Farm and home cook book and housekeeper's assistant

a layer of melted lard or suet on top. Everything wants to j be boiling hot when canned, sealed air tight, and set away i while hot. Great care must be taken to use only perfect, air- | tight cans. This recipe for canning meat has been used in our ; family successfully for many years. — [Mrs. M. R., N. Y. ' Smoking Meat 1 The smokehouse should be large enough and have enough i ventilation to prevent the meat becoming overheated. It is ■ best to have the fire outside, with a length of stovepipe to ; ABOUT SMOKING MEAT 291 conduct the smoke into the house. Hard wood, such as maple or green hickory, smothered with sawdust of the same, are the best for smoking meat, and corncobs the next best. Wood with resin, as spruce or pine, gives a bad flavor to the meat. There is a low, prickly, evergreen shrub, bearing green berries, that grows in some localities, and where this can be had it is nicer than anything else, giving the meat a delicious flavor. Meat to be smoked should be well washed, or scrubbed with a hand brush in tepid water, to prevent a crust of salt forming on the outside, or if very salt, soaked overnight. It should hang and dry out a day before being put into the smokehouse, and then hung so no two pieces touch each other. The fire should be slow at first, to heat up the meat gradually, and meat should never be frozen when put in the smokehouse. In cold weather it is best to keep the fire going steadily until finished, or the meat will not smoke evenly, owing to the inside being too cold for the smoke to penetrate, after cooling. Thirty-six hours will smoke meat nicely, if the fire is kept going steadily, or in warm weather a fire built every other day for two weeks cures it nicely, keeping the ventilator screened and the house dark, to exclude flies. — [F & H. Keeping Smoked Meat If the meat can be kept away from flies, it will keep nicely in a cool, dry cellar, but if one fly can get at it, it must be otherwise protected. A good and easy way is to wrap in paper and then in muslin sacks, and bury in a grain bin, by this method keeping a uniform temperature and excluding insects. If this cannot be done, it will be absolutely safe if wrapped in paper and put in muslin sacks, and the sacks completely coated with either ordinary lime whitewash or "yellow wash," and hung up so they do not touch. The directions for "yellow wash" are: 3 lbs barites, 4 lbs flour, Vs lb chrome yellow, 1-6 lb glue. Make the day before using. Heat l^^ gals water and add the flour, mixed to a smooth paste. Dissolve the chrome in 1 qt water and add it. Boil, stirring con^ stantly, and adding barites slowly. Apply cold with a brush, and stir often while using. — [F & H. Smoking In a Box Take a large, light box, place hooks inside the lop to hang" the meat on, and have a hole made on the side to fit a stovepipe. Then take an old discarded heater and fit the pipe to the box, with the stove outside the box. Have a lid or door on one side of the box, so you can look to the meat. Start a fire with a few dry cobs, fill partly with straw, and