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Show Zool Cooking for Hot Days -( By Mrs. Christine Frederick, The Distinguished Authority on Household Efficiency. t ry 1 "M J "One good exercis ftl f1'" J for reducing 0 - ' " I surplus fat 1 , consist in lying I ' '1 " ' , V flat on the t , $ t, back and f , 1 I raising the legs f i 4? t i1 i i i 1 slowly to a' r J ri f 4 ,. , ... , ? . perpendicular J? a? " position. : i 4 V F rl " ! ! v - y v 5 p4 , r . 'i -4 V, ' f ri i. ' " , r- -y I PROBABLY the most laborious work In housekeeping during tbe Summer is the preparation ot meals. The justing and other duties connected Wltb 1 -be care of the house can be slighted, but jiere seems no escape from the .three-imes-a-day task of cooking. ' However, these ' war days have fortunately fortu-nately made it . popular to serve fewer '.ourses at a meal. And the housewife who as been reading Government Bulletins nd studying food values knows that if Vie follows the "balanced meal" she can lovide meals that are easy to prepare Jfu yet give adequate nourishment. She' 'mows that, for . instance, a simple meal of hard-boiled eggs, lettuce, tomatoes, war iread and a glass of buttermilk will give , as much food value as a complicated, "fussy" dinner of meat, several vegetables and dessert. The first precept toward easier cooking In hot weather is to follow the plan of preparing pre-paring all or part of the evening meal during the cool hours of tbe early morning. It is quite possible while clearing up the morning dishes to oversee the cooking for the night dinner. For Instance! if the dinner din-ner should happen to be a roast, there is no reason why this cannot be cooked in the morning, and either eaten cold or left lying in the roasting pan to need only a. final fifteen minutes' heating. The great point in favor of this plan is that the muss and disorder of preparation can all be done in the eool morning while the woman has on her work clothes, instead in-stead of leaving it until afternoon when she more often cares to be dressed up or when the temperature is higher. , Again, such morning preparation enables her to wash up the graters, meat choppers, cooking cook-ing spoons, etc., thus minimizing the dish washing at the end of the day. Not only meat, but all forms of dessert, soup. etc.. can thus 'be pre-prepared. It is also just as easy to cook vegetables in advance ad-vance and have them ready for a final ten minutes re-heating in a sauce or other-i other-i -vise. Similarly all salads are best pre-' pre-' -( pared early in the day, packed into parafin paper, and allowed to chill slowly. '1 The fireless cooker has been mentioned ii so often, yet only ten people out of every five hundred use one. This seems strange in view of its great assistance, particularly in hot weather. The housewife who wants to devote several hours to the Red Cross or other work, as well as avoid the labor of standing over a hot stove, can cut down from 20 to 50 per cent of "pot watching" by its use. In far too many kitchens cooking is made laborious and debilitating because the kitchen is poorly ventilated. If possible, pos-sible, there should be "cross ventilation," with an arrangement of doors opposite windows or a transom window above a door. Windows over a sink are also most desirable, so that the odor from dish washing wash-ing may not be retained in the room. An excellent plan is to insert a register ventilator in the wall close to the celling, the kind of register . such. a3 used in the floor of the hot air furnace. It may be bought for one dollar and put into any wall by even an inexpert workman. If possible, a section of galvanized pipe about six inches wide and of a height of two or three feet beyond the height of the ceiling should extend on the outside wall. This will help create circulation and draw the waste odors off the top of the room. Many a man who thinks his office incomplete in-complete in Summer without an electric fan scarcely thinks of what a comfort an electric fan would be to his wife also. It may be placed on a shelf in the kitchen, on top of any closet, and its action will instantly lower the temperature as well as bring fresh air intp ttft room. Kitchen windows should always be open at the top, and if the entire window cannot can-not be covered with netting it is more important im-portant to screen the upper sash than the lower. Another thing to be learned is that foods cook just as well at a moderate or low temperature as at a high. Now that frying fry-ing has completely gone out of fashion owing to our desire to save fats, there is no reason why any food may not be cooked slowly instead of with a high degree de-gree of heat. The French, for instance, have so well learned the art of "simmering." "simmer-ing." They know that cooking vegetables or meats slowly and, we ma- say, quietly, will develop flavor and tenderness. Another point is to cook food with the lid tightly clamped on. If the flame or heat is low enough a lid c?n be kept tightly closed on the food while cooking, and this will save excess steam in the room. It is often advisable to use an asbestos as-bestos pad over the burner, and thus diffuse dif-fuse the heat so that the food will cook with less steam or radiation inso the kitchen. Also many foods which are commonly com-monly cooked with a great quantity of water (which, of course, causes a large amount of steam) may be cooked with much less. Often the clothing the worker wears has much to do with her feeling cool or the reverse. re-verse. It is no exaggeration to say that tight clothing, uncomfortable shoes and restricted armholes make for positive friction fric-tion and thus heat in the worker. In Summer Sum-mer it is often possible to wear nothing but a bungalow apron with low neck and short sleeves over a petticoat. Shoes should have broad, comfortable heels Another point worth remembering is to wear a hairnet, so that escaping locks will not irritate. |