The Weavers
Canned meat and canned fish are not recommended.
Care of Provisions
All bags of cereal, meals or flour should be placed in covered barrels, boxes or tubs stood on a platform raised from the floor. Boxes of dried foods such as fruit, cod fish and so forth should be stacked, each kind in a pile and placed on the platform. All tinned goods should be taken out of their cases and laid on shelves. Butter, crisco, eggs, peanut butter, apple butter, and so forth, should be kept in the ice house. Cheese should be wrapped in cheese cloth wrung out in vinegar and kept in a box on a shelf in the store room, not in the ice box.
The handling of fresh milk is something which should be done with great care. After opening a large can, the milk should be stirred with a long ladle which reaches to the bottom of the can. The quantity of milk needed should be taken out and put in a pitcher. For dipping out the milk use a dipper which has been sterilized by placing it in boiling water and cooled by allowing cold water to run over it. This dipper should not be used for any other purpose than taking milk from the large can and when not in use can hang in the ice room. Milk cans should always be kept covered and no milk which has once been taken out of a can should ever be poured back into it. What is left from the table should be put in a pitcher and stood in the ice house to be used for cooking. Milk which is handled in this way and which comes from a first class dairy will keep sweet for three days. It is not essential to keep fresh vegetables in an ice house. If the tops are cut off, vegetables can be kept in baskets in the store room. Under no circumstances should anything hot or even warm be put into the ice box, as the steam which arises from the combination of cold and heat will decompose food very quickly, or cause it to sour. Anything that is hot and needs to be cooled before placing in the ice box should be covered with cheese cloth kept for the purpose and stood on the store room shelves.
Bread, if bought from a bakery, can be kept in a barrel or on shelves and covered with cheese cloth. The sandwich loaves are recommended as they cut to better advantage in the bread cutter, and are more economical in the long run. These loaves weigh about three pounds apiece and cut into from 40 to 45 slices.
Ice cream salt should not be kept in the store room, but in a half-barrel or tub outside of the kitchen door. Salt causes dampness, which is not desirable. The bag of table salt should stand in a tub or box of some kind. Fruit, especially tomatoes and peaches, should be watched closely as little flies are apt to collect on them.
It is most essential that the store room be swept, the shelves brushed, and everything not of use removed from it every morning. This is true with the care of an ice box or room. Not a day should pass that it is not thoroughly inspected and all that is not usable removed from it, and the room left in a perfectly clean, wholesome condition. The ice compartment should be washed out two or three times a week before the fresh ice is put into the box.
Do not buy more perishable food than can be properly taken care of and used within a day or two. Watch it closely, pick it over each day and throw out any part which shows signs of decay.
Do not neglect to replenish the larder before supplies are out, as transportation is slow. Do not forget that large quantities take much more time to cook than small quantities. Many times meals are not served on time for this reason.