A clean, tidy, well-arranged store-room is one sign of a good methodical housekeeper. When stores are put away at hap-hazard, and taken out at any time and in any quantity, disorder and extravagance prevail. A store-room ought to be large, airy, cool, and dry. Such a room is not always to be had, but even if acloset has to be put up with, it may be kept clean. Shelves should be ranged around the walls, hooks fastened to the edges of the shelves. The driest and coolest part of the rooms should be kept for jams, jellies, and pickles. All the jars should be distinctly labeled at the front, so that they will not all need to be taken down every time a particular jar is wanted. Biscuits or cakes should be kept in closely covered tin boxes; lemons should be hung in nets.. Soap should be bought in large quantities, and cut up in convenient-sized pieces, so that it may be dry before it is used. Coffee, when roasted, should be kept in small quantities; if unroasted, it will improve with keeping. Stores on no account should be left in the papers in which they were sent from the grocer’s, but should be put. into tin canisters or earthenware jars closely covered, and each jar, like the jam, should be labeled. Stores should be given out regularly, either daily or weekly. In order to check their consumption, the housekeeper will do well to keep in the store- room a memorandum book, with a pencil fastened to it, and in this book she should enter the date on which all stores were brought in or taken out. By means of these memoranda she can compare one week’s outgo with another, and immediately discover any extravagance. A hammer, a few nails, a little gum, a ball of string, a few sheets of foolscap, and a pair of scissors, should always be kept in the store-room. THE ICE-HOUSE. Ice is one of the greatest of summer luxuries, and indeed is almost a neces- sity. Itisso easily put up, even in the country, and so cheaply protected, that there is no reason why any one who is able to own or rent a house may not have it in liberal supply. A cheap ice-house may be made by parti- tioning off a space about twelve feet square in the wood-shed, or even in the . barn. The roof must be tight over it, but there is no necessity for matched or fine lumber for the walls. They should, however, be coated with coal-tar_ inside. as the long-continued moisture puts them toa severe test and brings on decay. Ice should be taken from still places in running streams, or from clear ponds. It may be cut with half an old cross-cut saw, but there are gaws and ice-plows made for the purpose to be had in almost every village. Sy ae 458 KEEPING FRUITS AND VEGETABLES. In cutting ice, as soon as it is of sufficient thickness and before much warm weather, select a still day, with the thermometer as near zero as may be. Ice handles much more comfortably and easily when it is so cold. that it imme- diately freezes dry, thus preventing the wet clothes and mittens, which are the sole cause of any suffering in handling it; and ice put up in sharp, cold _ weather, before it has been subjected to any thaw, will keep much better and be much more useful in the hot days of summer than if its packing had been delayed until late winter or early spring, and then the ice put up half melted and wet. The best simple contrivance for removing blocks of ice from the water isa plank with a cleat nailed across one end, which is to be slipped under the block, which slides against the cleat, and may then be easily drawn ‘out with the plank, without lifting. Cut the ice in large blocks of equal

AI-modernized reading of the original text

A clean, tidy, well-arranged store-room is one sign of a good methodical housekeeper. When stores are put away at hap-hazard, and taken out at any time and in any quantity, disorder and extravagance prevail. A store-room ought to be large, airy, cool, and dry. Such a room is not always to be had, but even if a closet has to be put up with, it may be kept clean. Shelves should be ranged around the walls, hooks fastened to the edges of the shelves. The driest and coolest part of the rooms should be kept for jams, jellies, and pickles. All the jars should be distinctly labeled at the front, so that they will not all need to be taken down every time a particular jar is wanted. Biscuits or cakes should be kept in closely covered tin boxes; lemons should be hung in nets.. Soap should be bought in large quantities, and cut up in convenient-sized pieces, so that it may be dry before it is used. Coffee, when roasted, should be kept in small quantities; if unroasted, it will improve with keeping. Stores on no account should be left in the papers in which they were sent from the grocer’s, but should be put. into tin canisters or earthenware jars closely covered, and each jar, like the jam, should be labeled. Stores should be given out regularly, either daily or weekly. In order to check their consumption, the housekeeper will do well to keep in the storeroom a memorandum book, with a pencil fastened to it, and in this book she should enter the date on which all stores were brought in or taken out. By means of these memoranda she can compare one week’s outgo with another, and immediately discover any extravagance. A hammer, a few nails, a little gum, a ball of string, a few sheets of foolscap, and a pair of scissors, should always be kept in the store-room. THE ICE-HOUSE. Ice is one of the greatest of summer luxuries, and indeed is almost a necessity. Itisso easily put up, even in the country, and so cheaply protected, that there is no reason why any one who is able to own or rent a house may not have it in liberal supply. A cheap ice-house may be made by partitioning off a space about twelve feet square in the wood-shed, or even in the . barn. The roof must be tight over it, but there is no necessity for matched or fine lumber for the walls. They should, however, be coated with coal-tar_ inside. as the long-continued moisture puts them toa severe test and brings on decay. Ice should be taken from still places in running streams, or from clear ponds. It may be cut with half an old cross-cut saw, but there are gaws and ice-plows made for the purpose to be had in almost every village. In cutting ice, as soon as it is of sufficient thickness and before much warm weather, select a still day, with the thermometer as near zero as may be. Ice handles much more comfortably and easily when it is so cold. that it immediately freezes dry, thus preventing the wet clothes and mittens, which are the sole cause of any suffering in handling it; and ice put up in sharp, cold _ weather, before it has been subjected to any thaw, will keep much better and be much more useful in the hot days of summer than if its packing had been delayed until late winter or early spring, and then the ice put up half melted and wet. The best simple contrivance for removing blocks of ice from the water isa plank with a cleat nailed across one end, which is to be slipped under the block, which slides against the cleat, and may then be easily drawn ‘out with the plank, without lifting. Cut the ice in large blocks of equal

Buckeye cookery