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neration Loved its

were not 't I? Let come, many of domestic it than their erent way. In em; in practice,

V love to work out r, but not in labor; work out a formula for ho can't put the ingrein the kitchen. Women rains more, their hands less. see--and here I come back y-the women with the thetelligence will come to direct he agile hands to whom life thought. Also, in so far as machinery will replace human

tic science has done one thing for has relieved them of much of gery. But domestic science, and

2 vine in cookery, has need to go Enter in cltivating the possibilities that Je in food favors and in the development of the sense of taste. Asanation we are cerTtzingpotepicures: the simplicity and monotony of our fare is a part of our puritanical inheritance. There is too much thoughtless. careles cooking today, too little variety in the weekly menu, while among the few dishes with which most families content themselves the greater number are unpalatable. We would be happier and healthier if we ate food that was more carefully prepared, more daintily served. I do not mean, you must understand, that we should be gourmands, but we should be more particular. Why, only tonight, take our dinner here at the hotel. It's a good hotel, one of the best, they tell me, and yet-do you suppose we could eat the food as it was served to us? I tried to 'doctor up' the macaroni for my son, at the table, but-oh, it wasn't the kind of macaroni I make!

"My little kitchen is like a drug-shop-" Mrs. Rorer gets her similes from her early association's, one notes, "-everything in its place and within easy reach. And my hands are so well trained to act exactly as my head dictates that it takes me but twenty minutes to put a dinner, including hot corn bread and fried chicken, on the

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of mathematics after a while. You can ask me how to make anything, and I can tell you offhand, and guarantee that it will be right. I know just how much liquid you need to offset so much solid matter and how many eggs are needed to 'bind' a given mass. I know the actions and reactions of certain foods upon one another and the materials necessary to give perfect balance. What could be simpler?" What, indeed?

Trinidad, where she spends her winters with her son, who is a mycologist in the "King's Navee," is not so far away as to dim in any wise her interest in American homes, nor does it remove her from the neighborhood of those who write her for the advice that only she can give. "I get mail from this country once a week,” she said just before sailing, "and I expect to send back bunches of letters every week in answer to queries from my reader friends in GOOD HOUSEKEEPING. I am not allowed by the rules of South American etiquette, at the peril of my reputation as a lady, to enter the kitchen. So I keep in trim by teaching the natives the best American cooking I know-in the Victoria School which the English women have organized there, and by learning in turn from them their specialties."

So you see, even she has not learned everything about cooking and housekeeping. Now, perhaps, you can understand why, after thirty years, she still finds new things to say on these subjects.

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Simplicity of arrangement is essential for an efficient kitchen. This is a plan, drawn from memory, of the kitchen in which Mrs. Rorer delights to cook

FRONT

A dear, jolly, plump, motherly person Mrs. Rorer, big and tall and erect when she walks; direct and kind and compelling when she talks; oldfashioned in the simplicity of her bearing, her tastes, her affections; new-fashioned in her vigor and energy, and in the breadth of her point of view. Though she proudly asserts that she "belongs back in the war days," you can see at a glance that she is thoroughly of today.

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like to cook prompts me to introduce myself to the readers of GOOD HOUSEKEEPING by telling them how I

learned to cook and how I really enjoy the work, how it seems to me a play-spell between the hours of my work at the desk.

makes her bills of fare late in the day, each day in the week, is the one who finds cooking and housekeeping drudgery, and her marketing bills three times as much as they should be.

I have a regular system, but not a routine. Certain work is done at certain hours because it saves time, but I do not sweep simply because it is Friday. I never sweep unless the house needs sweeping. Nor do I bake on Saturday simply because it is Saturday; but while I am getting breakfast or luncheon or dinner I oc

How I

My system, the result of training, is not hampered by remembrances of how my mother or grandmother kept house, for I know nothing of the kitchen system of the past. I had no crude ideas to unlearn. I started in a well-equipped cooking school, and went gradually on. I put into practice the works of our modern household chemists. My ideals were those created and guided by modern methods that teach simplicity, regularity, and exactness. Thorough training in home. economics develops inventiveness. The two together give the foundation necessary to make kitchen work easy.

Simplify Cooking

By Sarah Tyson Rorer

I use forethought rather than hindthought. My bills of fare are made out a week or a month in advance. They consist of balanced rations, as nearly as possible; they are fixed facts; their arrangement is never changed under any circumstances. If guests come, they eat the same food that I had planned to give to my family-only, of course, I must increase the quantities. With the bills of fare made out a long while in advance, marketing is fitted to them. This necessitates, of course, a knowledge of foods in season. I never go to market without knowing what I am going to buy, and about what it will cost me. I may see very cheap or attractive things on the stalls. The cheaper ones are frequently stale and the attractive ones "out of season," hence costly and perhaps valueless as food. The housewife who goes to market and then

cupy the time in which the foods are cooking in preparing something for the meals to come. I never sit down, for instance, and wait for the potatoes to boil, or the meat to roast. While they are cooking I am making perhaps a nut loaf, or preparing some dish for the next meal.

My kitchen is smallnot over twelve by twelve. It is very light and well ventilated, which makes the work much easier. The floor is covered with linoleum. In front of the stove and table there are rather thick pieces of cocoa matting. I use this material because it is soft and gives to the feet, so that one does not tire easily. A tile or hardwood floor, unless you have rugs, is out of the question. The sides of the kitchen are covered with ordinary white glazed paint; this is easily wiped down, and shows every mark of dirt; dirt cannot be hidden. The stove, in the right-hand corner of the kitchen, is where the light shines. directly on it. In front of the stove is a long table made to suit my height, and having two deep drawers and a shelf. The drawers are divided into compartments. Knives are kept in one, spoons in another, forks in a third, and small utensils in a fourth. Towels, cheese-cloth, and such necessities are kept in the other drawer. The side of the table next the stove is covered with zinc,

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so that one can stand pots and pans there without soiling the table, thus doing away with the necessity for constant scrubbing. A sink with a large wooden drainboard is at the left of the stove.

Opposite the table, on the other side of the kitchen, is a kitchen cabinet holding all the dry materials and seasonings. On one side of the kitchen, under the stairway leading to the rooms above, is a large closet in which I keep crackers, bread-boxes, candles, soap, and general materials for household use. I keep the refrigerator just outside the kitchen on the porch.

All my cooking utensils are either aluminum or granite; they are light and easily kept clean. Granite bowls are used in preference to the heavy earthenware ones. Sharp knives are kept for cutting. Dulledged tools and spatulas are also necessary. By never using a knife for scraping pans or tables, I keep my knives sharp. Although rarely ground, they are treated like razors, and never sharpened on the edge of a stove or on the side bricks of the house. Utensils are cleaned each time they are used. A little sand soap, or one of the various scouring-soaps, is rubbed on the dish-cloth, and this around the pans; in a moment they are bright and clean.

By keeping things always clean, I never have cleaning days, thereby saving at least one day each week and saving my strength. People who leave dirt must necessarily take time to clean it up; they waste hours of valuable time and make drudgery of work that otherwise would be quite simple. I always use a small stove for cooking, either gas, oil, or electric, according to which is most convenient in the locality. This saves carrying coal, removing ashes, and constant dusting of the kitchen.

I never wonder at the scarcity of cooks when I go into the average kitchen. I could not be induced to cook in such a place, even for a family of two. The lack of conveniences and the burden of unnecessary work is overwhelming. My kitchen contains the necessary conveniences; not various things purchased at demonstration sales, without thought, on the spur of the moment, but the machines and utensils that I have found practical and valuable as time-savers. A vegetable-press for mashing potatoes is far superior to the old-fashioned wooden pestle, which makes the potatoes heavy and does not remove the lumps. I use a meat-grinder for almost a hundred and one things. I do not keep it on a shelf with its parts loose, so that you always have to look for them when you need them, but out in the room. As soon as it is used, the grinder is washed, thoroughly dried, and by the time I am ready to leave the kitchen it is ready to be put together and fastened to the most convenient corner of the table, where it remains ready for instant use. Another labor-saving device that is almost indispensable is a bread-mixer. Wherever home-made bread is used, even though the family be small, I consider this utensil necessary.

I follow every recipe to the letter. All the ingredients are carefully measured; it takes less time than to guess. Dishes then are always right, neither too thick nor too thin, conditions which it takes time and patience to alter.

I have no breakable dishes in the kitchen. Flat white granite-ware plates are used for the refrigerator. Measuring-cups are made of tin. My bread-board is metal. A little sand soap on a dish-cloth cleans it in less than a minute. It contains a ledge with

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