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Other Sweet Dishes: Cook

PRUNE PARFAIT 1/2 pound of prunes Juice of 1/2 lemon 3/4 cup of sugar White of 1 egg 1/3 cup of prune juice 1 1/2 cups of double cream Soak the prunes overnight; cook till tender; remove and discard stones and cut the flesh in bits. Cook the sugar with the lemon and prune juice to soft ball (238 deg F.), pour in a fine stream upon the white of egg, beaten dry, and beat until cold; add the pieces of prune and fold in the cream. Turn into a quart mold and finish in the usual manner.

CANNED APRICOT PARFAIT Press enough canned apricots through a sieve to fill a cup. Simmer the pulp with half a cup of sugar until it is quite thick, then set aside to become cold. Beat one cup and a half of double cream until firm; fold into the puree and finish in the usual manner. This parfait, not being very sweet, will freeze in two hours or a little less. Serve with a sauce made by cooking the rest of the syrup in the can with half a cup of sugar. Or. serve the parfait in cups with the sauce poured over and the top sprinkled with fine-chopped pistachio nuts.

GOLDEN PARFAIT, WITH FRENCH FRUIT 2/3 cup of sugar 5 yolks of eggs, beaten light 1/3 cup of water 1 1/2 cups double cream 1/8 teaspoonful of cream-of-tartar 1/2 cup French fruit Jamaica rum Let the fruit soak in rum to cover overnight or for several hours. Cook the sugar, water and cream of tartar to 238 deg F. (soft ball); pour in a fine stream upon the beaten yolks, beating constantly meanwhile; return to the fire over hot water and beat until the mixture thickens. Beat occasionally until cold. Have the cream beaten solid. Sprinkle some of the fruit into the mold, lined and chilled as usual. Fold the egg and cream mixtures together and turn into the mold, sprinkling in the fruit here and there. SAUCE FOR VANILLA ICE CREAM 1 cup of sugar strawberry or raspberry 1/4 cup of boiling water pulp 1/3 cup of claret or 1/2 cup of Cook the sugar and water to a thick syrup. It will take about eight or nine minutes. Cool and add the wine or strained fruit. Serve in cups, pouring the sauce over or around the ice. Sprinkle the top with fine-chopped pistachio nuts.

BANANA PUREE FOR ICE CREAM Cook a cup of banana puree (peeled bananas pressed through a sieve) with a cup of sugar and the juice of a lemon until hot throughout; let cool, add a teaspoonful of vanilla and use as a sauce for vanilla ice cream. VANILLA ICE CREAM WITH MAPLE SYRUP Put two tablespoonfuls of maple syrup into a chilled sherbet cup; add a spoonful of vanilla ice cream and sprinkle the top of the cream with English walnuts, chopped rather coarse. Caramel syrup as, also, chocolate syrup may be used in the same way.

CHOCOLATE SAUCE FOR ICE CREAM 1 cup of sugar 1 ounce of chocolate 1/2 cup of water Cook the sugar to caramel, add the water, let boil to a syrup, add the chocolate and let boil two or three minutes. Strain through a cloth and use cold as the maple syrup.

RASPBERRY PARFAIT 1 1/4 cup of raspberry juice 2/3 cup of sugar 1/2 tablespoonful of granulated gelatine 1 1/2 cup of double cream 4 tablespoonfuls of cold water Soften the gelatine in the cold water, dissolve by setting the dish in hot water; add the sugar and raspberry juice, stir (in ice and water) until thickened, then fold in the cream beaten stiff. Finish according to directions given on page 364.

A SERMONET "The poetry of life always has a practical side to it, and most practical affairs rightly worked out are full of poetry." - E. P. Powell, in "The Country Home." `The women of the home should so arrange their household duties as to allow time for outdoor exercise and some form of healthful recreation" --" Back to Nature."

AN old adage runs something like this: "A workman is known by his tools." No one expects a carpenter with dull planes or broken saws, and who does not own a glue-pot or a spirit-level, to turn out a finished job. A woman may use a hair or hat pin for a larding-needle and slice bacon or bone a chicken or a fish with a knife that will not take, much less keep, an edge; but she who makes no effort to supply herself with fitting implements of her trade certainly has no great love for her calling, and is not destined to shine therein. The cook who visits the public library to examine dictionaries of cooking, in order to discover what a certain chef uses in Hollandaise sauce to give it an odd and piquant flavor, will never beg for work. Her calling means more to her than the buying power of the money she receives on Saturday night. Yet, granting that this be true, the old adage needs an amendment or an addition, for the modern work man is known by the disposition he makes of his tools. A kitchen pantry has its uses, but it is turned from its legitimate purpose, when it is made into a storehouse for the utensils needed at the range and sink. Go into your kitchen to get breakfast or dinner, and count the steps you might save, were the various saucepans, frying-pans, forks, dredgers, etc., needed in the actual cooking of the meal, where the hand can be quickly laid upon them. Note the distance between the stove and sink. In two houses lately visited two rooms lay between them. Is the refrigerator conveniently placed in reference to the pantry or the place where food is prepared for cooking? Modern houses, supposedly, are planned aright, but do not go on the supposition that whatever is is right. Do not waste your strength in useless, monotonous walking back and forth in the kitchen. Have things arranged to save steps, and put in the extra time in the open air. Truly we might spend vastly more time out of doors and at the same time supply our tables with a greater variety of food, if receptacles holding sifted flour of various kinds, well dried out and ready for instant use, were in close proximity to mixing-bowls, egg-beaters, baking-tins, measuring-cups, sugar, butter eggs, baking-powder, and other commodities.

Make the doing of work as easy as possible by having every utensil or food product as near as possible to the place where it is to be handled. Then do things often, and you will have no consciousness of the motions you go through to secure the result. When dancing the two-step or the waltz, who, save the beginner or the teacher, analyzes the result to find out the postures or positions that go to produce it?

We say of certain housekeepers among our acquaintances, "They have a `faculty' of turning off work." Possibly this faculty is nothing but the exponent of an unusually active and attentive mind.

In reading the newspaper aloud, there are those whose whole attention is fixed on the words they are speaking. Others, while they are giving to the spoken words the inflection needed to convey the proper meaning of the author, have their eyes at the other end of the line or even at the end of the paragraph, and know what is coming next. Thus, in laying the table and cooking a meal, the woman with "faculty" carries in her mind many things at one and the same time. She is never in danger of forgetting any one item or of not knowing the exact condition of all at a given moment. Such a woman can prepare a meal of three or four courses, properly selected, and made ready to cook beforehand, in the time that another would give to the cooking of a single dish. She would also finish with no more fatigue than if she had stood and watched over the one dish, knife and fork or skimmer in hand, during every moment of the cooking.

Simplify the cooking during the hot months. Complicated dishes, sauces, rich cakes, and pastry are certainly out of season - to say the least. Fruit and berries are always welcome, and, when tired of the old way of serving with cream and sugar, try them with oil and acid. Those who are conservative lose half the joy of life, and the first place where one's conservatism crops out is in respect to food.

Know what you are going to do before you enter the kitchen, then go straight to the mark without dallying. Fuel and precious time are often wasted, while one is trying to make up her mind what she will do. Then, worn out in trying to find something easy to make, calling for nothing tangible in the way of ingredients and little cooking, the matter is given up, and the grocer is telephoned to bring something in the inevitable paper bag. We fail to see any satisfaction in this kind of housekeeping. Housekeeping is a business to be conducted in summer and in winter. To be always equal to it, take a holiday often. Do not stagnate. Initiate new projects in your business. Rejoice in it. Avoid overwork an overheat, but keep up your interest. We love those things upon which we expend our efforts.

UNDER-NUTRITION AND OVER-NUTRITION The two mistakes into which the new housekeeper is most often led are under-feeding and over-feeding. There are so many things she wishes to have in her new home that the allowance for food is often drawn upon to supply things more highly prized; and the items for food are restricted to whatever is cheap, regardless of its composition. Starch is the principal compound in cheap foods. But there are individuals whose digestive organs are not tolerant of starch, and they are just as intolerant of fat, if it be presented as a steady diet. In the main, the dietary of such individuals needs include plainly cooked fresh meat and fish, with green vegetables, while fancy breads, cereals, and sweets, in the form of pastry, puddings, and cakes, are to be avoided, except on rare occasions.

On the other hand, many new housekeepers think meat, fish, and, possibly, eggs, the only articles having any considerable nutritive value, and, consequently, the only articles to be considered in eating to live. The idea that bulk is needed to insure the best digestive action is undreamed of by them, or, if considered at all, they think it is secured by these same nutritious articles rather than by bread with green and starchy vegetables. The normal stomach can digest a little of any kind of food, and health will be better, if monotony in selection be avoided. But these, and other matters of like import, are easily worked out, provided the desire be present to chose food in accordance with the laws of dietetics.

Do not follow the lead of those misguided butter-flies who think that physical exercise that savors of practical utility detracts from health no less than from dignity. To those who can do things is given an added dignity. The women of this century must be able to execute as well as to know. Then, too, any proper physical exercise will tend to set the blood in circulation, deliver the nutritious elements of the food ingested where they are needed, and drive waste matters out through the pores of the skin. Often dish-washing in a well-ventilated kitchen will prove a most efficacious remedy for the dull, drowsy sensations just after breakfast. Let active exercise start the perspiration, and cold extremities will become warm, the brain clear, and the day will not be lost.