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Some Kitchen Kinks: Colorado

In the cooking departments of women's magazines, I find one class of housekeepers completely ignored, perhaps unwittingly. It comprises the millions who inhabit lofty plateaus and mountains. Perhaps lowland women do not know that we who come to these high altitudes (Telluride, Colorado), have to learn all over again how to cook. I have seen hundreds of recipes in cookbooks and magazines that would fail altogether here. For instance-I have boiled potatoes in Ohio (near the sea level) in twenty-five minutes. In Denver, at an altitude of five thousand feet, it takes thirty-five minutes. In Leadville, Colorado, at ten thousand feet, forty-five minutes. This is because of water boiling at a lower temperature in high altitudes. Where I now live, at an altitude of nine thousand feet, I boil potatoes nearly an hour in water merely at the boiling point, and find they are not tender, so the water must be much hotter than at the boiling point to cook them. Other vegetables must be cooked longer. It is impossible to cook until tender some of the garden peas that are on sale here in the summer, and we have to depend almost wholly on factory canned peas.

A woman must learn over again to bake cake if she has just come from a low altitude. No Eastern cookbook can be depended upon. The ladies of this town have published a cookbook of their own reliable recipes. It is eagerly bought by newcomers from low altitudes. In baking cake, you must use more flour and less shortening.

Nothing else sweetens vessels in which milk has been kept so well as a solution of baking soda and hot water, in the proportion of a level teaspoonful to a quart of warm water. Let the solution stand in the vessels long enough to get cold. Pudding dishes or pots and pans which have been burned are easily cleaned this way.

If the refrigerator is stored away and the cellar is warm from the heating plant there, an excellent way to keep lettuce crisp and tender, is to wrap each head separately in a piece of old linen, wet in cold water. Moisten the linen every day, and you can keep lettuce for two weeks. The inner leaves will be yellow and crisp, and there will be no wasting of outer leaves.

Sometimes it is impossible to obtain sour milk for a favorite dish. A mountain mine cook told me his method of obtaining sour milk was to dilute condensed milk, which is invariably used at the mines, until it was like ordinary skimmed milk. Then he added a little sugar, and kept it in a warm place until it soured, even clabbered.

When using lemons in a way that does not call for the rind, I pare off the yellow portion carefully, put it SOME KITCHEN KINKS through the meat chopper with the finest plate, and spread it out to dry.

Then I put into a corked bottle, and it frequently saves grating peel when one is in a hurry, or makes a pleasant flavoring when a fresh lemon is not at hand.

Wash and slice ten stalks of rhubarb, cut and core three mediumsized apples, then stew apples and rhubarb together. Hang up in a jelly bag. For every pint of juice take a pint of sugar; boil till it jellies and pour into tumblers.

If you cut cheese in long strips and put in a glass jar, screwing the lid on tight, it will keep fresh till the last bit is used. It can be kept in the ice box in this way without harming other food.

When I use oranges or lemons, if the rind is fresh and wholesome, I pare it thin, so as to get none of the bitter white inner skin, and put it in a glass jar of granulated sugar.

When the sugar has absorbed enough oil of the fruit skin to make it moist, it is ready to use for flavoring cakes, puddings, etc. The bits of rind give a delicious flavor to pudding sauces.

If you wish to prevent citron, raisins, or currants from sinking to the bottom of your cake, have them well warmed in the oven before adding them to the batter. When spinach and dandelion are expensive, try cooking celery leaves exactly as you would other greens, boiling them in salted water, then chopping slightly and seasoning with butter, pepper, and salt. By saving the leaves from three or four bunches and keeping them bouquet fashion, with their stalks in water, you may soon accumulate enough leaves for a small, savory dish of celery greens.

Here are some uses for salt: To beat eggs quickly add a pinch of salt.

This also applies when whipping cream. Place salt in the oven under the baking tins, in order to prevent the scorching of their contents. Put salt in the water when you wish to cool a dish quickly. Use salt to remove ink stains from carpet, when the ink is fresh. Salt sprinkled on the pantry shelves will drive away ants.

Before cooking mushrooms I always distinguish them from poisonous fungi by sprinkling salt on the spongy part, or gills. If they turn yellow, they are poisonous; if black, they are wholesome.

Boil oyster plant, parsnips, and such vegetables, with thin skins on; then peel when cold. The flavor is preserved and your hands are not stained.

For boiling meats I always use a lard can in preference to a kettle.

For a smaller piece of meat, or a chicken, there is nothing better than a tin bucket with a tight-fitting cover.

It confines the steam and not only cooks more quickly, but the meat is juicier and more tender.

When poaching eggs add a little vinegar to the water, besides salt.

This sets the eggs and keeps them in good shape.

A pinch of soda, put in green vegetables while they are boiling, acts like magic. It makes string-beans deliciously tender; it keeps the fine color of spring peas, while a more generous pinch performs a miracle for cabbage, causing it to cook in about half the usual time, and keeping it as fresh and green as when it came from the garden.

In making mayonnaise, I find that using vinegar which has been poured over pickles, beets, or cucumbers, instead of fresh vinegar, adds a pleasant flavor to salads. If pastry is considered unwholesome, those who are fond of pump- MRS. CURTIS'S COOKBOOK kin or squash pies will find a good substitute by baking them as custards. I use the same recipe as for a filling for a pie, only add a little more milk, then bake it in custard cups set in a pan of water. The result is a creamy, delicious dessert. When steaming a pudding, place the steamer over the saucepan in which you are boiling potatoes. One gas burner will cook both pudding and potatoes.

When beating eggs separately beat the white first, then "steal" a little bit of it to start the yolks. The result is the yolks will not stick to the beater, as is generally the case, and they will get light twice as quickly.

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 bottom 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 cucumbers 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 immediately 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 unpleasant 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 will 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 particle 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 off in an amazingly short time.

Use lemon peel, after the juice has been partly squeezed out, to rub stains from silverware; also to remove fruit stains from your fingers. SOME KITCHEN KINKS 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 putting in the jelly, as it helps it to thicken, er set them in the sun.

As a relish and a garnish to serve with a light meat course, such as chicken croquettes or timbales, nothing is more refreshing than small individual 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.