Hilda's diary of a Cape housekeeper

20 drops in water every 2 or 3 hours, and then as much milk as they can drink, and some brandy. The best thing if any one is bitten is to tie a handkerchief tightly above the bitten part, and suck out the poison and apply ammonia, Sal volatile is also given in frequent doses. During the harvest season there were sometimes instances of the labourers being bitten ; perhaps they had put a few sheaves on the ground without noticing a small hole in the ground, and out of that the venomous creature would creep and bite. If discovered at once, and the poison sucked by a friend or snake-doctor, no ill effects were felt. We had an old Hottentot, Moos Julies, who was very good at it; and he had a brother who was believed in as a “snakedoctor,” sucking the poison of every snake he found. He wore a cap which was never washed, and the victims of the snake-bite were allowed to boil it up and drink the extract as an antidote ; horrid, is it not } — but he always cured our patients by applying ammonia and giving sulphuric acid in water, and after that brandy and milk. I only once remember a man dying, but then he never said he was bitten until too late to do anything. He died a week afterwards. January 13. — Kitchen- garden and Vegetables. — Vegetables are plentiful this month — cucumbers, vegetable-marrows, beans, tomatoes, etc., and many and excellent are the recipes that all these names recall to mind. The other day in Mrs. Earle’s delightful book. Pot-pourri Jrom a Surrey Garden, I came across a recipe for a good cold luncheon-dish made of tomatoes with a portion of the middle scooped out and replaced with cold minced chicken and mayonnaise sauce, and decorated with aspic jelly. I tried this with the recipe for Mayonnaise Sauce in Hilda's Jan. GREEN BEANS. CREAM SAUCE Where is it, p. 218; and for Aspic, Hilda, p. 119. But instead of a quart of boiling water in latter recipe, I dissolved the gelatine in well-flavoured stock. It was pronounced excellent. Green Beans. — It is in January that green beans are plentiful, and we pick the young French beans every day, so that they do not become coarse or stringy. We then get a large earthenware jar and lay in it alternately a layer of freshly-gathered French beans, and on them a sprinkling of salt, and so on till the jar is filled, ending with plenty of salt at the top. If preserved like this they keep well ; and when wanted we take them out, wash them well and lay them in water for a time to prevent their being too salt. (A friend tells me in England they do the same, using an earthen jar with a slate on top weighted with a stone or brick, and buried below the reach of frost.) The beans can be boiled, cut up or whole whichever is preferred, then drained, warmed up, and a lump of fresh butter and a squeeze of lemon added, and a little chopped parsley on the top ; or they can be served with white cream sauce made as follows — Cream Sauce. — Dessertspoonful of butter, ditto fine flour or maizena rubbed well together. Add 2 spoonfuls of boiling water or milk, a little salt ; and when stirred quite smoothly over the fire for a few minutes add a tablespoonful or more of cream. Serve over any boiled vegetable. — My own 7'ecipe.