88 



THE GARDEN MAGAZINE 



October, 1917 



^*^<fcr 



*a*sr &£■£?*■ 



vegetable, or, if it is cooked in water, using so 

 little water that it may be served with it, or 

 saving the water for the making of cream 

 vegetable soups, are all ways of doing this. It 

 is stupid to choose vegetables for our diet 

 because of their one special value, and then 

 throw away much of the material that gives 

 them that value. Delicious soups may be 

 made from the water in which cabbage, cauli- 

 flower, asparagus, peas, corn, spinach and 

 other vegetables have 

 been cooked. 



In trimming celery 

 for salad the leaf and 

 the tougher stalks 

 may be laid aside to 

 dry. The tougher 

 leaves of the spinach 

 may also be dried. 

 Part of the bunch of 

 parsley or mint, onion 

 or carrot, that is not 

 used, even the peel- 

 ing and tough stems 

 of mushrooms, may 



be dried, and all of these may be used for soup 

 or flavoring. 



For drying these small amounts no special 

 apparatus is necessary. A tin plate kept on 

 top of the gas oven, or in some place near the 

 stove where it will get a small amount of heat, 

 is all that is needed. In the same way, if an 

 ear or two of corn is left from the dinner, it 

 may be cut from the cob and dried and used an- 

 other time for a vegetable or for soup. "Dry 

 as you go" might be the motto for this method 

 of saving. 



EMERGENCY USE 



To-day the question arises how far can 

 we use these fruits and vegetables not merely 

 for their own value but to take the place 

 of other foods. We can use them safely in 

 large amounts if in this generous use we do not 

 neglect the fuel and body building foods, and 

 if we choose them carefully we may use them as 

 meat savers, cereal savers, and sugar savers. 



Fruits and Vegetables as Meat Savers 



TV/T EAT is one of the foods upon which we are 

 ^ -*■ accustomed to depend for much of our 

 body-building material. The best vegetables 

 to take its place are peas (including the cow 

 pea so common in the 

 South) and shelled 

 beans, such as kidney, 

 lima, and soy beans. 

 These have a fair 

 amount of this body- 

 building material that 

 is so essential not only 

 to our welfare but to 

 our very existence. 

 This protein is not of 

 quite the same kind 

 that is present in milk, 

 eggs and meat, so that 



it may be used only to supply part of thewhole 

 amount we need. It is better then to think of 

 these vegetables as meat savers rather than as 

 meat substitutes, but the addition of a very 

 little meat, or milk — even skimmed milk — or 

 egg is all that is necessary to supply the lack. 

 One half a pound of shelled green peas or 

 beans, or one fourth of a pound (one cup) with 

 a cup of skimmed milk or an egg, gives as 

 much body-building material as one fourth of 

 a pound of beef. 



Other vegetables may be used to extend the 

 meat flavor and to make it go as far as possible. 

 Many of us eat too much meat. If we can eat 



less and yet have the flavor that we like we 

 shall be better off and just as happy. If we 

 are accustomed to use only a little meat, it is 

 all the more necessary that we should get all 

 the satisfaction possible out of it. In our 

 stews we might use one fourth as much meat 

 as we have been accustomed to use, and double 

 or triple the amount of vegetables. A satis- 

 factory dinner may be made from a very little 

 left-over meat, put into a casserole or covered 



A well chosen dinner, giving the right proportion of 

 muscle-building food, with enough starch, sugar and fat to 

 give the needed fuel. The spinach contains iron and other 

 mineral matter, and some of the other foods contain the re- 

 gulating substances so necessary to health and growth. 



The dinner on right is less expensive, but it is as well 



selected. Most of the protein is supplied by the bread, 

 since the cereals are the cheapest source of this muscle 

 building food, and by the baked beans, that like all the 

 legumes contain a very large proportion of it. Even the 

 least expensive diet must have some fresh vegetables or 

 fruit. Here cabbage is chosen 



dish between thick layers of sliced earrots or 

 turnips, with a little water and seasoning 

 added and perhaps a little left-over gravy, or 

 broth, and the whole cooked in the oven until 

 the vegetables are thoroughly done. The 

 New England "boiled dinner," with its many 

 vegetables and its small amount of meat, is an 

 old method of carrying out this plan. 



Cereal Saving — Potatoes 



' I v HATour present need is to save our cereals, 



■*■ especially wheat, no one questions, and 



for this we must look chiefly to the potato 



and the sweet potato, among vegetables; 



This dinner looks attractive, but when we study it we 

 find that too many of the foods that are used in it are 

 chosen from the group that contains a large amount of fat. 

 The dinner consists of cream of tomato soup, mutton 'chops, 

 creamed potatoes, greens cooked with bacon or pork, andsuet 

 pudding with hard sauce. It contains over 3 ounces of fat; 

 1-J to 3 ounces is all that should be used for the whole day 



This dinner has too much of the muscle-building food 

 called protein. Fish, eggs, nuts and beans each may be 

 used to take the place of some of the meat in the diet. 

 Here we have them all, with meat besides. 



The dinner shown to the right has too many foods from 



the two groups that are rich in sugar and starch. Meat pie 

 and baked potato, green peas, bread and butter, and cottage 

 pudding with chocolate sauce, in one meal show how by 

 unwise choice, one characteristic of the well-chosen diet — 

 a right proportion between protein and fuel— was omitted 



among fruits we may use the partially ripened, 

 cooked banana. 



The potato, not only in common usage but 

 from a dietetic standpoint, is in a class by it- 

 self among vegetables. One may live entirely 

 upon the potato, as some Danish investigators 

 have done for several years. 



Five ounces of potato yields as much fuel 

 value as one ounce of cereal, uncooked, but 

 since in cooking the cereal we add from 2 to 3 

 times the amount of water, we must serve 

 about twice as much potato as cereal to give 

 equal food value. A small potato (4 or 5 to the 

 pound) has as much starch as a large slice of 



bread (1 oz.), though it contains a little less of 

 the body-building protein. Now that pota- 

 toes are again abundant we may eat less bread 

 and use more potato. In America the average 

 consumption of potato is about one-half pound 

 per day for each person, and this might be 

 materially increased. The potato should be 

 cooked in its "jacket," for much is wasted 

 in paring and the pared potato loses more 

 of its mineral salts in the water than the un- 

 pared. 



Fruits as Sugar Savers 



EpOR saving of sugar 

 *■ we depend chiefly 

 on fruits rather than 

 on vegetables, though 

 beets, carrots, pars- 

 nips, artichokes, and 

 especially the sweet 

 potato, contain a good 

 deal of sugar; while 

 onions, cabbage, some 

 kinds of peas, string 

 beans, sweet corn and 

 squash also contain a fair amount of sugar. 



We sometimes divide our fruits into flavor 

 fruits and food fruits, but the dividing line 

 between these is very indefinite. Bananas 

 would naturally fall into the food class since 

 the banana contains a large amount of real 

 food in the form of starch — or sugar in the 

 ripened banana. Oranges and peaches, on the 

 other hand, belong to the flavor fruits, with 

 less than half as much fuel value as the banana. 

 Grapes, with their large amount of sugar, 

 plums, and cherries come in between. We need 

 to remember this in planning our bill of fare. 

 Dried fruits — dates, figs, raisins, prunes — have 

 so much sugar that they may well be used in 

 place of candies. 



While the raw fruits to many are the most 

 attractive, some find them more difficult to 

 digest than the cooked fruit. While we may 

 use cooked fruits in combination with cereals 

 and in other ways for puddings and desserts, 

 some of the simplest ways of cooking them are 

 quite as satisfactory. The apple sauce made 

 from cooking the whole apple, skin and all, and 

 straining it, uses every particle of the flavor 

 and the mineral salts present. Pears baked 

 for three or four hours in a deep dish, with a 

 very little water, either with or without a 

 small amount of 

 sugar, turn such a 

 beautiful red that 

 thev are a delight to 

 the eye as well as the 

 palate. Baked quinces 

 prepared in the same 

 way, either with or 

 without the addition 

 of apple, is a use of the 

 fruit that might be 

 more often made. 

 Prunes may be cooked 

 without sugar, and to 

 many are much more palatable. If the prunes 

 are soaked over night, and cooked in the water 

 in which they were soaked until the water is 

 reduced to a thick syrup, one has an article 

 little like the ordinary stewed prune. 



Jams in Place of Butter 



JAMS and preserves, through the ac 

 of sugar, are foods of a high fuel 



the addition 

 value. 

 Jam is regarded as of great importance on 

 the Continent of Europe to-day and all the 

 Continental governments hav^ taken steps to 

 procure sufficient jam in order to cover this 

 need in the diet. 



