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HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Seaforth News, 1952-11-13, Page 2TABLE TALKS A, few words about the humble onion might not be out of place in a column such as this for, after all, where would we be with - Out this much -maligned vegetable in a large proportion of our cookery, Robert Louis Steven- son once called it "the rose among the roots" although, actually, it is closer, scientifical- 1y, to the lily than to the rose. .And the great satirist Jonathan Swift put it into a sort o verse, writing: "For this is every cook's opinion No savoury dish without an onion." Swift's couplet, as Jane Nicker- son remarks in The New York Times, is admittedly questionable from a rhyming standpoint, emphasizing the onion as a sea - Ironing. But the onion leads a double life; it is delicious on its Own, too, especially in soup, Many and various, the onion presents itself this fall both large and small, round and oval, yel- low, white and red. Among those present, also, are its cousins—the stronger garlic and the milder shallots. The latter are the onion of the French chef, who like their subtlety and aromatic quality in delicate sauces. A pity the ap- preciation of home cooks is not great enough to increase their availability. • • Strongest -flavored of the on- ions now available is the Yellow Globe; its name hints as to its appearance. Mildest is the Red Italian, imported in larger am Italian, imported in larger amounts in the spring than now; strangely, when grown on our soil its taste becomes more ro- bust. Then there are the sweet jumbo -sized Spanish and the small white boilers. • * Thinking of onions on their Own, we shall use, if we follow custom, the large Spanish onions for French frying and either the same variety or the Red Italian onion in salads. For stuffing and baking whole, obviously a big onion, and it may be of any kind. For boiling and creaming, nat- urally the white boilers. In onion soup, the mild Spanish type or the stronger Yellow Globe, de- pending on the soup and savor aimed at. * * 0 For there is not, as it develops, one onion soup of the kind eaten in Les Holies after an evening in Paris, but several, Many nations have recognized that onions make good soups, and now, with the vegetable a part of the autumn harvest and the weather turning cool, we should, it would seem, Investigate them. • • • Austria has a soup for which onions are sliced and French - fried and then put crisp into a hot clear stock, Mexico makes a soup half of stock and half of milk, thickening it with eggs, and stirring into this liquid boiled, quartered onions and a bit of cheese. Italy's onion soup, large- ly of stock and onions, resembles the French, except that it is alightly thickened. Greece pre- pares one by simmering in stock, along with the onions, celery and carrots. 9 0 $ As for the soupe a I'oignon, the most famous onion soup, it fre- quently comes to the table in France looking more like a meat pie than a soup. That is because the cheese is grated and affixed, and the soup is then slid under the broiler to permit the cheese to melt and form a sort of crust all over the surface. 5 Digging into this 'golden brown "roof" with spoon and fork, one comes up with a spoonful of rich brown stock, sliced onions and bread, from which hang strings, almost like spaghetti, of the cheese. A mess to eat, but ex- ceedingly good, 9 5 9 A French onion soup clearly has more substance if made from a good stock, but water can be substituted, as it sometimes is in France on Fridays and other days of fast, A homemade stock being a thing of the past, One must substitute canned consomme for it for better or worse. a * a French Onion Soup 2 large onions. sliced fine 2 tablespoons butter I tablespoon flour 2 quarts stock or water Salt and pepper to taste (depending on how well sea- soned the stock is) Sliced French bread Aged, grated Gruyere type cheese. 0 * . Slowly .cook the onions in the butter till they turn golden, Mix in the flour and cook a few min- utes. Add the stock, boil ten minutes and season. Arrange the bread on top, sprinkle complete- ly with the cheese and put into a hot oven or under a broiler until cheese has melted and browned. The soup niay be made in one large pot, then transferred to individual heat -proof casse- roles before the cheese is added. Or it may be prepared and pre- sented in the same big recep. tacle. Yield, depending on ap- petites and other food served with the soup, is three to six portions. Or, it might be more nearly correct to say, you make suffi- cient for six and find it barely enough for three. Believe me, I know. Living On Snow Few white men can build a snow house. It takes an Eskimo about half an hour. The blocks of snow are so solid, that it is like building with masonry. We were thankful to get inside as it was bitterly cold and still blow- ing hard. Nothing is more gor- geously clean than a new snow house. It is like a fairy grotto of an unearthly whiteness. The walls sparkle with a myriad dia- mond pinpoints. The next morn- ing the heat of the occupants will have turned the walls into ice, opaque and lustreless.. . What a strange substance. is snow! At once your enemy and your means of life. The blizzard is your greatest enemy. Then the fall of heavy flakes — which obliterates tracks and wipes out visibility—which in the North they call "Snowing Hudson's Bay blankets," has brought many of the hardiest travellers to los- ing their way.. . And yet without snow you could not travel. You build your house of it, you get it in your stew, you drink it in your tea, you ice your sledge runners with it. Its omnipresence de- taches from the world as you know it and makes the North a world of itself. The next day was Wednesday. It was even colder but there was less wind. The sun rose not as a ball of fire but as a pale gold orb with a pear-shaped aura around it of the same colour. At each side were two great rain- bow sun -dogs. . From Hudson's Bay Trader, by Lord Tweedsmuir. In Chicago, man got a court injunction that ordered hi wife not to see another man. No More Stogies For Jimmy—Jimmy Parmenter, 23 -month-old son of Mr, and Mrs. Kenneth Parmenter, must give up smoking, Juvenile Court Judge Walter Criswell ruled that cigars were bad for the child's health, and that Jimmy, who has been smoking *Ince he was 13 months old, set a bad example for other children. Prom now on, Jimmy will ask in vain for a light from his mother, left, above. Hair -Raising Experience—Tommy Schultz,4, was pretty tired of being mistaken for a little girl. Those long curls, left, were really beginning to annoy him. After a long campaign, his mother, Mrs. Nor- bert Schultz, finally consented to the shearing operation, and Tommy now feels he can face the world again with his new hair -do, right. WRONG PARTY A lady who was worried at the failure of her twenty -eight- year-old daughter to find a hus- band persuaded her to insert a classified ad in the "personal" columns, reading: "Beautiful, exotic young heiress seeks cor- respondence with devil - may - care gentleman who wants to go places fast." Two days after the ad appeared, the mother asked anxiously, ''Well? A n y an- swers?" "Just one," sighed her daughter. "Who wrote it?" de- manded Mamma, "I can't tell you," said the daughter, "But this was my idea," shouted Ma- ma, "and I insist upon knowing." "All right," said the daughter wearily. "It was Papa." KEPT AT IT The last time Harpo Marx vi- sited New York, representatives of a dozen worthy charities de- scended upon him to request his appearance at benefits. One lady • wao particularly persistent and, after twelve telephone conver- sations in two days, Harpo final- ly agreed to appear for her, She called for him to escort him personally to the proper place in order to make sure that lie wouldn't elude hen Just as they were closing the door of the suite, his phone began ringing. "Don't you want to go back and answer it?" she asked. Harpo sighed gently and said, "Why bother? It's undoubtedly you again." T ST YOUR INTELLIGENCE Score yourself 10 points for each correct answer in the first six questions. 1. Which of these men is given the credit for inventing the game of baseball? —Ty Cobb —Abner Doubleday —Knute Rocicne —Kennesaw Mountain Landis 2, Which of the following cities is sometimes called. "The City of Light?" —Paris —London —Berlin Vienna 3. Which of the following men invented movable type for printing, thus making mass production of books possible? —Thomas Aquinas —Aristotle —Hermann Helmholz —Johann Gutenberg 1, One of the following elements does not match the other three. Can you find it? —Nitrogen —Helium—Sodium —Argon 5. The word bicycle means: —Cut in half —Two eyes —Two wheels 6. What leader of the Israelites could not enter into the promised land? —Moses —Abraham- —Jacob —Solomon 7. Match the following battles with the wars in which they were fought. Score yourself 10 points for each correct choice. (A) Bunker Hill -American Civil War (B) Charge of the Light Brigade —French and Indian War (C) Pickett's Charge —American Revolution (D) Braddock's Defeat —Crimean War Total your points. A score of 0-20 is poor; 30-60, average; 70-80, superior; 90-100 very superior, ANSWERS TO INTELLIGENCE TEST rem uelpul put nomad (a) 'rem 'Tam utolaoury (0) 'tam uoeuna0 (g) 'uol;nlonag usaLssury (y)—a 'sesoW-9 •slaagAt ons—g •ttmlpog --a 'Teague;ntj turtgor—g 'sista—g • tepalgnoa aaugy—i Dressmaking Tough In Grandma's Day The vast improvements in dressmaking techniques of today have been emphasized by an in- teresting experiment conducted by a modern housewife. Accustomed to modern home dressmaking equipment and techniques which made it easy for her to whip up a new dress in a few hours, she decided, in the interest of science, to make herself a dress exactly the way her pioneer ancestor had to do it—the hard way, Beginning with the raw cotton and a spinning wheel, the ex- perimenter compared the result" of her work with modern methods. With practise she could turn out about a pound of yarn a clay on the spinning wheel. In the same length of time a single operator in a modern spinning plant produced twelve hundred pounds of yarn that was stronger and more uniform in quality, Weaving was part of every homemaker's job in pioneer times and operating an old hand loom, she found it took another full day to make enough cloth for her dress. The operator of a mod- ern loom in a textile mill made enough for 300 dresses in the same period, Bleaching came next. Eighteen hours were spent on the tedious job. The cloth had to be treated with' buttermilk, washed many times and then spread on the grass in the sunlight to dry. To day, bleaching is done chemically by machinery that turns oul thousands of yards a day. Dyeing the fabric for the dress meant standing over steaming dye pots for six solid hours. 01d fashioned dyes were made from seeds, flowers and the bark of trees. Today, thousands of yards are dyed' in a matter of hours with modern, fast dyes made from chemicals derived from coal tar. The cutting -out was clone with rough hand - made patterns. (There were none of our detailed tissue paper patterns in pioneer days.) The cutting alone took all of thirty minutes. Compared with this time factory cutting machines following expertly designed pat- terns whipped through hundreds of thicknesses in one operation. Sewing entirely by hand took the experimenter a total of eight and one-half hours, At a dress factory, workers completed the same type of dress in '76 minutes. Pressing each seam with an old-fashioned flat iron consumed another half hour compared to the factory job of only seconds. When finished the weary house- wife decided that modern tech- nology and mass - production methods could produce a dress of far better quality, and in. terms of toil, less expensive than she or her ancestor could. Even in malting clothes at home, mod- ern women have been freed the drudgery of making their own materials. Altogether the experimental dressmaking job consumed a total of 80 hours and great -great. gtaandmother would have spread the various steps over a period 01 16 months while making her own dyes and material, How Can !? By Roberta Lee Q. How can I wash leather gloves? A, Use a soft brush and soap- suds with cool water. Rinse in clear water. Pull the fingers into shape and blow open the fingers and glove, If no glove form is used, stuff with tissue paper and hang up to dry in room temper- ature. When half dry, put the gloves on the hands to shape. - Q. Now can 1 make glass opaque? A. If it is desired to make some glass surface opaque, rub over it with a lump of putty. Apply evenly and carefully, rubbing one way only. Q. How can 1 keep medicine from staining the teeth? A. If no glass tube is avail- able for taking a medicine that stains the teeth, use a stick of macaroni for the purpose. It will draw perfectly. Q. How can I make use of left- over milk? A. If it so happens that there is a quart or more of milk on hand, make a rice pudding, a custard, or a dish with a creamed sauce. Another pleasing way to use it is to have a slice of ham for dinner and bake it in milk in the oven for about an hour, add- ing milk as it boils away. Q. How can T retain the colors in cretonne when laundering? A. The next time it is neces- sary to launder the cretonne slip covers, or any other cretonne ar- ticles, try washing them in bran water and see if they do not re- tain their colors. Q. How can 1 make a tooth brush Iast longer? A. Soak the new tooth brush in salt water over night, not only to cleanse it but to make it last longer. Q. How can I remove ammonia stains? A. Ammonia will sometimes change the color of fabric on which it has been used for the removal of spots. When this is the case, the original color often can be restored by applying vine- gar and water. Q. What is a good home rem- edy for relieving a cough? A. A mixture of honey and lemon juice will often prove ef- fective. Butter in hot milk, taken before retiring, will ease the throat and induce a pleasantly drowsy feeling. UNE SC11001, Amtrews LESO BY REV. R. BARCLAY WARREN, B.A., B.A. JESUS COMMISSIONS THE TWELVE Matthew 1$,1, 5-7, 24-27, 34-39. MEMORY SELECTION: Ile that findeth his life shall lose it; and he that loseth his life for my sake shall find it. Matthew 10:39. One might have thought that Jesus would bave chosen his twelve disciples from Jerusalem, the religious centre of the nation, But not so. Only one, Aides Is- cariot, was from Judea. Seven were from Capernaum in Galilee. God frequently . chooses unlikely men to do his work. When Robert Raikes in 1781 lighted the fires of the modern Sunday School movement, the main body of clergy turned from him because the movement was inspired and maimed by laymen. As the disciples went forth to minister among the Jews they were not always to be favorably received. Today we are fortunate to live in a land where religious freedom is almost complete, But that does not mean that God's messenger is always well receiv- ed. Of course, he will not be be- headed as John the Baptist who dared to declare to King Herod, "It is not lawful for thee to have thy brother Philip's wife." In- stead, God's messenger is often confronted with a stolid indif- ference. This is sometimes hard- er to bear than active opposition. But just as the disciples did not alter the message to find the favor of men, neither should we. Pau] said, "If I were still pleas- ing men, I should not be a ser- vantof Christ." Gal. 1:10. Families are sometimes divid- ed in their attitude to the Gospel. It is unfortunate when only one of the married couples takes the way of the cross of Jesus Christ. But it is better that one serve Jesus Christ than neither. There is hope that the other may be won. I Cor. 7:16. Christians in many parts of the world are having to suffer for Christ. Let us pray for our brethren. Let us be bold to de- clare Christ before men. If it should sometimes occasion a sneer, let us recall Christ's suf- ferings for us. "If we suffer, we shall also reign with Him: If we deny Him, He also will deny us." 2 Tim, 2:12. GOOD ADVICE When Thomas Edison's private desk was opened fifteen years after his death, a card bearing the following admonition was found among his papers: "When down in the mouth, remember Jonah. He came out all right!" SALLY'S SALLIES *bol You boys have started whis- tling, too It" Not Blind To Beauty --"The Most Beautiful Blind Girl in America* will soon be selected from entrants in a contest recently spon- sored by The Associated Blind, Inc. Irving M. Sells, above, presi- dent of the organization, extends best wishes to two aspirants for the title. At left is Paddy Markey, 18. She is a lyric soprano, and has appeared an both radio and television. At right is Betty Schoonmaker, 20, who hopes to become a teacher for the blind. Purpose of the contest was to bring skills of the blind to the attention of employers,