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Vinegar, Pickles, and Pickling: Eggs

Packing Eggs. To pack eggs for transportation, layers of newspaper or any soft, cheap paper that may be available will be found safer than oats or bran. Crumple a number of newspapers, and lay them in the bottom of the box or basket, and bring them up well around the sides. Pack the eggs close together so that they cannot roll against each other. Lay over them 2 or 3 thicknesses of paper, on this another layer of eggs, and so on. Throw over the top 2 or 3 thicknesses of coarse burlap and fasten it around the outside of the package with cord. Eggs packed in this way in a clothes basket may be driven in a wagon over the roughest roads without breaking.

Or to pack for market, obtain an egg case, manufactured for this purpose, which will serve as a model for making cases at home. Or they can be made at trifling expense by the local carpenter. It will be found that the cost of these cases will be more than repaid in convenience and in preventing breakage.

Pickling Eggs.-Prepare a spiced pickling liquid the same as for spiced cucumber or other pickles.

Or boil in a cheese-cloth bag for 15 or 20 minutes in 1 quart of white wine or pure cider vinegar, 1 ounce of raw ginger, 1 ounce of allspice, 2 blades of mace, 1 ounce of pepper, 1 ounce of salt, 3 or 4 cloves of garlic, and 1 ounce of mustard seed. Boil for this quantity of pickle, a dozen eggs for 10 minutes. Place to cool in a pan of cold water. Remove the shells, pack them in a crock, and when perfectly cold, pour the pickling liquid over them. Lay over the top a folded cloth to keep the eggs under the pickling liquid, and tie over the top of the jar a thickness of cotton batting. They will be ready to use in about 4 weeks.

Dried Eggs.-Break any quantity of eggs in a suitable receptacle, and beat them well with an egg beater.

Spread out in a thin layer on a clean earthenware platter, and let them dry into a paste. Pack closely in glass jars and seal.

Or pour the beaten eggs into glass jars and set the jar in a pan of hot water at about a temperature of 125° F. until the moisture is evaporated and the egg becomes hard. Seal until required for use. They can then be dissolved with about 3 times their own bulk of cold water, and beaten up together, when they will be found to have retained much of their original flavor.

STORING AND PRESERVING VEGE- TABLES, FRUIT, NUTS, AND HERBS Conditions that cause vegetables to decay are moisture and heat, or frequent and extreme changes of temperature, as alternate freezing and thawing. These conditions are also favorable to the attacks of insects.

Cold storage in a dry vault, with a temperature near or below the freezing point, is, of course, the best method. Coöperative cold storage plants, both large and small, the benefits of which may be shared by a group of neighbors or an entire community, are likely in time to come to be very numerous. But if cold storage is out of the question, a cool, dry place, where the temperature is likely to be as even as possible, should be sought for most vegetables.

Vegetable Pits. - To preserve root crops as beets, turnips, and parsnips, also cabbages-dig a trench on the north side of a sandy slope or ridge where the drainage is as perfect as possible, so that after a storm no water will stand in the trench.

Dig a trench two or three feet deep about the same in width, and any desired length. Pack the vegetables carefully in this. Pile them up in a pyramid like the ridge of the roof of a house. Cover with a layer about a foot thick of meadow hay or straw and throw enough earth lightly over the straw to keep it in place. After the first frosts in the fall cover with a layer of earth 5 or 6 inches thick, and in the latter part of November or about the 1st of December, cover solidly with earth to the depth of a foot or more. Remove the vegetables from one end as required for use and cover the opening with hay or straw and keep it in place with boards, or shovel snow over it.

Ventilate these pits by means of 6-inch tile drains or square boxes of 6-inch boards nailed together. Insert these ventilators at intervals of 25 or 50 feet in large pits and plug the opening with loose straw to keep out the frost. Otherwise there is danger of decay from moisture in the event of an early thaw.

Or pull root crops, as turnips, beets, and the like on a hot, dry day and let them lie in the sun until all dirt can be shaken from the roots.

Twist off the tops, leaving the tap root on. Pack them in clean, dry barrels or bins and fill with fine dry sand or road dust, shaking it down around them until the box or barrel is full. Root crops should not be packed on the floors of cellars, as dampness is likely to cause them to decay and furnish breeding places for bacteria that cause filth diseases.

To Keep Celery.-In the latter part of October dig a trench 18 inches deep and 12 to 15 inches wide on a dry, well-drained ridge. Loosen the earth about the roots of the celery and draw out the stalks without shaking off the soil that adheres to them.

Stand them upright close together in the trench inclining slightly toward the middle, and draw the earth around them up to the tips. Cover with a thick layer of leaves, straw, or meadow hay, put a board across the top and weight with stones or otherwise. If there is any danger of standing water from rains or melting snow, in winter, dig a ditch deeper than the celery trench for drainage. - Vegetable Cellar. - To preserve small quantities of vegetables for domestic use, sink a half hogshead, cask, or large dry-goods box about twothirds of its depth into the ground and slope the earth around it on all sides to the top. Knock the bottom out, and line the space with loose brick laid on the earth side by side or with a layer of loose stone. Fit it with a water-tight cover coming down over the edge.

Pack in this such vegetables as cabbage, celery, beets, turnips, etc. They will keep fresh all winter.

PRESERVATION OF MEAT AND VEGETABLES 709 When cold weather comes on, throw over the top a large bag of burlap or potato sacking made like a mattress 1 Straw D Hay "Sink a Cask in the Earth." and filled loosely with hay or straw.

This can readily be removed to allow access and replaced after required vegetables have been taken out for use.

To Store Onions. - Pull the onions and let them lie in the field until the tops are withered. Spread them under cover on an open floor or on slats until they are bone dry.

The best receptacles for onions are slat boxes having solid heads of inch pine stuff, with sides and bottoms of rough laths, the width of one lath open between every two. These should be made to hold a bushel or half a bushel. Stack them one above the other, with pieces of inch pine stuff between to admit of free circulation of air. Pack these in a cool cellar on a platform raised 8 or 10 inches from the cellar bottom.

Or stack them in a shed or outhouse. Make a bin around them of rough boards about 6 inches from the outside of the crates, and fill the space with chopped straw, chaff, or sawdust. Cover over the top with sand and throw over the whole any old burlap, carpet, or canvas that may be at hand. Thus protected it will do no harm if the onions freeze, as chaff or straw is a nonconducting material, and they will not thaw out until spring, and then very slowly.

The same would be true in an ordinary cellar.

Or small quantities may be packed in barrels or boxes in chaff or sawdust, and stored in a dry attic which is not heated in winter.