Democratic Sentinel, Volume 2, Number 47, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 January 1879 — HOUSEHOLD ECONOMY. [ARTICLE]

HOUSEHOLD ECONOMY.

Before washing black and white cotton or linen dresses, or any of these dark colors, first dip them in salt and water and hang them in a shady place to dry. Mix lightly one pound of Graham flour with a pint of thick, sweet cream; add salt, roll thin and bake as other pastry, and you will have a fine Graham pastry. Nice Breakfast Dish.—Cold mashed potatoes, made into little balls, and slightly flattened; dip them into an egg slightly, so as to mix the yelk and white; roll them in cracker crumbs. Fry them in hot lard or butter. Send to table hot. If horse-radish be prepared in the fall, as follows, it may be kept all winter: To each coffee-cupful of horse-radish allow one table-spoonful of salt, one table-spoonful of white sugar, and a pint and a half of good vinegar; bottle and seal. Rat Traps.—Rats and mice will go into a trap more readily if a small piece of looking-glass be put in any part of thetrap where they can see themselves reflected. They mistake the reflection for another rat, and where others go they follow. Fruit or wine stains can be removed from woolen or cotton goods by sponging them gently—do not rub the goods —in ammonia and alcohol; a teaspoonful of ammonia to a wine-glass of alcohol. Then if needed the material may be washed.

A piece of red peopper, the size of your finger-nail, put into meat and vegetables, when first beginning to co«k, will aid greatly in killing the unpleasant odor arising therefrom. Remember this for boiling cabbage, green beans, onions, chickens, mutton, etc. House Plants.—Tobacco smokeunder cover—will be found an effectual remedy for aphides; but the larvoe of many other insects, especially of. the tipula and the tenth-redinidee, which occasions the wrapping up and shriveling of the leaves, can be removed by washing with lime-water, or hand-picking. To make buckwheat cakes, mix one gill of wheat flour with one quart of buckwheat flour, add one large teaspoonful of salt, then add gradually a scant quart of warm water mixed with one gill of yeast. Let it rise all night, and then in the morning add a quarter teaspoonful of carbonate of soda, and bake immediately. Wasting Flour.—A correspondent writes to the Christian Union: “ How can I help wasting much flour when making bread, cake or pastry? So much is washed off the bread board or the cake bowl, and yet I can’t see how it can be helped.” Mrs. Beecher answers : “ There is no necessity for wasting any of it. Knead your bread in the bowl till it will no longer adhere to your hands; then dip your hands in flour and rub off all the dough that

clings to them. Sprinkle very little floor on the board, taking care not to scatter it, but keep it only where it will be needed. If the bread is properly prepared, it will require but little flour to finish kneading it after you put it on the board. Put a little flour in the bowl and, with it, rub oft all the dough that remains, and work it in with the bread. Scrape off all the flour and such dough as may stick to the molding board, which should be very little. Put what is thus scraped up in the bottom of the bread bowl, and when the dough is raised enough to go into the pans this flour at the bottom of the bowl will be light enough to work into the dough and thus be saved. When molding the dough to put into the pans, if you scatter flour or dough on the boards, more than you work in, scrape it up and put it in your yeast pot, and do the same with all adhering to the board when making pastry. By practice you will soon be able to make both bread and pastry and leave but very little to scrape from the board. All that sticks to the bowl in making cake should be scraped off with a thin-bladed knife and dropped into the pan with the cake.”