358 MONTHLY JOURNAL OF AGRICULTURE. 



are not ashamed to look after the churning of the butter and the feeding of the 

 poultry — where they still carry their own keys and give out the flour and the 

 butter and the sugar and the cofiee— where they know the exact proportion of 

 plums for a pudding, and sage to sausage-meat. Those are the sort of receipts 

 we can trust, and, ladies, if in any one we ever deceive you, all we have to say 

 is — send us a better. So now for— let us see — ah ! this is the very season 



To Make Buckwheat Cakes. — Instead of yeast, not everywhere to be conveniently 

 had, you may use carbonate of soda and tartaric acid, after this fashion. To 3 pints of buck- 

 wlieat flour mixed into a batter, add one tea-spoonfuU of carbonate of soda dissolved in 

 ■ivater — add one also of tartaric acid dissolved in like manner. These you can get at any of 

 the dni"gists when you send to town. First apply the carbonate, stir the batter well, and 

 then put in the acid. Thus the use of yeast is entirely superseded, and cakes as " light as a 

 feather " are insured. One great advantage is, that the batter is ready for baking as soon 

 as it is made. 



N. B. — As buckwheat cakes ai-e sometimes met with, made of black meal and not light- 

 ened, and then burnt without being done, one might as well eat so much raw hide. We 

 used to send to Philadelphia, and got meal nearly as white as wheat meal. s. 



Receipt for Making Journey or "Johnny Cake." — Boil a quart of milk, and stir into it 

 one quart of Indian meal, from com gi-own south of the Chesapeake — Northern com is not 

 lit'ht and dry enough, any more than Northern wheat, to make the best bread, though it may be, 

 and pi-obably is, more nutritious for horses — add a little salt and a piece of butter or lard the 

 size of an egg. Spread the dough on the Johnny-cake board half an mch thick — some bake 

 it in pans, but they are not of the school in which people know " what's what." It should be 

 an oak board, such as used for shingles, about 18 niches long, kept as clean, by scraping and 

 washing, as clean can be — as clean as ladies' fingers. The board must be wet when the 

 dough is put on, to be spread and patted to the proper thickness, and laid lengthwise on the 

 heailh, near enough to the fire to cook quickly without burning, and when done brown, without 

 beln<^ burnt on one side, the kitchen knife is passed from end to end under the cake, when 

 it is turned, and returned to its place at the fire — [we like to be precise in these cases] — and 

 as soon as done it should be eaten, while hot, with good butter. Mem. — Some, for economy, 

 put aside butter that is not good, and call it " cooking hultcr."' Well, if not for cooking, for 

 what purpose should butter be good ? All butter is good or not good, and that which is not 

 good should be at once consigned to the slush-tub, or have a little tar mixed with it and laid 

 aside for the cart-wheels ! But good Johnny-cake, as well as a good many other good things, 

 are only to be had where there are — wood fires. s. 



Postscript. — Dear Ladies, let me detain you while I make one extract from a book on my 

 table entitled. Fruits and Farinacea. 



Sir William Temple, after noticing the customs and habits of the Patriarchs, says, [and we 

 believe it,] " From all these examples and customs it may probably be concluded that the 

 common ingredients of health and long life are, great temperance, open air, easy labor, little 

 care, simplicity of diet — rather fruits and plants than flesh (which corrapts the humors,) 

 and water, which presen-es the radical moisture without too much increasing the radical 

 heat." " A quiet state of mind is of the utmost importance to the maintenance of health, 

 and a light and spai-e diet conti-ibutes gi'eatly to the same end." 



No one, no, not even the doctor, has more right or reason to be instmcted in the rules of 

 Hygeia than mothers. Hygeia, you know, was the " sweet sniihng Goddess of Health," 

 and is figured, in painting and statuary, with a bowl in her hand from which a serpent is 

 eating — emblematic of the art of Medicine. There is a marble figure of Hygeia surmount- 

 ing that glorious fountain of health, the old White SuljAur Springs, in Greenbriar, Virginia. 



s. 

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