Domestic

New Zealand Tablet, 11 May 1916, Page 49

Domestic

(By Maureen.)

Prune Cake.

One egg, one-half breakfast cupful of butter, one cupful of sour milk, one cupful of treacle, one cupful of brown sugar, four cupfuls of flour, three and one-half cupfuls of chopped prunes, one teaspoonful of soda, a little salt, spice to taste. Bake in a slow oven.

Chocolate Bread Pudding.

Three-fourths cupful of breadcrumbs, two cupfuls of scalded milk, three squares of chocolate melted, two eggs, one-fourth teaspoonful of salt, one-half teaspoonful of vanilla extract, one-fourth cupful of cold milk, and threefourths cupful of sugar. Mix all the ingredients in the order given. Pour into a buttered baking-dish, set in a pan of hot water, and bake one hour in a moderate oven ; stir twice during the baking to keep chocolate from rising to the top.

Preserving Vegetable Marrow.

Take a small green, hard marrow, about eight pounds in weight. Pare it and cut in half. Put the marrow into a pan of boiling water, and boil rapidly for eight or ten minutes. It must on no account fall to pieces. Remove from water and weigh. Cut into pieces about three inches in length and two inches in width. Place in deep dish and coyer with sifted sugar, allowing one pound of sugar to one of marrow. > Let stand until next day. Strain syrup from marrow, and place in enamelled jam pan, bring to .boil, throw the chunks in, and boil rapidly for five minutes. Remove from fire and let chunks stand in syrup until following day. Strain the syrup and again bring to the boil; add the marrow and enough lump ginger to suit taste. It is difficult to give quantity as some people prefer it hotter than others. Boil again for five minutes. Remove from fire and again let stand until next day, when proceed in same manner as before. Let stand till cold. Then place carefully in glass jars and tie down with bladders. This preserve is delicious as a tea jam, and the longer it is kept the more it improves, age giving it quite a different flavor. ,

THE CHARM OF THRIFT.

Economy, as understood and practised by Latin nations (says Farm, Field, and Fireside) is not irksome.

It is part of the game of life, ■ a limitation acceptedin good taith, and managed with such dexterity that, although it may rub now and then, it. seldom pinches hard. A writer in the Atlantic Monthly gives a vivid and sympathetic sketch of a French middle-class household, with its assured comfort, its touch of elegance, its carefully balanced expenditures. The; picture was as accurate as it was pleasing. A Frenchwoman takes an honest and just pride in making; every penny of Jier money bring its fair equivalent; and she knows that her family keenly appreciates the results of her excellent management. She goes to market. The artichokes are big and green and beautifully fresh. Her husband likes artichokes. Very well, then, there must be no salad, and no cherries. Artichokes represent that day’s extravagance, and the rest of her marketing deals with the necessaries of life. It no more occurs to her to buy both the artichokes and the salad than it occurs to her to be sorry for herself, because she cannot do so. Her good dinner represents heights achieved, and difficulties overcome. She has sense enough to relish the situation. Does an Alpine climber want to be carried in a Sedan chair? What charm, after all, encircles the mountain top but the supreme sense of triumph ? In England economy is still ill-understood and distasteful. Housewives ignore it, servants despise it. A lady whose daughter had lived for two years in Italy lamented whimsically that the girl could no longer be permitted to run the house at homo. * She did fairly well before she went away,’ sighed the amused parent; but now she asks the cook what has become of the other half of the onion, and the cook gets up and goes.’ In Italy, where everything can be purchased in small quantities, half an onion looms large on the horizon. If a customer chances to want one egg. she buys one egg. No dealer looks askance at her because she does not take a dozen. If she wants a pat of fresh butter and a tiny flask of cream, she buys them for a few pence, and has the comfort of knowing that both are superlatively good. Italians are more intolerant of stale eggs than we dare to be, and they abhor the salted butter that we contentedly consume. But no food is wasted, and. no one considers wasting is a privilege. You seldom hear economy preached in France, or Italy, or Spain; instead it is universally practised.