r 
FROM DAY TO DAY. 
A stout and cheaply-made hammock 
for the children is constructed from four 
burlap sacks, stitched together. A wide 
hem should be made at each end, and a 
barrel hoop run into this, stout ropes 
being used for hanging it up by. A 
hammock of this kind will be greatly 
enjoyed by the children, who can 
scramble in and out as they desire. 
* 
A comfortable chair for the piazza 
should always have a back high enough 
to affoid rest for the head. The House¬ 
hold advises the selection of a stout, 
splint-seated chair without rockers, but 
with broad arms. A shelf 12 inches broad 
should be firmly fixed to the right arm, 
as a rest for books or sewing materials. 
Below this, securely fastened to the 
rounds of the chair, a deep but narrow 
wicker basket should be arranged to 
hold sewing materials, books, papers, 
etc. The piazza chairs are often finished 
merely with a coat of varnish or shellac, 
but a very pretty effect is obtained by 
staining in colors similar to those used 
for shingle stains. 
* 
When considering the wearing quali¬ 
ties of everyday shoes, it is always wise 
to have two pairs for common wear, 
using each every other day. Changed 
in this way, they do not become soaked 
with perspiration, to the material im¬ 
provement of their lasting qualities, to 
say nothing of the greater cleanliness. 
If the feet perspire badly, a little pow¬ 
dered burnt alum sprinkled in the stock¬ 
ings is an advantage. In caring for the 
shoes, they should always be repaired 
before they go too far, and the heels 
should never be allowed to run over. If 
nice buttoned shoes are laid away for 
any length of time, they should not be 
jammed carelessly into a shoe-bag, but 
buttoned all the way up, and stuffed 
with cotton batting. Patent leather 
shoes should always be kept in a warm 
place ; they are very likely to crack in 
cold, and must be watched in cold 
weather. Housekeepers who must stand 
a good deal, often suffer much from 
tired and swollen feet, and this trouble 
is much lessened by a daily foot-bath, 
followed by a brisk rubbing with a 
moderately rough towel. Professional 
dancers rub the soles of tlieir feet with 
alcohol after bathing them, and a simi¬ 
lar practice will be found comforting by 
busy women who stand or walk a good 
deal. There are several medicated pow¬ 
ders which add much to personal com¬ 
fort when du9ted inside the stockings 
during warm weather. 
* 
Butter and lard are the fats most 
freely used in American kitchens, yet, 
in the opinion of the highest culinary 
authorities, these are not only wasteful, 
but the poorest that can be used for fry¬ 
ing and similar purposes. Butter re¬ 
quires a slow fire, and burns quickly, 
while lard always leaves a fatty coating 
on anything cooked in it. The best fry¬ 
ing fat is the clarified drippings from 
roast beef, or from the top of the soup 
pot; next to these, ranks beef suet 
chopped and tried out. Of course, the 
fat should be removed from the soup 
before vegetables are added. To clarify 
drippings, they should be melted in an 
iron vessel and allowed to stand on a 
hot stove until all the water is boiled out; 
then strained through muslin into a jar 
kept for the purpose. Salt fats should 
be put in a kettle of cold water, and 
thoroughly boiled for about an hour. 
After this, the water is cooled, the fat 
hardening into a cake upon it. This 
cake is removed and clarified like other 
fat. Drippings from ham, bacon or 
sausages should never be mixed with 
other fats, though they will be found 
useful in cooking or fiavoring some vege¬ 
tables. Clarified chicken fat is very use¬ 
ful, but drippings from turkeys, geese 
or mutton should be set aside for soap 
grease. Apart from the characteristic 
flavor, mutton fat is too hard to be used 
advantageously in general cooking. 
While the careful saving of these fats 
often seems a small economy, it effects 
a great saving in the course of a few 
months. _ 
THE ALADDIN COOKER. 
M. L., Elkhart County, Ind.,asks 
• for some information regarding 
the cooker invented by Edward Atkin¬ 
son. This, known as the Aladdin cooker, 
consists of a hot-air chamber, heated 
by a kerosene lamp, in which food is 
slowly cooked during a period of sev¬ 
eral hours. Roughly described, the 
cooker consists of a table or frame hav¬ 
ing a sheet-iron top with a hole in the 
middle. Over this hole is placed a slab 
of soapstone, or a tile, about six inches 
square, and one inch thick, resting upon 
pebbles or little legs, so as to raise it 
about half an inch. A box of boards 
one inch thick, lined with tin, placed 
over the slab, forms the oven. Heat is 
supplied by a large kerosene lamp, 
placed under the stand, the chimney just 
entering the hole below the slab. The 
food is placed in crocks or tin dishes in 
the oven, and cooked for a long time, 
three to five hours being allowed for a 
stew. The cooker described above is, 
of course, a homemade appliance, but 
an article more elaborately made is fur¬ 
nished by a Boston firm, being arranged 
for from one to five lamps, with oven or 
hot-air chamber of asbestos. The special 
claims made for the cooker are economy 
of fuel, absence of waste heat, and nutri¬ 
ent value of food thus prepared. 
Now let us see what may be cooked 
with this appliance. Bread requires 
cooking for 3 34 hours, but the result is 
excellent. Roast beef must be cooked 
20 or 25 minutes to the pound. Irish 
stew is cooked in three hours ; stewed 
potatoes, 334 hours ; cauliflower, 1% 
hour ; baked apples, two hours ; stewed 
prunes, two hours. Once placed in the 
oven, no further attention is required ; 
there is no risk of burning, and Mr. 
Atkinson especially urges the use of 
such a cooker by working people, who 
may start the cooker at bedtime, and 
find a hot and wholesome breakfast 
ready for them early the next morning. 
Women who go out to work, also, may 
start their dinner going before leaving 
home, with full confidence that it will 
be well-cooked and appetizing on their 
return. Soup, for example, is especially 
well-cooked in this way, the cooking 
process being similar to that of a Papin’s 
digester. Discussing this mode of cook¬ 
ing with a Chicago working girl, who 
had been interested in the Aladdin 
cooker operated at Hull House, she ob¬ 
served that the chief drawbacks, to her 
mind, were the first cost of the cooker, 
and the difficulty of persuading women 
to do their cooking in a mode to which 
they were unaccustomed. Regarding 
the first objection, while the cooker, as 
manufactured with the asbestos oven, 
costs, without the lamp, from $12 up¬ 
wards, the appliance is not patented, 
and any one may copy it with a home¬ 
made appliance, at small cost. Mr. At¬ 
kinson did not desire to patent his idea, 
wishing to leave it free to all. Regard¬ 
ing the second objection, we can only 
hope to overcome it through more thor¬ 
ough education in domestic science. 
Naturally, a woman whose chief idea of 
cooking is a “ hurry-up ” meal prepared 
on a gasoline stove, will think it difficult 
to attempt such a slow process. 
Mrs. Mary Hinman Abel, who has 
used the Atkinson cooker very success¬ 
fully, describes a plan closely approach¬ 
ing it in her prize essay, Practical Sani¬ 
tary and Economic Cooking. She ob¬ 
serves that the inhabitants of northern 
countries make extensive use of non¬ 
conducting substances, like wool, to 
prevent the escape of heat from vessels 
in which cooking is going on. Mrs. 
Abel made and used a cooker modeled 
on this principle, and found it a very 
useful thing. She used a packing-box 
measuring about two feet each way, the 
bottom being covered with a layer of 
closely-packed wool four to six inches 
thick. Inside this a vessel containing 
meat or vegetables is placed, the contents 
being at the boiling point. Oyer this a 
thick woolen blanket or pillow is placed, 
the lid of the box covering all. As the 
heat in the water must finish the cook¬ 
ing already begun, the quantity must 
be rightly proportioned to the amount 
of food to be cooked. Mrs. Abel used 
two quarts of water to 134 pound of 
beef, the water being brought to the 
boiling point, the meat placed in it and 
allowed to boil for five minutes, the pot 
then being tightly covered, placed in 
the box, and allowed to remain three 
hours. At the end of that time, the 
meat was tender. It would appear pos¬ 
sible to cook fruit sauces in this way, 
with a material saving of heat and dis¬ 
comfort during the summer. 
To give a further idea of the practical 
merits of the Atkinson cooker, we may 
quote from Mrs. Abel’s report in Mr. 
Atkinson’s book, The Science of Nutri¬ 
tion. A dinner described consisted of 
tomato soup, beef stew with potatoes 
and dumplings, macaroni, gingerbread, 
and stewed fruit. The lamp was lighted 
at 9 A. m., dinner being served at 1 p. m. 
The materials for tomato soup, and the 
fruit to be stewed, were placed on a 
middle shelf in the oven, while below 
were placed cookers, one containing 
water for the macaroni, the other the 
beef stew. The oven was left closed 
until 12 o’clock, when macaroni and 
gingerbread were put in. A little before 
one o’clock, the dumplings were put on 
top of the stew, being steamed 12 
minutes. Besides putting together the 
materials, this dinner merely required 
slight attention but once, between light¬ 
ing the lamp and serving the meal. 
A very full account of the Aladdin 
oven, with cooking tests, dietaries, re¬ 
cipes, and tables of the nutritive value 
of food materials, will be found in Mr. 
Atkinson’s book, The Science of Nutri¬ 
tion. 
SUNDAY DINNERS. 
OR several years before the babies 
came, we rode three miles to church 
services every Sunday, reaching home 
about 2 p. m., in a semi-starved condi¬ 
tion. By the time the horses were fed, 
I usually had a warm dinner on the 
table. The table was laid in the morn¬ 
ing, and everything in readiness to warm 
over or serve cold. Many things are 
just as good reheated as when freshly 
cooked, such as meat stews, soups or 
baked beans. In winter, one of these 
usually served as the one warm dish, 
and with white and brown bread, pickles, 
jelly or jam, a salad made Sunday morn¬ 
ing, and a pie or pudding made on Satur¬ 
day, hot coffee or cocoa, made a satis¬ 
factory meal. 
In warming over any food, I find it 
nicer when set in a kettle of hot water, 
or if in the dish in which it is to be 
served, placed in the steamer over a 
kettle of boiling water. This takes 
longer than when placed directly over a 
blaze ; but in winter, I place my beans, 
soups or stews in a stone jar, and this in 
a kettle of boiling water over the heater 
in the morning, and they are ready to 
serve when we get home. The mince or 
fruit pie is placed on an asbestos mat on 
the heater, a tin basin turned over it, 
and in a few minutes is freshened with¬ 
out heating the oven. 
In summer, the warm dishes are usu¬ 
ally potatoes warmed over, eggs poached 
or in the form of an omelet, cooked 
tomatoes or other vegetable that bears 
warming over. Then there is “ Dutch ” 
cheese, made of sour milk, cold slaw or 
a salad of lettuce, kale, asparagus or 
string beans, a platter of cold meat— 
fried chicken, roast beef or boiled ham 
sliced. Even salt pork—a side piece 
with streaks of lean—may make an ac¬ 
ceptable dish. Place it in plenty of cold 
water, let boil an hour or two according 
to size. Take out, remove the skin, cut 
gashes across the top, sprinkle over 
powdered sage, pepper and rolled crack¬ 
ers, and brown in the oven. Slice when 
cold. 
Summer desserts are some light pud¬ 
ding, custard, cream or fruit. Being 
three miles from ice, our substitute for 
ice cream is floating island, and when 
served very cold with cake, it makes a 
nice hot-weather dessert. Place over the 
fire a quart of rich sweet milk, through 
which is stirred two-thirds of a cup of 
sugar. Beat three eggs, whites and yolks 
separate, adding a tiny pinch of salt to 
each. When the milk is hot, pour on 
the whites, letting them scald through, 
then dip out on a platter. Add a little 
cold milk to the yolks and stir through 
the milk. When it just boils, remove 
from the fire, and flavor with lemon or 
vanilla. When pretty cool, pour in a 
glass dish, dip the whites over the top 
in “ islands,” sprinkle over a tiny pinch 
of cinnamon, and set on the cellar floor 
(the farmer’s refrigerator). 
Cup custards and corn-starch fruit 
puddings are easily made. For the lat¬ 
ter, stew any dried or fresh fruit until 
pulpy, sweeten, and thicken with corn 
starch rubbed smooth in a little cold 
water. Serve cold with or without cream. 
In fruit season, nothing is nicer than 
berries served with whipped cream. 
MARY S. STELSON. 
Concerning Bookbinding —S. H. G., 
East Warren, Vt., found a difficulty in 
evenly trimming the edges of his home- 
bound book with the trimming device 
given by a subscriber in the February 
number of The R. N.-Y. If he would 
nail a board to the one on which his 
volume rests, and put the back of the 
volume straight and firm against this 
back board, holding it so until the top 
strip of iron or wood is screwed down 
tightly, he would be able to keep his 
volume from slipping. Also, great care 
should be taken to keep the blade of the 
knife from slanting either in or out 
while trimming. 
H. W. J., Cambridge, O., inquires 
about rounding the book. To give the 
“ rounded appearance at the back,” the 
volume is inclosed in a vise with about 
the eighth of an inch of the extreme 
back exposed. The vise extends the 
length of the volume, and is screwed 
upon it firmly. Then with a heavy mal¬ 
let—made for the purpose—the extreme 
back of the volume is pounded on both 
sides until they lap over the edge of the 
vise. The vise is then removed, and the 
volume shows two creases or ridges that 
are down the back of bound books. In 
putting on the cover of the volume, let 
the back of the board fit in this crease. 
Also, while sewing the book in the frame, 
push each section of leaves as it is sewed, 
close down upon the other with the fin¬ 
gers, at each of the stretched twines. 
When this is done well, the book has a 
tendency to round itself. 
M. LANE GRIFFIN. 
