It may have been frequently noticed that all families require food at certain intervals, generally three times a day, and in the case of children even oftener. The cost of providing this food at the butcher, baker, and provision shops is necessarily very great, and it is well, then, to understand how a very good substitute for store-food may be prepared at home. In order to make this preparation, procure from your grocer's a quantity of flour—ordinary wheat flour—buying much or little, according to the size of your family. This must then be placed in a tin-pan, and mixed with water, salt, and yeast, according to taste. If the mass is now placed by the fire, a singular phenomenon will be observed, to which it will be well to draw the attention of the whole family; old and young will witness it with equal surprise and delight. The whole body of the soft mixture will gradually rise and fill (and sometimes even overflow) the pan! When not in view by the household, it will be well to cover the pan with a cloth, on account of dust and roaches; but it must be observed that a soft and warm
bedlike arrangement will thus be formed, and if the family cat should choose to make it her resting-place, the mixture will not rise.
After this substance is sufficiently light and spongy, it must be taken out of the pan and worked up into portions weighing a few pounds each. But it must not be eaten in this condition, for it would be neither palatable nor wholesome. It should be put in another pan and placed in the oven. Then (if there be a fire in the stove or range) it will be soon hardened and dried by the action of the heat, and will be fit to be eaten—provided the foregoing conditions have been perfectly understood. When brought to the table, it should be cut in slices and spread with molasses, jelly, butter, or honey, and it will be found quite adequate to the relief of ordinary hunger. A family which has once used this preparation will never be content without it. Some persons have it at every meal.
PUNCHINELLO has read with great pleasure a recently published book, by CATHARINE BEECHER, and her sister Mrs. STOWE, the object of which is to teach ingenious folks how to make ordinary articles of household furniture in their leisure hours. One article not mentioned by these ladies is recommended by PUNCHINELLO to the attention of all economical families. It having been observed that it is a highly useful practice to provide for the regular recurrence of meals, bedtime and other household epochs, an instrument which shall indicate the hour of the day will be of the greatest advantage. Such a one may thus be made on rainy days or in the long winter evenings. Procure some thin boards and construct a small box. If it can be made pointed at one end, with two little towers to it, so much the better. Make a glass door to it, and paste upon the lower part of this a picture representing a scene in Spanish Germany. Paint a rose just under the scene. Then get a lot of brass cog-wheels, and put them together inside of the box. Arrange them so that they shall fit into each other and wrap a string around one of them, to the end of which a lump of lead or iron should be attached. Then put a piece of tin, with the hours painted thereon, on the upper part of the box, behind the door, and get two long bits of thin iron, one shorter than the other, and connect them, by means of a hole in the middle of the tin, with the cog-wheels inside. Then shut the door, and if this apparatus has been properly made, it will tell the time of day. Any thing more convenient cannot be imagined, and the cost of the brass, by the pound, will not be more than fifteen cents, while the wood, the tin, and the iron may be had for about ten cents. In the shops the completed article would be very much more costly.
In his "Hints" PUNCHINELLO always desires to remember the peculiar needs of the ladies, and will now tell them something that he is sure will please them. They have all found, in the course of their shopping, that it is exceedingly difficult to procure at the dry goods stores, any sort of fabric which is so woven as to fit the figure, and they must have frequently experienced the necessity of cutting their purchases into variously-shaped pieces and fastening them together again by means of a thread. Here is an admirable plan for accomplishing this object. Take a piece of fine steel wire and sharpen one end of it. Now bore a hole in the other end, in which insert the thread. If the edges of the cloth are now placed together, and the wire is forced through them, the operator will find, to her delight and surprise, that the thread will readily follow it. If the wire is thus passed through the stuff, backward and forward, a great many times, the edges will be firmly united. It will be necessary, on the occasion of the first puncture, to form a hard convolution at the free end of the thread, so as to prevent it passing entirely through. This method will be found much more convenient than the plan of punching holes in the stuff and then sticking the ends of the thread through them. In the latter case, the thread is almost certain to curl up, and cause great annoyance.
Dies Iræ.
The Philadelphia Day, on account of the immense success of PUNCHINELLO.