Healthful Cookery
625
I have said to myself: I do not wonder at it. It is your manner of
preparing food that makes it so unpalatable. To eat such food would
certainly give one the dyspepsia. These poor cooks, and those who
have to eat their food, will gravely tell you that the health reform does
not agree with them. The stomach has not power to convert poor,
heavy, sour bread into good; but this poor bread will convert a healthy
stomach into a diseased one. Those who eat such food know that they
are failing in strength. Is there not a cause? Some of these persons
call themselves health reformers, but they are not. They do not know
how to cook. They prepare cakes, potatoes, and graham bread, but
there is the same round, with scarcely a variation, and the system is
not strengthened. They seem to think the time wasted which is devoted
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to obtaining a thorough experience in the preparation of healthful,
palatable food. Some act as though that which they eat were lost, and
anything they could toss into the stomach to fill it would do as well as
food prepared with so much painstaking. It is important that we relish
the food we eat. If we cannot do this, but eat mechanically, we fail to
be nourished and built up as we would be if we could enjoy the food
we take into the stomach. We are composed of what we eat. In order
to make a good quality of blood, we must have the right kind of food,
prepared in a right manner.
It is a religious duty for those who cook to learn how to prepare
healthful food in different ways, so that it may be eaten with enjoyment.
Mothers should teach their children how to cook. What branch of the
education of a young lady can be so important as this? The eating
has to do with the life. Scanty, impoverished, ill-cooked food is
constantly depraving the blood by weakening the blood-making organs.
It is highly essential that the art of cookery be considered one of the
most important branches of education. There are but few good cooks.
Young ladies consider that it is stooping to a menial office to become
a cook. This is not the case. They do not view the subject from a right
standpoint. Knowledge of how to prepare food healthfully, especially
bread, is no mean science.
In many families we find dyspeptics, and frequently the reason of
this is the poor bread. The mistress of the house decides that it must
not be thrown away, and they eat it. Is this the way to dispose of poor
bread? Will you put it into the stomach to be converted into blood?