SCOUTING FOR GIRLS 
353 
in camp by doing his own mixing, and it will not do 
for thickening, dredging, etc. 
“Flour and meal should be sifted before starting on 
an expedition. There will be no sieve in camp. 
“Baking Powder — Get the best, made with pure cream 
of tartar. It costs more than the alum powders, and 
does not go so far, bulk for bulk; but it is much kinder 
to the stomach. Baking soda will not be needed on 
short trips, but is required for longer ones, in making 
sour-dough, as a steady diet of baking-powder bread or 
biscuit will ruin the stomach if persisted in for a con- 
siderable time. Soda also is useful medicinally. 
“Cornmeal — Some like yellow, some prefer white. The 
flavor of freshly ground meal is best, but the ordinary 
granulated meal of commerce keeps better, because it 
has been kiln-dried. Cornmeal should not be used as 
the leading breadstuff, for reasons already given, but 
johnny cake, corn pancakes, and mush are a welcome 
change from hot wheat bread or biscuit, and the aver- 
age novice at cooking may succeed better with them. 
The meal is useful to roll fish in before frying. 
“Breakfast Cereals — These according to taste, and for 
variety's sake. Plain cereals, particularly oatmeal, re- 
quire a long cooking, either in a double boiler or with 
constant stirring, to make them digestible ; and then there 
is a messy pot to clean up. They do more harm than 
good to campers who hurry their cooking. So it is best 
to buy the partially cooked cereals that take only a few 
minutes to prepare. Otherwise the ‘patent breakfast 
foods' have no more nutritive quality than plain grain; 
some of them not so much. The notion that bran has 
remarkable food value is a delusion; it actually makes 
the protein of the grain less digestible. As for mineral 
tnatter, ‘to build up bone and teeth and brawn,' there 
