Rensselaer Union, Volume 7, Number 48, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 August 1875 — AGRICULTURAL AND DOMESTIC. [ARTICLE]

AGRICULTURAL AND DOMESTIC.

—To make apple-tea, pour boiling water over roasted sour apples, and let them stand until the water is cold; this is a very palatable drink for invalids. —For cream-sponge, break one egg in a teacup, fill up the cup with sweet or sour cream; one cupful of sugar, one and. onehalf cupfuls of flour, one spoonful cream tartar, and one-half spoonful of soda. —A rich ice-cream is made by taking twelve lemons; squeeze well, and strain their juice upon as much fine sugar as will absorb the jftiice; then into this pour, very slowly, yet stirring very fast all the time, three quarts of cream. —To make apple custard pie, beat tart, well-flavored apples and stew until soft, then run through a colander; add to each pie one-third ot a cup of butter, one-half cup of sugar and three well-beaten eggs. Flavor with nutmeg and bake as a custard pie. —To make hickory-nut cake, take onehalf cup of butter, one and one-half cupfuls of sugar, two cupfuls of flour, threefourths cupful of sweet milk, one cupful of hickory-nut meats, two eggs, or the whites of four, one teaspoonful cream tartar, and one and one-half teaspoonfuls soda. —To make’ rice muffins, take one-half cup of boiled rice, boiled soft; add to this three spoonfuls of sugar, a bit of butter the size of an egg, one pint of sweet milk, onehalf cup of yeast, two quarts of flour and a pinch of salt; let it rise over night, if necessary; add in the morning a little soda. —To make salt risings for bread, take three tablespoonfuls of shorts or flour, one pinch (between thumb and forefinger) each sugar, salt, soda and ginger; mix with hot water to a thick batter, set over night and keep warm. This is called pinch yeast. Take of these two teaspoonfuls to one quart of batter mixed in the usual way, and set to rise; when risen, mix your dough and work it w'ell. —To preserve citron, pare and <ut in small slices, not exceeding a quarter of an inch in thickness; remove all the seeds, weigh, and then put them in alum water for two or three hours; then pour the alum water off, and boil in clean water until you can pierce them with a straw. Then make a sirup, allowing three-fourths of a pound of sugar to a pound of citron; place your citron in this sirup, and cook the same as you do any other preserves. Just before taking from the stove slice two or three lemons (according to the quantity of preserves you have); let them cook a minute longer, and they are ready for use or to put away. If cooked down too strong the preserves will become candied after awhile. —The following device for scaring birds from fruit trees or vegetable seeds is an old one, but is none the less valuable on that account: Get a glass bottle and cut oft the bottom, which can be done by tying around it a string saturated in turpentine or kerosene and burning it. A slight touch will detach the bottom if it does not part without. Make a hole in the cork and suspend a string or fine wire coiled two or three times to give it a little spring. A good-sized nail, a stone or anything will make a clapper for your glass bell. Then drive in the cork securely or wire it down, and leave wire enough to hang the bottle to some delicate bending twig or to a pliant sapling thrust in the ground. The bell will ring by the motion caused by the wind or by the birds alighting on twigs near it.