MACARONI WITH CREAM SAUCE

Possibly the simplest way in which to prepare macaroni is with cream sauce, as is explained in the accompanying recipe. Such a sauce not only increases the food value of any Italian paste, but improves its flavor. Macaroni prepared in this way may be used as the principal dish of a light meal, as it serves to take the place of meat. Click here for more Free Macaroni Recipes

MACARONI WITH CREAM SAUCE
(Sufficient to Serve Six)

1-1/2 c. macaroni
3 qt. boiling water
3 tsp. salt
1/4 c. crumbs
CREAM SAUCE

2 Tb. butter
2 Tb. flour
1 tsp. salt
1/8 tsp. pepper
1 1/2 c. milk

Break the macaroni into inch lengths, add it to the salted boiling water, and cook it until it is tender. To prepare the sauce, melt the butter in a saucepan, add the flour, salt, and pepper, stir until smooth, and gradually add the milk, which must be hot, stirring rapidly so that no lumps form. Cook the cream sauce until it thickens and then add it to the macaroni. Pour all into a baking dish, sprinkle the bread or cracker crumbs over the top, dot with butter, and bake until the crumbs are brown. Serve hot.

BREAD RECIPES

In order that the beginner may bring into use the bread-making principles and directions that have been set forth, and at the same time become familiar with the quantities of ingredients that must be used, there are here given a number of recipes for the making of bread. These recipes include not only white bread-that is, bread made from white flour–but whole-wheat, graham, rye, and corn bread, as well as bread in which fruit and nuts are incorporated.

The beginner will find it a good plan to begin making bread entirely of white flour, for the reason that it is easier to determine the consistency of the dough mixture at various stages, as well as during the kneading, if there is no coarse material, such as bran, corn meal, nuts, fruits, etc., in the dough. Later, when a definite knowledge along this line has been acquired, one after the other of the bread recipes should be tried. They are no more difficult to carry out than the recipes for white bread; indeed, the woman who has had experience in bread making will find that she will be equally successful with all of them.

WHITE BREAD–QUICK PROCESS
(Sufficient for Two Large or Three Small Loaves)

2 Tb. fat
2 Tb. sugar
1 Tb. salt
2 cakes compressed yeast
1 qt. lukewarm liquid (water or milk) 
3 qt. flour
1 c. flour additional for kneading
 
Put the fat, the sugar, and the salt into the mixing bowl, and then to them add the yeast dissolved in a few tablespoonfuls of the lukewarm liquid. Add the remaining liquid and stir in half or all of the flour, according to whether the process is to be completed by the sponge or the straight-dough method. One yeast cake may be used instead of two. However, if the smaller quantity of yeast is used, the process will require more time, but the results will be equally as good. After the dough has been allowed to rise the required number of times and has been kneaded properly for the method selected, place it in greased pans, let it rise sufficiently, and proceed with the baking.

More Free Bread Recipes here…

 

PROCEDURE IN BAKING WAFFLES

The procedure in making waffles is very similar to that in making griddle cakes. While the waffle mixture is being prepared, heat the waffle iron. Then grease it thoroughly on both sides with a rind of salt pork or a cloth pad dipped in fat, being careful that there is no excess fat, as it will run out when the iron is turned over. With the iron properly greased and sufficiently hot, place several spoonfuls of the batter in the center and close the iron. By so doing, the batter will be pressed out to cover the entire surface. In pouring the waffle batter, do not cover the entire surface of the iron with batter nor place any near the outside edge, for it is liable to run out when the iron is closed. In case this happens, be sure to put in less batter the next time. Allow the waffle to brown on the side near the fire and then turn the iron, so as to brown the other side. When the waffle is sufficiently brown, remove it; then grease the iron and repeat the process.

COLOR CHARACTERISTICS AND COMBINATION

To become familiar with the colors used in dress, look into their characteristics.

Blue may be regarded as a standard color for woman’s dress. It not only gives the impression of coolness, but is restful and unobtrusive. The lighter tints are very closely related to white, and when it is the purpose to make white give the impression of purity a bluish tint is always given to it. On the other hand, when mixed with black, blue produces a black that gives the impression of greater blackness. Blue frequently is preferred to black, because it is not inclined to look grayish in combination with some of the other colors.

Every season brings its new range of colors. Many new colors—some queer, some positively ugly—are presented as being the very latest and, of course, the most fashionable colors. The various exploiters of fashion proclaim each color as desirable, but invariably, after all is said, the assertion is made that blue is good and will be worn, thus emphasizing the power of popular demand.

Blue is always fashionable, because women instinctively understand its value as a garment color, and it predominates because it best enhances the good points of the wearer, in both the figure and the complexion. It does not by its intensity or depth obliterate the real charm of the face or form; neither does it accentuate any unpleasing features.

White in its different varieties, the same as blue, may be called a standard, because it, too, is universally becoming, but the same thing cannot be said of black. Black is not becoming to nor desirable for all women, as it emphasizes age and adds as many years to a face as white will subtract from it. A prominent writer credits the French women with saying that black should not be worn after a woman is thirty, unless for mourning, nor again until after she is sixty, and then only if she feels that she has to wear it.

Violet is more pliable in its combinations than some of the other colors. It associates well with green-yellow, yellow-green, orange, orange-yellow, yellow, gold, gray, and green, but rarely is it satisfactory with red or blue, unless some intermediate tone or a neutral color is used with it.

The darkest shades of orange form pleasing combinations with subdued yellows, especially when a stripe or a small figure of black is worked into the material. Light orange is too bright to be used freely, but yellow-orange or gold can be used to good advantage for embellishments.

Green is very restful to the eye and forms an agreeable harmony with white. Its effect is to lend brilliancy. Light greens upon dark grounds produce pleasing effects, while the reverse is less satisfactory. Light and grayish greens are desirable in plain materials or as stripes, figures, or borders of darker tone. Blue-green, however, is difficult to combine with other colors, combining best with gold and with red in small quantities.

Fashion Colors continued here…

BLUEBERRY MUFFINS. – Muffins containing blueberries can be made successfully only in blueberry season, but other fruit, as, for example, dates, may be used in place of the blueberries. Cranberries are often used in muffins, but to many persons they are not agreeable because of the excessive amount of acid they contain.

BLUEBERRY MUFFINS
(Sufficient to Serve Six)

• 3 Tb. fat
• 1/3 c. sugar
• 1 egg
• 1 c. milk
• 2-1/4 c. flour
• 1/2 tsp. salt
• 4 tsp. baking powder
• 1 c. fresh blueberries

Cream the fat, and add the sugar gradually. Then stir in the beaten egg and milk. Reserve 1/4 cupful of flour, and mix the remainder with the salt and the baking powder. Stir the dry ingredients into the first mixture. Next, mix the 1/4 cupful of flour with the berries and fold them into the batter. Fill well-greased muffin pans about two-thirds full of the batter, and bake in a hot oven for about 20 minutes.

The effects of Hyperinflation on the People and Economy

The general impression received from three months in South Germany was of a people on short ration, mentally distressed, and living from hand to mouth; a people terribly shattered, terribly demoralized. They were industrious without hope; their moral nature was weakened, their courage undermined, or worn to the point of irritation. Had I hated the Germans when I entered their country, I should have left it with my thirst for vengeance satiated.

I saw nothing of North Germany, where the race is possibly more powerful, more willful, and at the same time more highly industrialized. Let me, therefore, leave any summary of conditions to others, and report upon the one sinister phenomenon that impressed me most — the fall of the middle class.

There was painful evidence of the decay of that class, on all sides. Lawyers were leaving the law, ministers the church. In September I accompanied an eminent man of science to the door of a pawn-shop, where he was to sell his most costly and delicate instruments, expecting to receive for them about one twentieth of what they had cost him. He wanted food for his children; he sold his tools, thus ceasing to function in his chosen profession.

Multiply his case by the thousand, and you have a picture of things as they now are.

The professional class, which creates and sustains civilization, is being rapidly abolished. It needs no Trotzky or Radek to destroy it; the tyranny of circumstance suffices. Owing to the fall of the mark, the rise of prices, and the general dislocation of things, the salaries of these men are not sufficient for their support; and if, in addition to their salary, they were recipients of an income, this is now no longer forthcoming. The scholarship, science, medicine, and art of Central Europe are actually disappearing.

Much more on 1923 Germany here…

 

Beekeeping in the City 

THE joys of backyard beekeeping are yearly being experienced by more and more city dwellers. What can add more prestige to the informal private area than a neat row of white hives with their industrious inhabitants arriving heavy laden with nectar and pollen to be converted into “bee-bread” for the pearly larvae? What study more fascinating than the life of the colony, that example of perfect social organization where not one single individual who labors so tirelessly during the long summer days storing the nectar from myriads of blossoms lives to reap the harvest of her labors?  What wonders of nature await the tired business man who, after work is over, hurries eagerly home to take up veil and smoker and visit for a while with the tiny tenants of his backyard apiary? What thrill of pleasure when he first sits down to, taste the fragrant sweetness of crisp brown waffles swimming in honey fresh from his own bee hives!

As a food, honey is perhaps the least appreciated of nature’s gifts to man. A concentrated carbohydrate whose seventy-five percent content of invert sugars is assimilated by the human stomach immediately and completely, it contains two valuable vitamins, appreciable quantities of mineral salts, and 1,785 calories of easily liberated heat and energy per pound. Being in a form for direct assimilation, it causes no work for the digestive organs and is therefore safe for the most delicate stomachs. It is recommended by physicians as a milk modifier for infants, a sweet for children, and in many instances as a safe sugar in diabetic cases. It is non-fattening, stimulating to the vital processes, and has been proved by carefully conducted experiments to be a medium “in which practically none of the bacteria of known human diseases can exist.” And yet this wholesome flower-flavored sweet of nature’s own production rarely finds its way to the average American table, a fact truly to be regretted.

Beekeeping continued here…

IMPORTANCE OF BREAD AS FOOD
1. BREAD is sometimes defined as any form of baked flour, but as the word is commonly understood it means only those forms of baked flour which contain some leavening substance that produces fermentation. The making of bread has come down through the ages from the simplest methods practiced by the most primitive peoples to the more elaborate processes of the present day. In truth, to study the history of bread making would amount to studying the accounts of the progress that has been made by the human race. Still, in order that the production of bread from suitable ingredients may be fully understood, it will be well to note the advancement that has been made.

2. In the earliest times, what was used as bread was made in much the same way as it is today by many uncivilized and semicivilized people. The grain was ground between stones, usually by hand, and then mixed with water to form a dough; then this dough was formed into flat, compact cakes and baked in hot ashes, the result being a food very difficult to digest. Later on, some one discovered that by allowing the dough to stand until fermentation took place and then mixing it with new dough, the whole mass would rise, and also that by subjecting this mass to the action of heat, that is, baking it, the mass would be held in place and become a loaf of raised bread that was lighter and, of course, more digestible. It was this discovery that led up to the modern bread-making processes, in which substances known as leavening agents, or ferments, are used to make bread light, or porous. Chief among the substances is yeast, a microscopic plant that produces fermentation under favorable conditions.

Indeed, so important is this ferment that, in the United States, whenever the term bread is used alone it means yeast, or leavened, bread, whereas, when other leavening agents are used, the bread is referred to as hot bread, or quick bread, as is fully explained in another Section. It will be well to note this fact, for in all cases throughout these cookery lessons yeast, or leavened, bread is always meant when the term bread is used alone.

Bread Making Lessons

 

ORIGIN OF CEREALS

 Cereals, which is the term applied to the edible seeds of certain grains, originated with the civilization of man. When man lived in a savage state, he wandered about from place to place and depended for his food on hunting and fishing; but as he ceased his roaming and began to settle in regions that he found attractive, it was not long before he became aware of the possibilities of the ground about him and realized the advantage of tilling the soil as a means of procuring food. Indeed, the cultivation of the soil for the production of food may be considered as one of the first steps in his civilization. Among the foods he cultivated were grains, and from the earliest times to the present day they have been the main crop and have formed the chief food of people wherever it is possible to produce them.

The grains belong to the family of grasses, and through cultivation their seeds, which store the nourishment for the growth of new plants, have been made to store a sufficient amount of nourishment to permit man to collect and use it as food. The name cereals was derived from the goddess Ceres, whom the Romans believed to be the protector of their crops and harvests. Numerous grains are produced, but only eight of these cereals are used extensively as food, namely, wheat, corn, oats, rice, barley, rye, buckwheat, and millet.

Cereals continued here…

In 1924 the WOMAN’S INSTITUTE OF DOMESTIC ARTS AND SCIENCES of Scranton, Pa published a comprehensive Cooking Course.

The Woman’s Institute Library of Cookery consists of five volumes that cover the various phases of the subject of cookery as it is carried on in the home.

Volume 1 deals with the essentials of cookery, cereals, bread, and hot breads. In Essentials of Cookery, Parts 1 and 2, are thoroughly treated the selection, buying, and care of food, as well as other matters that will lead to familiarity with terms used in cookery and to efficiency in the preparation of food. In Cereals are discussed the production, composition, selection, and care and the cooking and serving of cereals of all kinds. In Bread and Hot Breads are described all the ingredients required for bread, rolls, and hot breads of every kind, the processes and recipes to be followed in making and baking them, the procedure in serving them, and the way in which to care for such foods.

You will find the Free Cooking Lessons here…