Food study

In canning fruit, use a fourth to a third of the weight of the fruit in sugar and from two and a half to three cups of water for each pound of sugar. Make a syrup by boiling the sugar and water together for three to five minutes. Scald the peaches by dipping in boiling water long enough to loosen the skin; peel, cut in halves, and remove the stones. Then, cook the fruit in the syrup. Often, only part of the fruit is cooked at a time, so that there need not be an excess of the syrup. While the peaches are cooking, sterilize a jar and cover, as the test tubes were sterilized in the last lesson. When the peaches are done, place the jar either in hot water or on a cloth wrung out of hot water. Fill the jar with fruit and pour in syrup until it overflows. If there is not enough syrup, add boiling water. As quickly as possible, put on a rubber and screw on the cover. When the jar is cold, screw the cover as tight as possible, being sure that it is air tight. C. ANOTHER METHOD OF CANNING. Fill a jar with peaches, cut in half and stoned, within one inch of the top. Make a syrup and pour over the fruit. Adjust the rubber, screw cover on lightly or adjust top without clamping, and place the jar in a moderate oven or in a steamer. Cook till the fruit appears clear and waxy. Then remove from the oven and tighten the cover. Compare the advantages and disadvantages of these two methods of canning. MOLDS (ONE CAUSE OF THE SPOILING OF FOOD) Molds are so well known to everyone that it is surprising to learn that there is no such botanical classification. All plants that do not contain chlorophyll, the coloring matter which makes an ordinary plant green, are called colorless plants or fungi. The fungi include mushrooms and toadstools, but of more interest to the housekeeper are molds, yeasts, and bacteria. All these are plants which feed on organic food and so may be found living on any of our foods that are not properly taken care of. While nearly everyone recognizes molds at sight, few have looked at them closely enough to realize what really beautiful plants they are. When they begin growing, they appear at first as soft, fluffy masses which are made up of a tangle of much-branched threads. Each thread, called a mycelium, looks white as it is seen ordinarily. but appears nearly colorless under a microscope. When the mold is older, perhaps after two days, it may show a color, blue, green, brown, black, red, or pink, each color marking a different variety of mold. The color is due to the so-called spores, which are reproductive bodies and which, if they contained nutritive material, would be seeds. Each different species of mold has a different way of forming spores. Perhaps the most common household mold, one that is almost always found on moldy bread, is penicillium. This is a blue mold ; that is, at the time of spore formation, it becomes blue, or bluish-green. This color is due to the color of the spores themselves. When the mold is a day or two old, the mycelium sends up vertical threads which soon divide into many little branches. Then, each branch begins to divide by ringlike constrictions as if it were trying to make beads of itself, until, finally, the branch is nothing more than a string of little round balls, each of which is a spore. These spores