Part 4

A bilious girl should not drink milk unqualified by a dash of lime water, and never take coffee. Her languid, appetiteless mother will be refreshed in nerve, stimulated in brain, by a demi-tasse of strong coffee taken without cream after her dinner. It is doubtful whether or not creamed coffee is a wholesome beverage for any one. It is an established fact that the addition of cream works a chemical change, and for the worse, in that which, taken clear, is a valuable digestive agent.

An important branch of the mother’s profession is to acquaint herself with the stomachic idiosyncrasies of each member of her household. Certain compounds and some simples do not agree with one person, while others thrive upon them. To be cognizant of the peculiarities of each constitution is to be forewarned of the danger of gastronomic experiments. Lay down as a positive law that it is wrong—a sin against the body given by God—to eat what one is sure will disagree with one. Tabulate for your own convenience a code of “kitchen physic.”

To wit, that Indian meal is laxative; oatmeal, heating; wheat-flour, binding; that tea is slightly astringent, and coffee, creamed, a gentle aperient; that sweets and rare beef engender gouty acid in those disposed to rheumatism and constitutional headache; that candies and other confectionery ferment into sharp acid in an empty stomach, and should, therefore, never be eaten unless as a dessert. The same is true of pickles. Except when eaten in combination with meats and other oily foods, they are actively unwholesome. The schoolgirl habit of champing pickled cucumbers and pickled limes, as a starving pauper might gnaw a crust, is pernicious and disgusting. The skins of raisins and grapes are indigestible. Figs are a well-known cathartic, a fact the housemother should avail herself of where a doctor, if summoned, would prescribe a drug. It is always better to control digestive irregularities by diet than by medicines, each of which is a poison which cures one ill by creating another.

Pears dispose one to constipation. Ripe peaches and ripe apples regulate the bowels in a vast majority of cases; an orange, eaten at bed time, is a gentler agent than Rochelle salts, and does as good work.

The veteran practitioner who insisted fifty years ago that “cupboard cures” were safer and surer than those wrought by materia medica was in advance of his age. The twentieth century is just growing up to his standard.

I have spoken of qualifying milk with lime water for bilious people. Other articles of food unwholesome to some constitutions may be modified with wholesomeness by the use of certain condiments which act as correctives to hurtful qualities.

For example, nuts may be eaten freely when salted. Thus treated they are introduced at dinner as digestive agents and appetizers. When accompanied by fruits, nut-oils are readily assimilated by the gastric juices. Hence, nuts and raisins go naturally together upon the menu.

Cayenne pepper makes oysters and fish a safe enjoyment for those with whom they disagree actively if this be not used, and lemon-juice further counteracts the evil effects of fish-oil and the dreaded ptomaine.

THE IMPROMPTU LARDER

Some of her friends call it “The Emergency Pantry.” The owner objects to the term because it conveys an idea of bandages and styptics. Whereas, the cozy closet devoted to the comfort of possible guests—to be welcomed and fed, although unexpected—contains substantial food and appetizing delicacies.

She belongs to the great and growing host of suburbanites dependent upon peripatetic butcher and baker, and the nearest “general store.” The keeper of the typical general store never orders so much as one jar of marmalade or a pound of fancy biscuits until the last is sold, and has never a twinge of mortification in saying: “Just out! Expect new lot next week.”

So our hospitable housewife stocks and keeps filled her reserve shelves.

John has a way of bringing home a chance guest to dinner when the notion strikes him, and Mrs. Notable’s town friends have their way of happening to be in dear Mary’s neighborhood about lunch time, and, having come all the way out from town, it is hardly worth while to go home when there are afternoon calls to be paid in the suburbs. When one of these calls chances to be upon Mrs. Notable, afternoon tea must be served. Mrs. Notable’s daughters join theater and concert parties, going early into the city and coming out late and hungry. Iced lemonade, ginger ale, cake and sandwiches refresh them and their attendants in summer, and on winter nights something hot and savory from “mother’s chafing dish.”

Back of all this stands mother’s Impromptu Larder. One shelf holds the best brand of canned soups, chicken, tongue and boned ham; another sardines, anchovies in oil, anchovy paste and _pâté de foie gras_, soused mackerel, and mackerel with tomato sauce. Baked beans, plain, and baked beans with tomato sauce, have honorable place among potted foods; also dainty jars of fancy cheeses, ready for use at a second’s notice, and bottles of grated Parmesan. Olives, including pimolas, stand in line with “pin-money pickles” and catsups. There is a brave array of homemade jellies, marmalades, brandied and pickled peaches; a case of imported ginger ale, bottles of domestic liqueurs, and glass cans of apple-sauce and tomatoes, put up in Mrs. Notable’s own kitchen. A fair proportion of each kind of pickle and preserve is set aside for the Impromptu Larder and not touched for family consumption.

Fancy biscuits of many sorts have several shelves for their own; sweet and unsweetened cheese biscuits, sea-foams and snowflakes and _zwieback_; hard crackers and soft crackers; plain wafers, fruit wafers and cream wafers; lady-fingers and ginger-snaps—make a goodly show to the eye and stay the mistress’s surprised soul when the impromptu luncheon or supper must be more sudden and abundant than usual.

“My strong tower!” she once called this pantry, laughingly.

In winter she finds room for nuts, raisins, apples and oranges; in autumn, for baskets of grapes. These last named may be called “transients,” the supply being renewed frequently.

Mrs. Notable is not a rich woman. She is obliged to make each dollar do the full work of one hundred cents. To this end she keeps an “expense book,” setting down every article purchased and the cost thereof.

In the account of necessary outlays that for replenishing the stores in the strong tower is registered under the head of “HOSPITALITY.”

FAMILIAR TALK

BREAKFAST

Common sense would decide that we should begin the day with the glad alertness with which the sun smiles at us over horizon, or housetops. He rejoices as a strong man ready—that is, rubbed down, supple and light—to run a race.

There are still writers of “goody” books and works on hygiene who extol the morning mood. According to them, the whole human machine is then at its best. The head is clear, the stomach is vigorous, the spirits are buoyant, life is a joy.

In reality—the reality of the every-day life of respectable people who have not tarried long at the wine, or eaten Welsh rarebits over night—the hard pull of the day is at the beginning.

The head of the average man or woman _ought_ to be clear, the digestive organs active, limbs and joints in excellent working order. There should not be what one comedian describes as a “dark-brown, fuzzy taste” in the mouth, or the feeling that the cranium is stuffed with cotton wool, and the diaphragm should not loathe all manner of food.

But such things are. Where one man tells you that breakfast is the best meal of the day, fifty account the ceremony of the earliest meal of each new day as a hollow mockery. A celebrated judge left upon record the saying: “No man should be hanged for a murder committed before breakfast.” Another, almost as famous, openly and officially declared his unwillingness to condemn a prisoner convicted of manslaughter of whom his physician had testified that he was a chronic dyspeptic. “A dyspeptic,” urged the judge, whose own diet had consisted of mush and milk for ten years, “is never quite sane.”

Not one of his three daily meals is “comfortable” to him whose alimentary apparatus is out of order. To one in tolerable health the business of “stoking” the engine for the drive of the forenoon should not be irksome.

Thus common sense and hygienic general principles. Now for facts.

A brilliant woman summed up the popular judgment on the subject in an after-luncheon speech before other literary women, in the assertion that “the human machine needs to be wound up and lubricated and regulated by bath and breakfast before it is fit to work with other machines, or, indeed, to go at all. Breakfast, partaken of in the company of one’s nearest and dearest, is a blunder of modern civilization. It is an ordeal over which each should mourn apart.”

A young man of education and breeding, who lives in bachelor chambers with three other “good fellows,” confesses that, while the seven o’clock dinner hour is always full of cheer and good-will, the four friends seldom exchange a syllable at the breakfast table beyond a brief salutation at entering the room, and a curt “good day,” in separating to their various places of business.

“Thanks to this sensible silence, we have lived together three years without quarreling,” he wound up the story by saying. “Every man is a brute until he has had his morning coffee.”

Much of this is talk for talk’s sake, and some of it is Temper. It is not easy for one to get full command of oneself before the relaxed nerves are braced by tea or coffee, and the long-empty stomach is brought up to concert pitch by food. If we have slept too heavily, we are stupid; if too little, irritable.

I admit that the American’s first meal of the crude day, with the accompaniment of the rush for car, or boat, or train, that turns out—or in—dyspeptics by the hundred thousand yearly, is not conducive to domestic happiness, or the preservation of table etiquette. The householder, devouring porridge, two cups of scalding coffee, rolls, steak and fried potatoes, at discretion, with one eye on the clock, and both feet braced for the jump and run he knows are imminent if he would catch the train, is in the first or fortieth stage of what a witty essayist diagnoses as “Americanitis.” His children’s railroad speed of deglutition and the scurry for school are along the same lines of discomfort and disease.

Upon the mother’s hands and head rests the responsibility of “getting them off for the day,”—a battle renewed with each morning until she “fairly loathes the name and the thought of breakfast.”

The remedy for the domestic disgrace—for it is nothing if not that—is so simple that I have little hope it will be respected, much less accepted.

It is, get up fifteen minutes earlier in the morning!

The plain truth is that your system is not “ready for breakfast,” when you announce that _you_ are. The racer, to whom Scripture compares the smiling God of Day, never takes the first lap at a rush. He warms gradually to his work, having at the outset paid as diligent heed to the “Make ready!” as to the “Go!”

If you rise usually at seven, have the hot water and cleaned boots brought to the door at a quarter before seven, and get up when you are called. A brisk bath and a smart rubbing with a crash towel, preceded by fifty gymnastic strokes, such as arm-swinging and general flexing of the muscles; twenty-five deep breaths that pump the morning air down to the bottomest well of your lungs and clear the respiratory passages of effete matter lodged there during the night—these, with a general disposition to speak charitably toward, and to speak civilly _to_ companions and competitors in the race, correspond to “make ready.” Clean, supple, and in good heart, come to the table as to preliminary refreshment you have time and appetite to enjoy.

At least seven-tenths of the twaddle over the horrors of the family breakfast are affectation and indolence. Breakfasting in bed is an imported fashion, and to my notion, is not a clean practice. The tray brought to an unaired room, a tumbled bed and an unwashed body, looks well in French engravings, but is a solecism in an age of hygienic principles, much ventilation and matutinal baths. The inability to be in charity with one’s fellow mortals, to smile genially and to speak gently before the world is well started upon its diurnal swing, and the complainant’s physical system is toned and tuned and oiled by eating, is degrading in itself. The confession of it is puerile.

Force yourself to speak pleasantly if you can not at once bring your spirits up to the right level. Study to be a man, or a woman, although breakfastless. To be thrown in the first round of the day by the sluggish flesh and the devil of ill-humor, before the world has a chance to grapple with you, is cowardly and sinful.

One word of friendly counsel to my fellow brain-workers, who are also sister-women, may not be amiss in this connection:

Never write or study in the morning until you have broken your fast. A physiologist of note estimates that the draft on the nervous forces and the eyesight of working on an empty stomach is equivalent to the labor of lifting thirty pounds dead weight.

However this may be, stay that long-suffering organ with a few morsels—a slice of bread and butter, moistened by a cup of tea, if your rising is in advance of that of the rest of the household and you meditate an hour’s work before the family breakfast.

BREAKFAST FRUITS

The imported fashion of beginning breakfast with fresh fruit has become an American custom. The assuasive effect of the generous juices upon the coat of the stomach, usually clogged at early morning with a mucous deposit, is a wholesome preparation for digestive processes—a “toner” to just-awakened energies. To commit suddenly to the long-suffering stomach, as yet inert, and but dimly aware of what is expected of it, a “feed” of beefsteak, potatoes and hot breads, is always an unwelcome surprise. Sometimes the abused organ turns with the proverbial blind wrath of the patient, and revenges itself, if not speedily, surely and fiercely. It would fain be awakened kindly and gently. To this end, stay it with oranges, comfort it with apples and grapes.

Oranges

1. Cut in half, crosswise, and dig out the pulp with a silver or gold orange spoon.

2. They are yet nicer prepared beforehand by running a sharp knife on the inside, close to the rind, thus severing the membranes that divide the lobes. Take these membranes out carefully, leaving the pulp in the two cups of the halved orange. It can be then eaten as easily as a custard could be. Set on ice until you are ready to serve.

3. Peel the oranges; separate the lobes and cut each into three pieces. Serve in a chilled glass dish, passing powdered sugar for those who like it.

Breakfast fruits are far more wholesome when eaten without sugar.

Grapes

Keep them on ice for an hour before sending to table, even in winter, and scatter cracked ice over and among them. This has the double advantage of cooling and of cleansing them. Pass grape scissors with the dish of fruit.

Peaches, pears and apples

Wash and dry pears and apples with a soft cloth. Have a silver fruit knife at each plate, and let the eaters pare the fruit for themselves. Peaches should be left with the fur (and bloom) on.

Berries

These should never in any circumstances be sugared in the dish. Let each person sweeten his portion for himself, after which they should be eaten immediately, before the sugar has time to draw out the juice and thereby wither the berries.

Strawberries should be eaten at breakfast with the caps on. Choose the finest fruit for this meal, using the stem as a handle, and dipping the berry into powdered sugar, if not sweet enough to be eaten without.

Raspberries and blackberries

Never wash these, or strawberries, unless they are intolerably gritty. Water is ruin to flavor and integrity, where the more delicate berries are concerned. Set on ice for an hour or more before sending to table. Pass sugar for those who wish it, and in helping out each portion avoid bruising the berries. “Mashed” berries suffer an instant change in flavor. The air begins at once to act chemically upon the liberated juices.

Huckleberries and gooseberries

Wash, drain and leave on ice for two hours. Pass sugar with huckleberries for such as wish it. They are better without at breakfast. Gooseberries are always eaten without. The large English varieties are delicious and very healthful.

If cream be eaten with breakfast fruit, it should be as an after-course—or dessert. It loses character and effect as an assuasive and persuasive agent.

Melons

Cantelopes and nutmeg melons are prime favorites as an introductory step to the weightier business of the morning meal. They deserve their popularity.

Cut those of small and medium size in half; scrape out the seeds and put a lump of ice in each half. The larger may be divided into thirds, and a piece of ice laid upon each piece. Pass salt and pepper, also sugar with them. Many epicures prefer to eat them _au naturel_.

Stewed fruits

In the late winter or early spring-time, when apples are scarce and dear, and oranges have not yet come to their full plenteousness and flavor, the human system needs anti-bilious food. Our foremothers compounded a villainous preventive against spring “humors,” of sulphur and molasses, stirred together to a cream and administered before breakfast to each shuddering creature who had pains in the bones, headache and nausea at rising, and a general sensation of good-for-nothingness. “Advanced” matrons added cream of tartar to the villainous preventive, and gave their families to drink of cream-of-tartar lemonade. According to these wise and worthy women, “spring fever” was as inseparable from the opening season as robin song and pussy willow.

Even now, cooling medicines are advised by physicians and believed in by families. The careful student of hygiene, a science the prime principle of which is prevention, and not cure, shows us a more excellent way. The kindly fruits of the earth never merit their name more truly than when winter is going and spring-time is coming; when benevolent bile, balked in its rightful channels, becomes a baleful agency to be fought as an acknowledged foe. In fruit and in succulent vegetables we find our cooling medicines, “indicated” by the great physician, Nature. If fresh fruits be wanting, we must accept substitutes.

Stewed rhubarb

Wash, scrape and cut the stalks into inch lengths. Leave in cold water for an hour. Put over the fire in the inner vessel of a double boiler, set in cold water, bring to a boil and simmer gently until tender and clear. Keep the inner vessel closely covered that the steam may do its work. Remove from the fire, sweeten to taste—not heavily—turn into a bowl and cover until cold.

As a breakfast dish, this is refreshing and most wholesome. Cooked as above, you get the benefit of the anti-bilious juices, undiluted by water. Set on ice for an hour before eating. Some add a handful of sultana raisins to the raw rhubarb.

Prunes

Wash and soak for two hours. Drain, put over the fire with just enough cold water to cover them, and cook tender. Turn out and cover until cold. Put on the ice for an hour before sending to the table. No sugar should be added to prunes when they are to be eaten at breakfast time.

They are slightly laxative and anti-bilious.

* * * * *

The unfortunate few who can not begin breakfast with acid fruits “may, with pleasure and profit, conclude the meal with oranges, apples, grapes or melons.” One family I know of eats, the year around, fresh uncooked fruit as a last course to the breakfast that is invariably inforced with oranges, melons or grapes, each in its season.

And there is not a dyspeptic among them!

BREAKFAST CEREALS

Some dietetists, who are neither cranks nor simpletons, disbelieve in cereals of whatsoever sort as a first course at breakfast. They urge that to spread a hot poultice all over the lining of the stomach is to relax and weaken that organ; that it goes to sleep, as it were, and is too inert to dispose properly of the rest of the meal.

Others are strenuous in the belief that the act of chewing is necessary to the proper assimilation of even semi-solids, and since few people think of chewing porridge, the value of it as nutriment is doubtful.

There is force in the latter demur. Children should be taught to chew porridge of all kinds, also bread and milk. One zealous dietist insists that milk—“the one and only perfect food”—ought to be masticated. The motion of the jaws excites the salivary glands, he says, causing the flow of a secretion most favorable to digestion.

As to the “hot poultice,” there is a grain of reason in the objection. As I have explained in urging the propriety of beginning breakfast with fruit, the coat of the stomach is masked, after the sleep of the night, by a thin mucus, which interferes with the task of the digestive agencies. If fruit is not eaten, a draft of cold water, not iced, will do the work in part. A few swallows of really hot water are better still. A sip of tea or coffee—or, perhaps, best of all, vichy, apollinaris or other good mineral water, may precede the nourishing cereal.

That it is nourishing when the stomach gets hold of it, is undeniable. Oatmeal builds up bone, and muscle, and brain; Indian meal mush and hominy are gently laxative and cooling to the blood; preparations of wheat are less laxative, and therefore safer in hot weather, and for teething children, than oatmeal in any form. Rice boiled tender in milk is both palatable and wholesome. Each and all of these should be eaten with cream, and except as a dessert, never with sugar. Children who are trained to eat porridge and milk, or cream, without sugar, find the addition of this unpleasant. It certainly tends to acidity of the stomach.

Every cereal, with the exception of rice, that needs any cooking needs a great deal of it. Soaking over night is indispensable to the excellence of most of them. Four hours of boiling make oatmeal good; eight hours make it better; twenty-four hours make it “best.”

Oatmeal

Soak over night. Even the varieties which are advertised “to require no soaking, and but fifteen minutes’ cooking,” are improved by this process. Turn a deaf ear to the charmer who would persuade you to the contrary. “Steam cooked” is often a delusion and a snare. Put your oatmeal into the inner vessel of your farina kettle, cover deep in cold water, put on the lid and set at the back of the range at bedtime. In the morning add boiling water, salt to taste, and draw to the front, filling the outer kettle with hot water. Cook steadily for an hour and as much longer as you can. My own taste is for oatmeal boiled to a jelly. It is as far superior to the ordinary preparation of the cereal as creamed cauliflower is to Dutch cabbage.

Send to table and eat with cream.

Never throw away oatmeal “left-overs.” Cook again, and yet again, always in a double boiler.

Hominy

Soak all night; cover with boiling water, slightly salted, in the morning, and cook for an hour. A delicious preparation of hominy is effected by cooking it in plenty of salted water until tender, turning off the water and supplying its place with cold milk. Bring to a boil and serve.

Cracked wheat

Cook as you would oatmeal. An hour’s boiling suffices.

Milk porridge

Heat a pint of milk to boiling. Into a pint of cold milk stir four tablespoonfuls of flour, and when this is smooth stir it into the hot milk. Cook in a double boiler for an hour, add salt to taste, and serve with cream.

Meal-and-flour porridge