers, slices of carrot, etc., are used. The vegetables should be carefully cleaned. Prepare a brine—two handfuls of salt to a gallon of water—and when boiling throw in cauliflowers cut into neat branches, the French beans, cabbage sliced, cucumbers cut lengthways in quarters, all the seeds removed, and the cucumbers cut into blocks, and small onions. Let them remain in the boiling brine five or six minutes, then throw into cold water and carefully dry. To every two quarts of the best vinegar put l|oz of white ginger scraped - and sliced, the same of long pepper, 2oz of peeled shallots, one of garlic, loz of salt. Add loz of turmeric, a little cayenne, and mustard. Put these ingredients into an earthenware jar for three or four days. Place the vegetables in glass or stone jars, and on the fifth day pour the pickle over them. The vinegar must, of course, be prepared first. The vegetables should not be gathered until the day before the pickle is ready. The jars must be well closed, the corks or bungs wrapped round with bladder or leather, and when well corked let them be dipped in bottle resin. The vinegar for all pickles should be made scalding hot (not boiling). To two quarts of vinegar add ioz of white pepper and of sliced ginger, 2dr of cloves, and a nutmeg bruised. The vegetables should be sound, not over-ripe, and be gathered on a dry day. • Onions, red cabbage' etc., are all pickled in the liquor as above with the species given, and either allowed to remain well rubbed with salt for three or four days or scalded in brine.