au Gratin
Dice enough cold boiled potatoes to measure one pint. Put one tablespoonful of butter and the same amount of flour in a saucepan with a little salt and pepper. Cook till well mixed, then add one cupful of milk and stir until smooth and thick. Add the potatoes and simmer five minutes, then pour into a buttered, shallow baking dish. Mix one scant cupful of fine, dry bread crumbs with one tablespoonful of melted butter, spread over the potatoes and place in a hot oven until the crumbs are a golden brown, then serve hot.
Make a plain lemon jelly, adding a little sherry wine if desired. Put a layer of sliced marshmallows in the bottom of the mold, and when the jelly has begun to set spread a little of it over them. Continue with jelly and marshmallows till the mold is full, then put away to harden. Serve with whipped cream.
Lemon and grape juice frappé is another cool dessert that is also light. To make it, boil a pint of water with two cupfuls of granulated sugar for ten minutes and cool it. Then add a little cinnamon and half a cupful of lemon juice, and lastly a quart of Armour's grape juice. Freeze and serve in cups, with a little of the grape juice.
"I'll ask my husband."
"I don't think my husband would allow me to do that."
"I'm sure Jack would say 'No.'"
Do you know the wife who, whenever she does not want to do anything, always places the responsibility on her husband's shoulders?
She knows quite well that she can do almost anything she likes with her husband, and that there are really precious few things that he would say "No" to her doing, but she finds that to say her husband would never allow her to do this, or that, is a very easy way of saying "No" to people without offending them.
But it's not quite fair on the husband really, because, after a time, people begin to think that he really must be rather a bear to be so strict with his wife.
And he gets disliked, very often, accordingly.
If you don't want to do a thing, say so; don't make your husband the scapegoat.
Of course the wife who does this kind of thing never dreams that people will blame her husband: it's just a convenient fiction to her.
But people are apt to think less of her husband because of it.
So you'll be wise to find some other excuse when excuses are necessary. — Exchange.
A Necessity in the Pantry
"How can you get along without a ham in the house?" asked one housewife of another; "to me it is as necessary as anything we ever have in our pantry."
This housewife, in saying the above, echoed the sentiments of many others. There is no meat more "necessary" in the house than good ham. Not only is the meat there in all its nutriment but it is preserved – that is, cured and smoked – in such a way that there is given to it a piquancy which whets the appetite and gives a stimulus to the gastric juices, thus aiding – so the doctors tell us – the process of digestion.
In so many cases of convalescence where the appetite is flagging and the digestion weak, ham and bacon are prescribed, both for their tonic and nutritive value.
On the crisp snappy mornings of autumn when a hearty breakfast is necessary and the appetite has not yet recovered from the jading effects of the hot weather what could be more tempting and more nourishing than a slice of broiled ham – broiled just enough to be thoroughly cooked and yet not enough to discolor the delicious appetising pink color of the meat. Even the aroma thrown out in the process of cooking sends a tempting appeal to the stomach that is impossible to resist.
Buying a whole ham at a time is the best and most economical way of buying ham, as experience will prove. It can be boiled or baked whole and sliced for whatever purpose intended. When baked ham is broiled for breakfast it requires to be cooked just long enough to get hot all the way through.
It is many years since the curing of ham was first tried and in those years much has been accomplished. Today Armour's Star Hams represent perfection in cured ham. In them the highest quality is allied to skillful curing and careful smoking.
From many thousand hams those intended for the Star brand are chosen; the process of curing is a specialty of Armour and Company, and careful smoking over green hickory logs gives the final necessary touch.
They say "the proof of the pudding is the tasting of it" and this applies to Armour's Star Hams as well.
[Many ways of using this, to most people, necessary meat, will be found on page 12.]
Halloween Hints
Bake large apples from which the core has been removed until soft, but not long enough to burst the skin. When cooked, insert a marshmallow into the core space, put a teaspoonful of sugar on top and a few maraschino cherries. When ready to serve turn over each a scant teaspoonful of brandy and light just as the table is reached. The brandy will burn with a ghastly flame and melt the sugar and marshmallows. Whipped cream served in a bowl is a delicious addition.
Cream one half cupful of butter with one and one half cupfuls of sugar; add three eggs and beat five minutes; add one cupful of milk. Sift together one third cupful of cornstarch, and two cupfuls of flour, one and one half teaspoonfuls of ground mixed spices, and three teaspoonfuls of baking powder; then add to the mixture. Now add one cupful of seeded floured raisins, also one cupful of chopped nuts. Turn into a well greased loaf cake pan and bake in a moderate oven about forty-five minutes. Frost with a white boiled icing. Melt sweet chocolate to equal one third cupful, flavor with a teaspoonful of lemon juice, add one cupful of boiled chestnuts which have been run through the meat grinder, and enough confectionery sugar to make a paste easily handled. Roll and cut (by pasteboard pattern) black cats or any other Halloween figure, press them into the icing on the sides of the cake.
Sautéing and Frying
"What is the difference between sautéing potatoes and frying them?" asks a young housekeeper from South Dakota in the Day's Work, and as the subject is of much importance and deserving of more space than may be given to it in the correspondence columns it is answered here.
In a word, to sauté – pronounced sotay – anything, is to cook it in a shallow frying pan with a little fat, turning as one side is browned to let the other color. Cooked potatoes are often warmed over this way. To "fry" potatoes, croquettes, etc., is to cook them in deep boiling fat, immersing the object to be fried while the fat is boiling hot.
That is the difference between sautéing and frying but there are one or two points about frying – this much abused way of cooking – that must be borne in mind if one would have the best results. In frying, a deep kettle must be used and it is wise to keep one for this purpose only. The one called a Scotch bowl is especially made for this purpose and is most satisfactory.
Use only the best fat for frying – an absolutely pure leaf lard which contains neither water nor salt and have your kettle two thirds full, that is, deep enough to quite cover the article to be fried. Once started, this quantity must be kept up, as it reduces slightly with each frying, but the same fat may be used again and again if care be taken to keep it clean and of a good color. After each frying let the fat cool a little and strain to remove crumbs, etc., which would otherwise burn and spoil the fat. If strained when very hot it is apt to unsolder the strainer. Wipe the kettle clean, return the strained lard and set aside until wanted again.
French Fried Potatoes are sliced thin or cut lengthwise in strips laid in ice water for half an hour; then dried thoroughly between two towels and plunged into boiling deep fat. As soon as they are delicately browned they are fished out with a split spoon and laid in a hot colander to drain off every drop of fat. Serve at once.
German Fried Potatoes are as a rule cooked and cold before they are sautéed. Some prefer them to the French. To many minds they never get quite rid of the stale taste that clings to the cold potato. The same may be said of stewed cold, cooked potatoes. The least objectionable way of serving them as left-overs