Healthful Cooking
[
Testimonies for the Church 1:681, 682
(1868).]
Many do not feel that this is a matter of duty, hence they do not
try to prepare food properly. This can be done in a simple, healthful,
and easy manner, without the use of lard, butter, or flesh meats. Skill
must be united with simplicity. To do this, women must read, and
then patiently reduce what they read to practice. Many are suffering
because they will not take the trouble to do this. I say to such, It is
time for you to rouse your dormant energies and read up. Learn how to
cook with simplicity, and yet in a manner to secure the most palatable
and healthful food.
Because it is wrong to cook merely to please the taste or to suit
the appetite, no one should entertain the idea that an impoverished
diet is right. Many are debilitated with disease and need a nourishing,
plentiful, well-cooked diet. We frequently find graham bread heavy,
sour, and but partially baked. This is for want of interest to learn, and
care to perform the important duty of cook. Sometimes we find gem
cakes, or soft biscuit, dried, not baked, and other things after the same
order. And then cooks will tell you they can do very well in the old
style of cooking, but to tell the truth, their family do not like graham
bread; that they would starve to live in this way.
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
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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
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