Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 191, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 22 August 1918 — WOMEN COOK AND CAN WITH SIRUPS [ARTICLE]

WOMEN COOK AND CAN WITH SIRUPS

Plan to Make Fruit Juices, Butters and Pastes Without Use of Sugar. MANY OF FRUITS ARE DRIED Over-Sweetening of Tea and Coffee Is One of Our Greatest Faults —Home Demonstration Agents Use Substitutes In Recipes. « Instead of letting the sugar shortage hpther her, the resourceful housewife is bending all efforts to learn the best ways of using Less sugar in her cooking and preserving and of canning without it or with sugar substitutes. She is drying many of the fruits; she is learning to put up fruit} juices and butters and to make sirups at home from sugar beets, quinces and apples. She is substituting, corn sirup, molasses, maple sirup, and honey for sugar in her canning and general cooking, and she is making sugarless candles, fruit pastes and confections. Bulletins telling how to carry out these methods may be had free on application to the United States department of agriculture. Sugar saving not only means cutting down on consumption, but it • also means preventing waste. Americans have allowed their fondness for sugar to increase to the point where it has passed extravagance and become actual waste. Over-sweetening of tea and coffee is one of our great faults, /lore than this, too often a good part of the sugar is not dissolved and is left in the bottom of the cup to be thrown away. Every housewife should enforce the rule of "one teaspoonftil to the cupful or none at all.” The children as well as the grownups must be willing to do without some of the sweet things they want and every one must be satisfied with much smaller amounts of sweetening in general cooking. Serve fresh fruits without sugar instead of sweet puddings; have salads often in.place of desserts; use sweet dried fruits like dates, raisins or Acs ' with the breakfast cereals, or a little sirup in place of sugar. Use cake sparingly and make it from recipes that call for molasses or sirups—in-* stead of frosting spread it with a little jam, fruit butter, or paste. Canning Without Sugar. Fruits canned without sugar keCp perfectly but will not have the fine color and flavor which they would . have if packed in sirup. They are very good, however, when used in salads, desserts, pie fillings, ices and in fruit punches. Fruit juices take no sugar and their uses nre just as varied during the winter months as are the fruits put up unsweetened. In this way, the juices are kept available, for jelly-making at a future time when sugar may be more plentiful. Many, home demonstration agents have already substituted sirups successfully for sugar in their recipes for canning and presetting. Very satisfactory results may be secured* if when one pound of sugy is called for in a recipe two-thirds of a pound of corn strop is used and one-third of a pound Of sugar. Where sorghum and cane sirups are used without first clarifying the sirups the product will be darker. These strops, also, impart a flavor which destroys the natural fruit flavor, so the addition of spices to the recipes is sometimes advisable. Honey has been used successfully with cherries peaches; in such cases the amount of liquid called for in the

sirup is reduced one-quarter cupful for each cupful of honey. The following ‘are some of the best recipes used by the agents: Blackberry Jam. 3 pounds crushed blackberries. % pound New Orleans molasses or sorghum. % pound sugar. Cook all together, stirring carefully until it gives a good jelly test Pack hot into hot jars and seal. Peach Jam. 2 pounds peaches. Mt cupful peach juice. H teaspoonful allspice. 1 cupful corn sirup. 1 cupful sugar. 2 teaspoonfuls broken stick cinnamon. 1 teaspoonful cloves. 1 inch ginger root. Tie spices in cheesecloth bag and cook all together until bright and clear. Pack hot into hot jars and seal at once. Apple Pulp and Corn Sirup. Take one quart of apple pulp, from which the juice has been extracted for jelly making, and cook it yvith one cupful of corn sirup until the mass brightens. Pack while hot in hot jars and seal at once. Grape Paste. Add one cupful of corn sirup to two cupfuls of grape pulp from which juice has been extracted for jelly making. Cook together until the mass is rather dry, then turn out on an oiled surface and place where a current of air will pass over it. Dry for two or three days. Cut into squares or roll and slice. Pack in glass jars, tin boxes or paraf-fin-covered containers. Apple paste may be‘made in the same way.

Left-Over Cereals. Remnants of cereal breakfast foods may often be utilized to make palatable dishes, to thicken soups or other foods, and in similar ways. Small quantities of cooked cereal left over from a meal can be molded in cups and reheated for later use by setting the cups In boiling water. Another way to economize cereal mushes is to add hot water to any mush left over so as to make it very thin. - It can then easily be added to a new supply. The practice of frying the left-overs of boiled hominy, or of cornmeal mush is as bld as the settlement of this country, and the nursery song about the “bag pudding the queen did make" from King Arthur’s barley meal shows us that for centuries other cereal puddings have been treated in the kame way. In oatmeal oysters, leftover cereal is dipped in eggs and cniimbs and frfied. Left-over rice and other cereals are commonly used in croquettes and puddings/ ( f ,, Fruits so? Children. Fruits should be served in some form to children at least once a day. Fruit juices and the puh) of cooked fruit, baked apples ahdj pears, and stewed prunes are safes/ Whether the skins should be given dependsipartly on the age and health of the schild hnd partly on the way the fruit is prepared. If the skins are very tender they are not likely to cause trouble except with very young children. When apples and pears are baked the skins can be made tender by frequent basting.