If sausages are rolled in flour before cooking they will not break. Before rolling them, prick the sausages on each side with a fork. Add a tablespoonful of water to the sausage pan; this keeps the sausages from sticking until their own fat begins to run. Cook sausages slowly; they need constant attention and rearranging…
We have salads almost every day, so I keep a stock of cooked, diced carrots and potatoes handy and, whenever I can, use shredded savoy instead of paying high prices for lettuces when they are out of season. My salads are arranged on individual plates – to the vegetables I usually add one of the…
PLUM FLAN ½ lb. Short pastry, ½ lb. Plums, ½ dessertspoonfuls sugar, 1 tea-spoonful cornflour. Place short pastry in a sandwich tin, cook for twenty minutes in a moderate oven (350°F.). Arrange lightly-stewed plums in halves on the pastry, add sugar to sufficient juice to cover the fruit. Mix 1 heaped teaspoonful of cornflour with…
There are many ways of serving potatoes. Instead of chips with fish I serve potato cubes about the size of pineapple cubes, fried in thick fritter batter. I make potato sausages from cold potato, mashed and mixed with a little milk and grated cheese and eggs. Shape, fry and serve on fingers of dripping toast….
DOUGHNUTS 6 medium potatoes (mashed), margarine tfie size of an egg, 1 cupful milk, 2 eggs, 2 cupfuls sugar, 3 tablespoonfuls baking powder. Mix ingredients, using sufficient flour to roll out and shape. Fry in hot fat. Cover with castor sugar. DUMPLINGS 1 cupful plain flour, 1 lbs baking powder, 1 teaspoonful salt, ½ teaspoonful…
Beef kidney, 2 tablespoonfuls margarine, 1 cupful chopped onion, 2 sliced carrots, ½ cupful chopped celery, 1 clove, 3 tablespoonfuls ketchup, 3 tablespoonfuls curry powder, 1 table-spoonful salt, 1 ½ cupfuls water. (Enough for four persons.) Split and prepare kidney in small pieces. Fry onions and curry powder in margarine; add kidney pieces. Add rest…
1 tin baked beans, 1 cupful sour milk, 1 tablespoonful chopped onion, ½ cupful syrup, 2 slices bacon, ½ teaspoonful dry mustard, ½ teaspoonful black pepper, 1 teaspoonful salt, 1 teaspoonful Worcester sauce. (Enough for four persons.) Drain beans, save half a cupful of liquid to mix with the rest of the ingredients. Place in…
4 cupfuls shredded cabbage, 2 cupfuls corned beef, 1 table-spoonful mustard, salt, pepper, 2 tablespoonfuls ketchup, 1 tablespoonful fat, 1 cupful milk, 1 tablespoon1 lb flour,2medium onions, 1 dessertspoonful curry powder. (Enough for four persons.) Cook cabbage, curry powder and onions until tender. Stir flour into fat until creamy, add milk and cook, then add…
BISCUITS (HONEY) 1 lb. Flour, 1 level teaspoonful bicarbonate of soda, 4 oz. Margarine, ½ lb. Honey, ½ lb. Brown sugar, 1 oz. Ground ginger, pinch of salt, 3 tablespoonfuls milk. Sift together flour, salt, ginger. Add brown sugar. Dissolve bicarbonate of soda in milk. Place honey and margarine in a small pan, stir over…
When stewing apples, add twice the water required. After five minutes, pour half of the water into a jug, then finish cooking the apples. The water poured off makes a delicious drink. APPLES, BAKED Peel and core apples, one for each person, and cut more than halfway down each apple to make six sections. Bake…
THERE are sure to be days when you just can’t think what to give the family for a change. Plan your menus roughly for the whole week, then plan in detail for two days ahead. This system will enable you to serve tasty meals. BREAKFASTS Steamed, seasoned tomatoes on toast. Sausages and fried slices of…
The following hints will help the young housewife to ask for meat and offal to suit what she has in mind for a meal. Pies and Puddings Beef. Aitchbone, buttock, chuck, brisket, thick flank, leg and kidney. Veal. Shoulder, fillet, pie pieces. Mutton and lamb. Leg and shoulder. Pork. Hind or spare rib. Stewing Cuts…
I SHALL never forget the first meal I cooked by myself after my marriage. I had never cooked an entire meal before and I didn’t know one joint from another or one measure from another. I was a greenhorn when it came to cooking and baking. Now I am considered to be the best pastry-maker…
Next day, put all clodies to be mended on one side and put others away to be ironed first. Try to do the mending the same day, and this makes you feel that the clothes are finished with for the week (for you will have enough mending of other things to keep you busy other…
I save as much washing as I can by protecting my clothes with aprons, and making the girls wear aprons when indoors. And I don’t let the children walk around without shoes. I sort my washing into groups before starting – flannels, woollens and hose, table-linen, bed-linen, towels, coloured articles, etc., and go over the…
Before storing away winter clothes and costumes, turn over lapels, turn out pockets and brush away loose dirt. Be sure the coat-hangers are big enough to fit to the shoulders of the garments so that they do not lose their shape. Pack winter gloves well with paper. Polish all handbags and see that all drawers…
Wash the article first, being careful to remove all soap (this is important) and follow the instructions given on the packet. Buy good dyes and test the dye on a piece of fabric similar to that you will be dyeing. The bath must be sufficient to hold the article, and the dye liquid must cover…
When a carpet is stained from a fall of soot, put common salt over the stain and brush this away after half an hour. Repeat with fresh salt until the soot mark disappears. Leather and hide furniture which has grown stained and greasy can be sponged over with a mixture of ammonia to which lias…
Fix a cardboard sole to a pair of men’s old socks. Darn soles to socks in decorative fashion and have a coloured-thread border all round where the sole is joined to the sock; thread ribbon through the top and you have fine bedroom slippers. By sandpapering baby’s shoes before they are worn you can prevent…
Add cut-outs of leaves to torn parts of curtains; the effect is very pretty. When edges or hems are frayed, make an eight-inch hem of a floral contrasting material, and run a four-inch hem of the same floral material up the sides of the curtains. And quite often the best pans of two sets of…
To straighten bent needles, hold them over the steam of a kettle. Put them into cold water immediately they are straightened. Always buy enough wool to finish a garment. Colours differ so much, and it may be hard to match up if you are short of wool. When you unravel a woollen garment, wind the…
Where there is a small family, make it a rule to mend for half an hour each night. You will never get behind with the mending it you do this. Before you cut fabric, lay the material out and see how it goes. Nap fabrics must be cut in one direction. Cut with the nap…
Where there are twin beds, don’t hang a picture above each bed. Instead, group a few small pictures just above the centre table – this looks pretty and unusual. Frame a room door with small pictures of flowers or animals or birds. Fix a folding ledge to a wall in a small room and you…
HOME MA KING is definitely a business, yet few housewives trouble to keep books about it. If they had an outside business they would be required by law to do so. I have already stressed the advantage of keeping record books of all tradesmen’s transaction!), and the usefulness of keeping a record of all illnesses…
ON THE way home you may call on an invalid who is on the club’s books. One of the good things all neighbourly clubs do is to help look after the welfare of local invalids. Visits relieve a patient’s loneliness and a spare half-hour sitting with an invalid will let an attendant get out for…
I HAVE found from experience that you get little satisfaction from your voluntary work if you are connected with too many organizations at once. You can only give of your very best to one club at a time, so choose the one which best suits your interests and hobbies, and go all out to make…
WE HAVE gossiped about entertaining in the home, but sooner or later the housewife will be asked to help with outside entertainments as well, so here are a few hints that will make you a sought-after person when there is a bazaar in view. Stalls at a bazaar can be dressed to represent the seasons…
SOME people think that entertaining means getting out the best china and silver and making the family dress up until everyone is uncomfortable and irritable, and secretly wishing the coming guests far away. But entertaining isn’t like that at all; it is just the fun of having a few friends in – folk like ourselves…
I DON’T know why, but I always associate the dining-room with the bathroom. Perhaps it is because, no matter when a meal is ready, there is always someone just finishing dressing, or rushing off to wash their hands. My dining-room is in cream and brown – cream walls widi a stippled all-over brown effect, and…
A NICE bathroom is a decided asset to any home, and care should be taken over its decoration and arrangement so that it suits the requirements of the entire family. Choose a colour scheme that will be bright and invigorating. Have you noticed in modern estates and at exhibitions that show houses have the bathrooms…
WE SEEM to have talked about downstairs long enough; let’s go upstairs and view the bedrooms. On my stair landing is an old-fashioned blanket box. It is moth-proof and just the thing needed in every home. I store blankets and woollen clothes in it during the summer and in the winter 1 fill it with…
COMFORT above all else should be the first impression on entering the living-room. There is ‘his ‘chair and ‘her ‘chair, of course, but the thoughtful housewife sees to it that there is also a set of easy chairs for visitors. Too often the living-room has only a settee and two easy chairs and the placement…
THERE is a Scottish saying that you judge the way a home is kept by the symmetry of the window curtains and the cleanliness of the doorstep. Thus a Scottish housewife starts cleaning her home from the front step inwards. Wherever I can I arrange things to lessen work. My doorstep is of dark oak,…
I have a small table on castors which I can pull up to the stove when I am cooking, then I can stand and reach to the stove, the pantry or the sink, and not move a step. This pull table is a boon to me in many ways. It has a cutlery drawer and…
WHEN the great day comes and you enter a home of your own at last, you will want to do many things at once to get the place to your liking. But please do approach this problem in the way you started married life – by working to a system, so that home life goes…
The food problem is one needing care when the home consists of one room. Have the gas-stove at one side of the window so that the fumes have a way of escape without going through the room. Place a screen in front of the stove and have the back of the screen fitted with rods…
No MATTER the size of the home, it is the way you plan it that counts. Like me, you may start off in one room. If so, make it snug and comfy, as it will probably be your home for a year or two. Try to get that room in a large, old-fashioned type of…
THE housewife of today has to have a practical mind. It is not only rent, taxes and food expenditure that run away with the money – it is the incidentals. Travel, shopping, electric 6res and other gadgets burned without an eye to economy, laundry expenses, pleasure, frequent visits to the hairdresser, holidays – to name…
THE day before I married, my mother gave me wise counsel: ‘Look on homemaking as a business and you will run it successfully.’ Throughout my married life I have never ceased to be grateful for such sound advice. On returning from our honeymoon I saw to it that everything was in order as regards my…
The search for a place to start marriage in a private way is not a situation peculiar only to present-day circumstances. I started married life in one furnished room – but we were private. I am glad now I started that way. I soon found it is not the size of a home that counts…
A HOME of their own – that is what every young couple dream about. Early in acquaintance the dream home is a castle; as acquaintance ripens the castle dwindles in size until it is rather like the home of their respective parents! When the marriage stage is reached most couples are glad of any home…
I WOULD like to change the name ‘Housewife’ to ‘home-maker.’ ‘Housewife ‘has such a commercial sound, but ‘homemaker ‘- there is all the love of home, of happiness, of family and neighbourliness in its meaning. I have found that there is something more important than running the home itself. It is that a woman has…