FoodNetArchive

Buckeye cookery

1892

Page 216

Presented as published in 1892. Historical recipes may not meet modern food-safety standards. Cook from the modern interpretation, not the original instructions.
damp and chill autumn and spring days, a little fire is comfortable morning and evening. The food for the family must be fresh to be wholesome, and it is economy to buy the best as there is less waste in it. No housekeeper ought to be satisfied with any but the very best cooking, without which the most wholesome food is unpalatable and distressing; and no considerations of economy should ever induce her to place on the table bread with the slightest sour tinge, cake or pudding in the least heavy or solid, or meat with the slightest taint. Their use means disease and costly doctor’s bills, to say noth- ing of her own loss of repute as an accomplished housekeeper. If children and servants do work improperly, she should quietly insist on its being done correctly, and in self-defense they will soon do it correctly without supervis- ion. Order and system mean the stopping of waste, the practice of economy and additional means to expend for the table and for the luxuries and ele- gancies of life—things for which money is well expended. It requires good food to make good muscle and good brain, and the man or woman who habitually sits down to badly cooked or scanty dinners, fights the battle of life at a great disadvantage. SWEEPING AND DUSTING. The sweeping and dusting of a room seems simple enough, but is best done systematically. ‘‘ Dusters,’’ made of old prints, with which to cover books, statuettes, and such articles as are difficult to dust, and larger ones to cover beds, are indispensable in sweeping and dusting. ‘‘Carpet sweepers”’ are only fit for daily use, when thorough work is not required, a thorough sweeping once or twice a week sufficing even the tidiest of housekeepers. Before sweeping open the blinds and let in the light, and open the windows if it is not storming or too windy. Look on the ceiling for cobwebs, and sprinkle the carpet over with moistened bran, salt, damp coffee-grounds, or tea-leaves. Clean the corners and edges with a sharp-pointed stick and stiff whisk-broom. Brush down with the feather-duster all picture-cords, frames, and curtains, and remove all cob-webs with a broom about which a towel has been pinned, going through all rooms before removing the towel; then clear one corner of furniture and begin sweeping toward the center with a short, light stroke, going slowly and carefully so as to raise no dust, and drawing, not pushing, the broom. The second time over, increase the length and force of the stroke, and the third, brush with long and vigorous strokes, using care as the dirt at the center of the room is approached. In this way it will take twenty minutes to sweep a large room, but it will be clean, and the car- pet will wear, bright and fresh, much longer than if the dirt were allowed to grind out the fabric. After the sweeping remove the ‘‘dasters” carefully, carrying them out of doors to shake, and rub, not simply wipe, off the furniture and other articles with a clean, soft, cotton cloth or an old silk handkerchief, or, better, a soft dusting-towel with fleecy surface which is sold expressly for this purpose, folding the dust in as it soils the cloth, and when it 1s filled with dust, shake thoroughly out of doors. Managed in this way, curtains, furniture and carpets will never be loaded with dust, but. will re- main bright, clean and fresh trom one year’s house-cleaning to another's, If