PURE AND IMPURE FOODS. 



" What a Man Eats He Is." 



Edited byC. F. Langworthy, Ph.D. 



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



PEASANT COOKS AND COOKING. 



In "A Girl in the Karpathians," an ac- 

 count of her wanderings in a region of 

 Eastern Europe little known to most tour- 

 ists, Mrs. Henry Norman describes the 

 cooking of the family dinner by a Ruthen- 

 ian peasant woman. 



"Away up the hills and through the pine- 

 tree glades we went, past little sunny bits 

 of field, all full of flowers, and along the 

 bed of a stream or 2, till we came to one of 

 the quaint, comfortful wooden houses which 

 are so unlike anything I have seen in our 

 country. . . 



"Stooping at the wide spreading eave, 

 which was a foot and more too low for me, 

 I followed the painter (her companion) 

 into the dusky keeping room, which is the 

 hut, save for a sort of entrance part where 

 provisions are stored. . . 



"After nods and good-days thrown vari- 

 ously to members of the family, we sit 

 down on the wooden bench which runs 

 around the wall, for stools and chairs there 

 are none in a Ruthenian cottage. The bed 

 and the stove usually share the opposite 

 side of the room, the bed being a broader 

 pine bench, with no mattress, but with sev- 

 eral rough blankets on it; and the stove, a 

 wonderful structure of wood and clay, 

 which, with its surrounding waist-high 

 shelf to place the pots on, is a good 6 feet 

 square. The effect of this whitewashed 

 stove is a pile of dressed stone blocks of 

 differing sizes placed one on another; thus 

 you have the base of all, then the protrud- 

 ing shelf, then the actual fire cavern, then 

 the chimney and oven, the 2 last of de- 

 creased sizes. The fire hole is a foot and a 

 half wide, a foot high, and 3 to 4 feet deep, 

 running to the house wall at the back; the 

 chimney root is in front of the fire, instead 

 of, as in England, at the back or side. This 

 excellent plan ensures the greatest heat and 

 the best burning toward the front, and 

 never have I seen a stove or an oven on 

 which cooking becomes so artistic a pleas- 

 ure as it does at these great Polish wood 

 fires. 



"On that upper ledge of the stove, where 

 a graduated heat doubtless appeals agree- 

 ably to the extended body, a man lies, lean- 

 ing on his elbow . . . another man is 

 sitting somewhere near a little window, and 

 a woman is thudding about the room with 

 her fine bare feet. 



insists on the young pig and chickens dis- 

 lodging themselves; and then, with sur- 

 prising swiftness, she picks over and washes 

 a heap of orange and white toadstools 

 wriich no English or Scotch peasant would 

 do more than kick over as they grew, let 

 alone touch. Some of these she has by her 

 in the wooden pot that holds the dandelion 

 leaves; others she produces from within her 

 single linen robe. They have lain there un- 

 suspected by me, and quite uncrushed, in a 

 row above the waist-line. I wonder when 

 an English woman will be able to bring 

 home mushrooms in her dress, above the 

 waist-line? 



"Let us pass from these idle fancies that 

 ran in my head as I watched the squeezing 

 out of these noxious agarici. They were 

 soon rammed into a one-eared earthen pot, 

 which was covered thriftily with close wire 

 netting, in the way of a practical life assur- 

 ance, as were all the jugs and pots I no- 

 ticed, and set before the blazing pine wood 

 fire. I have seldom seen a tub of potatoes 

 less washed than was that woman's, but in 

 an amazingly srfort time they were bubbling 

 away beside the dandelions and the mush- 

 rooms. Without a pause she washes her 

 hands, takes her rock and spindle and, sit- 

 ting by the second window, one foot under 

 her and the other upright on the toes sup- 

 porting her weight, begins spinning." 



As a rule, the peasants were not healthy 

 and robust ; but other reasons than poor 

 food are believed by Mrs. Norman to be 

 largely responsible. 



"Poor food and a lack of personal clean- 

 liness were probably not so much to blame 

 as the facile English creed would have us 

 believe; for it is a sophistry to call a diet 

 poor because it includes no meat nor stim- 

 ulant, and the monotony of maize meal and 

 potatoes, with such things as mushrooms, 

 dandelions, leeks, and eggs, is at any rate 

 an extremely healthful monotony." 



On another occasion Mrs. Norman 

 watches a peasant girl at Zabie prepare 

 some cakes, or bannocks, which seemed 

 promising, at least to a hungry stranger. 



"A fine wood fire was going and a pot 

 of potatoes had been boiled. These she 

 turned into a wooden trough, long, perfect 

 in form, hollowed from a tree, where they 

 were kneaded to a stiff plastic mass ; a few 

 handfuls of maize meal and young onions — 

 leaf, root and all chopped up — being added. 



'The woman, with instinct of politeness, This she welded into 2 formidable c?nnon 



3*0 



