IV—COOKING
A good beginning is a review of the cooking of our grandmothers, cooking in various parts of the country, and cooking in foreign lands.
Scientific cooking is, first, a knowledge of food values, but it also includes the art of cooking, and both may be presented. Show how an expert cook will use whatever materials she has at hand and will avoid the use of costly ingredients. A good topic here is, How shall we have variety without increasing the expense?
The kitchen as a workshop is the subject of the next paper. Make it plain that one needs a clean, sanitary room, with everything to work with; suggest new utensils, fireless cookers, and so on, and describe the ideal kitchen.
Close with a discussion on the point: How can a woman learn to be a good cook? Mention cooking schools, demonstrations and lectures, the study of magazine articles and the pamphlets sent out by the Department of Agriculture. Clubs might form cooking classes as an outcome of this meeting.
V—THE LAUNDRY
This topic may be arranged in two parts: the work done at home and the work sent out. Under the first speak of the former methods and how washing and ironing days were dreaded, and the old difficult ways of working. The second paper will take the new ideas, and mention running water, stationary tubs, washing machines, mangles, gas stoves, modern flat-irons, and other appliances for the laundry. Speak of the economy of buying soap, starch, and bluing at wholesale.
At this meeting members may bring in illustrations from catalogues of anything they have seen which promises to help in doing laundry work at home.
The other part of the program would naturally take up the larger aspects of the question. Have a paper on public laundries: Are they sanitary? Is it economical to have shirts done up there rather than at home? Describe the methods of some large laundry.
The last paper would deal with the washerwoman at one's own home, and at hers. Is it extravagant to hire a day's work when one could really do it one's self? Is it safe to send washing out to a home which may not be clean?