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Show It Makes Cents By VI JUDGE BLAKE Our neighbor, Gwen Roundy, brought me a book entitled Household Discoveries and Mrs. Curtis's Cook Book, published in 1908 by The Success Company. "This 81 -year-old book contains 280 pages of recipes plus 744 pages of discoveries "how-tos" covering every imaginable phase of homemaking. How to keep flies out of the house: bags of sweet clover in all the rooms, oil of sassafras, laurel, or lavendar sprinkled throughout. Or "soak houseleeks whatever that is for six days in water and wash pictures, furniture, and woodwork with the decoction. Or wash such items with water in which onions have been boiled . . . wash windows with kerosene to keep flics from settling on them." Recipes for poisonous fly paper, directions for making sticky fly paper, shoe polish, candles, hand soap, laundry soap (soft, hard amber, white), medicines, cosmetics. cosmet-ics. Consider this for tooth powder: "A little dry charcoal powder may be rubbed gently into the crevices between the teeth on retiring . . . and brushed or rinsed out in the morning." Or brush with baking soda or strawberry juice. How to concoct mouthwashes, toilet preparations, hair dyes, hair oils. "Bear's grease was formerly in high approval ... but beef marrow oil is equally good and less expensive, besides being free from the objectionable odor of bear's grease." "Vacuum cleaners are expensive and confined to localities where electricity is available. It is to be hoped, however, that vacuum-cleaning vacuum-cleaning apparatus may be devised that can be run by cheap gasoline or alcohol motors at a price within the means of the average family." The book informs its readers and further advises, "On sweeping day, open windows and doors; sweep toward the center so that dust won't settle on walls and woodwork." How to preserve meat and vegetables, home nursing, first aid, numerous folk remedies and, dyes, food colors ("Yellow: dissolve a little gamboge in warm water, or the heart of a yellow lily, until the bright tint is produced . . .) And the recipes they're just as interesting: Mincemeat (it only takes a week), the pickle barrel, Eider blossom wine, all kinds of breads, cakes, pies, puddings, soups, stews, all from scratch, meaning from live chicken to stew. Handy hints, too. Kitchen Kinks, they're titled: "Instead of shelling peas, throw them, pods and all, into a ketde of boiling water . . . When they are done, the pods will rise to the surface, while the peas will stay at the bottom of the ketde." Thank you, Gwen, for sharing with me this precious old book so full of reminders of how easy we homemakers have it today. And thanks to all of you for your loyal support and willingness to share your homemaking expertise. With love, Vi. Thought for the day: No person lacks blessings. Every person, regardless of trials and heartaches, has something for which he should be thankful. Readers: We truly appreciate the ideas you share with us, so keep them coming. Address: 328 S. 300 E., St. George, Utah 84770. |