PURE AND IMPURE FOODS. 



" What a Man Eats He Is." 



Edited by C. F. Langworthy, Ph. D. 

 Author of "On Citraconic, Itaconic and Mesaconic Acids," "Fish as Food," etc. 



LIFE ON A HOUSE BOAT IN SI AM. 

 The journey from Bangkok to Chieng- 

 Mai, the capital of the Lao provinces of 

 Siam, a distance of some 500 miles, must 

 be made on the backs of elephants or in 

 houseboats on the Maa-Ping rivers, and 

 requires 8 to 9 weeks. The boats are 

 about 30 feet long and only large enough 

 to accommodate one person comfortably 

 in addition to the native crew. The jour- 

 ney is usually made with a boat for each 

 person and a cook boat. The New Eng- 

 land Magazine contains an interesting ac 

 count of such a trip. 



Special interest attaches to the provis- 

 ioning of the boats. Those which serve as 

 cabins are fitted with many comforts. But- 

 ter, condensed milk, and such articles of 

 food as are required at every meal are 

 usually kept in them, as well as drinking- 

 water in large jars of porous red pottery. 

 The furniture of the cook boat is less 

 elaborate. Its sole necessity is a large box 

 filled with sand to hold the native stove, 

 a mere shallow earthern fire pan. With 

 this, a saucepan or 2, a Dutch oven, and a 

 perfectly flat sheet-iron griddle, supported 

 on 2 bricks, a competent native cook can 

 convert the most unpromising raw mate- 

 rials into dishes fit for an epicure. No 

 chairs are needed. A native always squats 

 on his heels or sits tailor fashion on the 

 floor. For sleeping comforts a block- 

 shaped cotton pillow, a mat, and a felt 

 blanket apiece are all he and his assist- 

 ants desire. A handkerchief would almost 

 hold all his extra changes of clothing, as 

 his costume consists simply of a gaily 

 colored cotton loin-cloth, with a white 

 cotton jacket for "occasions." Besides 

 preparing the food for the table, it is the 

 cook's duty to gather brushwood for fuel 

 and to care for the canned provisions en- 

 trusted to him, as well as to replenish 

 the larder with fresh supplies whenever 

 possible. The boy who assists him in 

 many ways also serves the meals, waits 

 on the table, attends to all of his master's 

 personal wants, and sometimes washes his 

 clothes, which are spread out on the roof 

 of the khak-khaa, or cabin for storing 

 goods, to dry, and are worn without the 

 formality of ironing. 



The boats start well provisioned with 

 such canned goods, flour, coffee, tea, sugar, 

 crackers, etc., as would be needed for any 

 camping-out trip. Eggs are often carried 

 packed in lard, which thus serves a double 



purpose. Bread, cookies, fresh meat, and 

 fruit are provided for the first few days, 

 and live fowl, confined in wicker cages, 

 bunches of bananas, and carefully selected 

 oranges, lemons, and cocoanuts, will often 

 last the whole trip. In the earlier stages 

 of the journey it is easy to get fresh sup- 

 plies from the villages all along the river 

 unless, as not infrequently happens, chol- 

 era is raging and one fears possible con- 

 tagion. As one gets farther into the jun- 

 gle, the villages are few and small, but 

 there is an abundance of wild game. Squir- 

 rels, jungle fowl, quails, and even deer, are 

 plentiful. But a man who goes to stalk 

 deer must look out that he is not himself 

 stalked by a leopard or treed by a pack 

 of wolves, and the hunter of squirrels in 

 trees must keep an eye out for snakes in 

 the grass at the same time. 



The natives include among edible crea- 

 tures certain varieties of serpents, the igu- 

 ana lizard, and at times even a monkey, 

 which may be made into curry to eat with 

 their inevitable rice. Certain fat crickets 

 are esteemed a delicacy, as are also wild 

 honey and many a wild root and vegetable 

 of the jungle. Fish are everywhere plenti- 

 ful, though most of them are coarse 

 grained and have a strong earthy flavor. 

 Sometimes these fish may be scooped up 

 literally in bucketfuls from the little land- 

 locked pools where they have been caught 

 when the water has fallen suddenly after a 

 freshet. Dead and alive, these all go to 

 make "Hah" for the boatmen, which is a 

 sort of sauce of rotten pickled fish much 

 appreciated by the natives. Sometimes 

 when "Hah" is extraordinarily plentiful, 

 the white man, whose taste for the morsel 

 is uncultivated, is obliged to shift the po- 

 sition of his boat so as to avoid its insistent 

 odor. 



FOOD VALUE OF MUSHROOMS. 



Autumn is the season when mushrooms 

 are most abundant in the fields and woods. 

 While many kinds are edible, some are 

 poisonous. There is no simple way of tell- 

 ing whether any given sort is harmful. No 

 dependence can be placed on discoloring 

 a silver spoon or any such tests. The only 

 sure method is by careful study to learn 

 the different fungi as one knows other 

 plants, and to avoid all which are doubtful. 



There is a widespread idea that mush- 

 rooms and other edible fungi are nutri- 

 tious foods. They are commonly said to 



3 l 7 



