To insure success with salt-rising bread in cold weather, keep the night yeast in a box of hay. A small wooden box with a close-fitting lid is best for this purpose. Put hay into the bot tom of the box and around the sides. In the middle of this set your yeast, then cover with hay. This will keep the yeast from a chill. Good bread will be the result.
When serving afternoon tea, try using slices of orange instead of the inevitable lemon. The flavor is very delicious, especially when combined with green tea. Fresh sliced cucum bers also give an agreeable flavor to hot tea if a dash of rum be added to the beverage.
Set a glass of jelly in a pan of boiling water for two minutes or more. Let the water reach to the top of the glass. Then plunge into cold water. Take it out of that im mediately and turn bottom up on a cut-glass nappy or saucer. It will be prettily molded.
To grind coffee and soak it some hours before boiling is a decided economy, but it must not be soaked in the pot. The acid in the coffee acting on the metal pot turns the coffee dark and gives it an unpleas ant •flavor. You can easily test this at breakfast time by putting a drop of coffee on the steel carver. Soak the coffee in a closed earthen vessel.
I save all paraffin paper from cracker boxes and cut it up to fit cake tins. After a pan is greased I put a sheet of paper in the bottom, and it keeps the cake from sticking to the pan. It 'is better to let the paper stay on cake after it is baked, until it is cold, unless frosting is to be used.
Corn-meal mush vvill brown very quickly when fried, if a little sugar is put in the water while boiling.
When mixing mustard, add a few drops of oil or sweet oil. This will prevent the unsightly black surface of the interior of your mustard jar. The paste will retain its original bright yellow color as long as a par ticle remains.
New popcorn, or popcorn that is damp, should not be dried out before popping, as is usually done. If you have recently gathered your corn, or if it has been left in a damp room, and you wish to use it right away,, shell a few ears and put it in a bowl of water for ten minutes. It will pop readily, and the flakes will be crisp and nice.
When picking a fowl, particularly if there are many pin feathers, the work can be simplified by plunging it into hot water for a few seconds, then wrapping in a piece of burlap and allowing it to stand for three or four minutes. When picking, uncover only a portion at a time, so that the rest will remain warm and damp, and the feathers, great and small, can be stripped of in an amazingly short time.
Use lemon peel, after the juice has been partly squeezed out, to rub stains from silverware; also to re move fruit stains from your fingers.
If you do not want liquor in your mince meat, use one pint of clear, strong coffee to each gallon of mince meat.
Warm jelly glasses before Tutting in the jelly, as it helps it to thicken, or set them in the sun.
As a relish and a garnish to serve with a light meat course, such as chicken croquettes or timbales, noth ing is more refreshing than small in dividual molds of very tart lemon jelly, in which are molded a few nut meats. The jelly can be tinted to carry out any color scheme.