HELOISE: Enjoy Pat Nixon’s date-nut bread

Dear Readers: While we were looking through archived columns, we ran across this recipe that ran in 1961, in my mother’s (the original Heloise) column. We thought you might enjoy again this recipe for Pat Nixon’s date-nut bread:

1 pound packaged dates

2 teaspoons baking soda

1 1/2 cups boiling water

1 tablespoon butter

1 3/4 cups sugar

1 egg

2 3/4 cups flour

1 cup chopped nuts

1 teaspoon vanilla

Cut dates into small pieces and place in a bowl. Add baking soda to boiling water and pour over dates in bowl. Set aside and let mixture stand. With a mixer, cream butter and sugar together. Add the egg. Strain water from the date mixture into the cream, sugar and egg mixture. Add flour and beat well. Add nuts, dates and vanilla. Pour the mixture into greased loaf pans. Bake for one hour in a 350 degree oven.

For more favorite Heloise recipes, send $5 and a long, self-addressed, stamped (61 cents) envelope to: Heloise/Recipes, P.O. Box 795001, San Antonio, TX 78279-5001. For a get-together, make this along with a pumpkin and a zucchini bread. Then sit back and watch them disappear. This date-nut bread also makes a great hostess gift.

Heloise

Dear Heloise: When you boil cabbage, corned beef or other odor-creating foods, add a tad of vinegar to the water. It will help prevent those smells.

Also, I love to make salads in the summer — macaroni and potato. I like chopped eggs in the salads, but hate the chopping. I grate carrots into the macaroni salad, and one day tried using the grater on the eggs. Worked beautifully, and took much less time!

Colleen in New Jersey

Dear Heloise: My family recently picked several gallons of blueberries at an Indiana blueberry farm. My heart sank when friends told me to freeze them individually on cookie sheets before placing them in freezer bags or they would all stick together in a clump. My only freezer is the one connected to my refrigerator, and a cookie sheet won’t fit in it easily. I tried another method, which worked wonderfully.

I washed the berries in a colander and placed them in a single layer on a clean terry dish towel. Then I blotted them with another clean dish towel. I put them in freezer bags, squeezed the air out and popped them into the freezer. The berries are perfectly individually frozen, and it’s so easy to pour out a few for our morning cereal.

Sue from Valparaiso, Ind.

Dear Heloise: My husband came up with an idea. Because ice cubes generally water down drinks, he decided to take some drinks and make ice cubes with them. Then when used, they won’t water down the drinks.

Val T., via e-mail

Dear Heloise: Keep a box of nonfat dry milk in your pantry for recipes that require milk. If you discover that you don’t have fresh available, this will always be on hand for that emergency situation, and it doesn’t need refrigeration.

A Texas Reader, via e-mail

Send a money-saving or timesaving hint to Heloise, P.O. Box 795000, San Antonio, TX 78279-5000, fax it to 210-HELOISE or e-mail it to Heloise@Heloise.com.

King Features Syndicate