ked. By the time I was putting a recipe a week on the board the
mothers got naturally interested and would come to school to ask about
this recipe and that. They wouldn't take any advice, you understand, not
they! They knew all about cooking, so they thought, but they were mighty
proud of the things their daughters did, particularly when they took the
prizes at the county fair. Besides that, it made a whole lot of
difference at home, because the things they made helped out a lot and
tasted mighty good on the table."

Miss Belle's next move was against the cake--soggy, sticky stuff, full
of butter, that was very generally eaten by all of the families that
could afford it. Expensive and fearfully indigestible it made up,
together with bread, almost the entire contents of most lunch baskets.

"I couldn't see quite how to go about the cake business," Miss Belle
commented, "because they were particularly proud of it. Finally, though,
I hit on an idea. One of the women in the neighborhood was sick. She was
a good cook and knew good cooking when she saw it, so I got my sister to
make an angel cake, which I took around to her. I do believe it was the
first light cake she had ever tasted--anyway, she was tickled to death.
It wasn't long after that before every one who could afford to do it was
making angel food. Of course it's expensive, but since they were bound
to make cake, that was a lot better than the other."

Similar tactics gradually replaced the fried meats by roasts and stews.
When Miss Belle came, meat swam in fat while it cooked and came from the
stove loaded with grease. Everybody fried meat, and when by chance they
bought a roast they began by boiling all of the juice out of it before
they put it in the oven. Miss Belle's stews and roasts made better
eating, though. The men-folks liked them hugely and the old frying
process was doomed.

"No," concluded Miss Belle, laughingly, "you can't do a thing with the
old folks. Why if I was to go into a kitchen belonging to one of those
women and tell her how to sift flour she would run me out quick, but
when Annie comes home and makes such muffins that the man of the family
eats eleven the first time, there is no way to answer back. The muffins
speak for themselves."

IV Taking the Boys in Hand

While the girls were making over the diet of the neighborhood Miss Belle
was working through the boys to improve the strains of corn used by the
farmers, the methods of ferti