Home Makers' Conference. 339 



"Atwater says there are four common errors in food economy: 

 That we buy too expensive food, that we eat too much, that we waste 

 too much and that the wrong food is often selected. This leads us to 

 inquire upon what the value of the food depends. Generally speaking, 

 the food value of a substance is determined by the amount and kind 

 of nutrients it contains, the value of these nutrients, their digestibility, 

 the needs of the body and the cost. The old saying that the best is 

 the cheapest is not true of foods. Eggs have the same food value when 

 they cost twenty cents per dozen that they do when they cost forty 

 cents per dozen. A pound of flour which costs two and one-half cents 

 has the same amount of nutritive value as seven pounds of oysters 

 which cost in the neighborhood of two dollars. 



"The intelligent housekeeper must familiarize herself with the 

 needs of the members of her family, with the composition and cost 

 of food and the best methods of preparing each." 



THE COOKING OF VEGETABLES. 



(Miss Nelle Nesbitt, Assistant in Home Economics.) 



Oar vegetable foods vary so greatly among themselves in composi- 

 tion and the condition in which we find them, that many methods of 

 cooking must be used to provide the best way for each. 



Fresh vegetables, as cabbage, celery and turnips, consist largely of 

 water, often containing as much as 90 per cent, which is a larger pro- 

 portion than milk contains. The greater part of the solids is the cellu- 

 lose which forms the structures of the plant. Throughout the vegeta- 

 ble are tiny cells of various forms and functions, but all have walls of 

 this substance cellulose, which we all know in certain forms, as linen, 

 which is cellulose of the stem of the flax plant ; cotton, which is cellu- 

 lose of the cotton plant; and paper, which is made of cellulose from 

 many sources. 



This substance, as is well known, has no great food value for the 

 human organism. However, though it is not itself digested by man, at 

 least not to any great degree, in most forms, it allows water and 

 the digestive fluids to pass through it readily. Because of this fact the 

 cell walls except when veiy thick do not interfere materially with the 

 digestion of the cell contents. 



In those vegetables forming the leaves, stems and roots of the plant 

 — as cabbage, celery and beets — are also fibres of cellulose whose func- 

 tion it is to fonn passageways for food material to the different parts 



