The aim throughout is not to teach fancy cooking, but plain serviceable dishes, 

 giving basic recipes ^vhich are capable of variation, and to combine with these such 

 facts as will bring a realization of the importance of the work and its vast influence 

 on human well-being. 



Life makes numberless demands upon the system which cooking can assist it 

 to meet. The more civilized we become the more unexpected and severe is the 

 wear and tear of daily existence. The art of cooking lies in providing such a food 

 supply that, while containing the elements essential to good nutrition it shall be 

 suited to the requirements of season, work and age, and shall combine economy 

 with due variety of flavour. 



Cooking is a science as well as an art, because it has laws of its own which it 

 is our duty to discover, to learn and to apply. 



It is also a service often despised and left in the hands of the ignorant or the 

 careless. No other art or science is so little understood, so lig'htly esteemed or so 

 casually performed, and there is no service the dignity and worth of which are less 

 perceived. 



A¥ APPKECTATIO^T OF THE DOMESTIC SCIENCE COFRSE: (FOODS 



AND COOKING). 



By Ethel M. Chapman, Demonstration Lecturer, Toronto. 



In the earlier days of Women's Institute work, the ]:)rogrammes consisted 

 almost entirely of demonstrations and discussions along the lines of cookery and 

 housekeeping. There was usually no system in the arrangement of the topics 

 to be taken up ; the programmes were necessarily outlined under difficulties 

 so far as procuring just the right person to take up the subject desired was con- 

 cerned, and yet, these, I am sure were always more or less helpful. Now, a few 

 organizations are going to the other extreme and subjects pertaining to practical 

 cooking and housekeeping are almost entirely eliminated, giving place to problems 

 of education, social life, and philanthropy in general. This we feel is a serious 

 mistake. These questions certainly should have their place, and possibly the first 

 place, but the greater part of every homemaker's time is spent in feeding her 

 family and caring for her home. Few women can escape it even if they should 

 want to, and we are proud to know that our Institute women realize that they 

 could find no higher profession. Anyway cooking has an ethical as well as a 

 practical value, for "a, hungry man is an angry man,'' and the well-nourished 

 individual is more likely to be normal mentally and morally as well as physically. 

 This is why the Demonstration Lecture Courses have been so popular with \he 

 progressive women of the province. 



When this course of demonstration lectures in domestic science was first talked 

 about, some people seemed to get the idea that a demonstrator would be sent out 

 to teach the preparation of several fancy impractical and expensive dishes. They 

 were even worried about the cost of materials to be supplied by the Institute. How- 

 ever, they soon found that this averaged only sixty cents a week, and that the 

 dishes prepared, far from being elaborate, were made to illustrate how to serve 

 the common foods in the most attractive palatable and wholesome way. This neces- 

 sarily involves a systematic, scientific study of foods and nutrition. Every other 

 line of work is conducted along scientific lines to-day, and why not housekeeping? 

 Even the farmer makes a study of what foods will make the best balanced ration 

 for his stock, and what variety is necessary to keep them in the best possible 



