CHAPTER XIX.

DRINKS AND ARTICLES FOR THE SICK AND YOUNG CHILDREN.

Drinks made of the juice of fruits and water are good for all who are in health. Various preparations of cocoa-nuts are so also. Tea is often made or adulterated with unhealthful articles. Coffee is usually drank so strong as to injure children and grown persons of delicate constitution. All alcoholic drinks are dangerous, because they are so generally mixed with harmful matter, and because they so often lead to excess, and then to ruin. The common-sense maxim is, when there is danger, choose the safest course. The Christian maxim is, “We that are strong ought to bear the infirmities of the weak, and not to please ourselves.”

Obedience to these two maxims would save thousands of young children and delicate persons from following the dangerous example of those “that are strong.”

=To make Tea.=—The safest tea is the black, as less stimulating than green; both excite the brain and nerves when strong. The chief direction is to have water _boiling_ hot. First soak the tea in a very little hot water, and then add boiling water.

=To make Coffee.=—Roast it slowly in a tight vessel, and so it can be stirred often. To roast all equally a dark brown and have none burned, is the main thing. Keep it in a tight box, or, better, grind it fresh when used. Clear it by putting into it, when making, a fresh egg-shell crushed, or the white of an egg, or a small bit of fish-skin. Some filter, and some boil; and there are coffee-pots made for each method, and some that require nothing put in to clear the coffee. The aroma is retained just in proportion as the coffee is confined, both before making and also while making.

=Fish-skin for Coffee.=—Take it from codfish before cooking; have it nice and dry. Cut in inch squares, and take one for two quarts of coffee.

=Cocoa.=—The cracked is best. Put two table-spoonfuls of it into three pints of cold water. Boil an hour for first use, save the remnants and boil it again, as it is very strong. Do this several times. For ground cocoa use two table-spoonfuls to a quart, and boil half an hour. Boil the milk by itself, and add it liberally when taken up. For the _shells_ of cocoa, use a heaping tea-cupful for a quart of water. Put them in over night and boil a long time.

=Cream for Coffee and Tea.=—Heat new milk, and let it stand till cool and all the cream rises; this is the best way for common use. To every pint of this add a pound and a quarter of loaf-sugar, and it will keep good a month or more, if corked tight in glass.

=Chocolate.=—Put three table-spoonfuls when scraped to each pint, boil half an hour, and add boiled milk when used.

=Delicious Milk-Lemonade.=—Half a pint of sherry wine and as much lemon-juice, six ounces loaf-sugar, and a pint of water poured in when boiling. Add not quite a pint of cold milk, and strain the whole.

=Strawberry and Raspberry Vinegar.=—Mix four pounds of the fruit with three quarts of cider or wine vinegar, and let them stand three days. Drain the vinegar through a jelly-bag and add four more pounds of fruit, and in three days do the same. Then strain out the vinegar for summer drinks, effervescing with soda or only with water.

=White Tea, and Boys’ Coffee for Children.=—Children never love tea and coffee till they are trained to it. They always like these drinks. Put two tea-spoonfuls of sugar to half a cup of hot water, and add as much good milk. Or crumb toast or dry bread into a bowl with plenty of sugar, and add half milk to half boiling water.

=Dangerous Use of Milk.=—Milk is not only drink, but rich food. It therefore should not be used as drink with other food, as is water or tea and coffee. Persons often cause bilious difficulties by using milk in addition to ordinary food as the chief drink. It is a well-established fact that some grown persons as well as young children can not drink milk, and in some cases can not eat bread wet with milk, without trouble from it.

=Simple Drinks.=—Pour boiling water on mashed cranberries, or grated apples, or tamarinds, or mashed currants or raspberries, pour off the water, sweeten, and in summer cool with ice.

Pour boiling water on to bread toasted quite brown, or on to pounded parched corn, boil a minute, strain, and add sugar and cream, or milk.

=Simple Wine Whey.=—Mix equal quantities of milk and boiling water, add wine and sweeten.

=Toast and Cider.=—Take one third brisk cider and two thirds cold water, sweeten it, crumb in toasted bread, and grate on a little nutmeg. Acid jelly will do when cider is not at hand.

=Panada.=—Toast two or three crackers, pour on boiling water and let it simmer two or three minutes, add a well-beaten egg, sweeten and flavor with nutmeg.

=Water-Gruel.=—Scald half a tumblerful of fresh ground corn-meal, add a table-spoonful of flour made into a paste, boil twenty minutes or more, and add salt, sugar, and nutmeg. Oat-meal gruel is excellent made thus.

=Beef-Tea.=—Pepper and salt some good beef cut into small pieces, pour on boiling water and steep half an hour. A better way is to put the meat thus prepared into a bottle kept in boiling water for four or five hours.

=Tomato Sirup.=—Put a pound of sugar to a quart of juice, bottle it, and use for a beverage with water.

=Sassafras Jelly.=—Soak the pith of sassafras till a jelly, and add a little sugar.

=Egg Tea, Egg Coffee, and Egg Milk.=—Beat the yelk of an egg in some sugar and a little salt; add either cold tea or coffee or milk. Then beat the whites to a stiff froth and add. Flavor the milk with wine. Some do not like the taste of raw egg, and so the other articles may first be made boiling hot before the white is put in.

=Oat-meal Gruel.=—Four table-spoonfuls of _grits_, (unbolted Oat-meal,) a pinch of salt and a pint of boiling water. Skim, sweeten, and flavor. Or make a thin batter of fine Oat-meal, and pour into boiling water; then sweeten and flavor it.

=Pearl Barley-Water.=—Boil two and a half ounces of pearl barley ten minutes in half a-pint of water, strain it, add a quart of boiling water, boil it down to half the quantity, strain, sweeten, and flavor with sliced lemon or nutmeg.

_Cream Tartar Beverage._—Put two even tea-spoonfuls cream tartar to a pint of boiling water, sweeten and flavor with lemon-peel.

=Rennet Whey=, (good for a weak stomach after severe illness.)—Soak rennet two inches square one hour, add half a gill of water and a pinch of salt; then pour it into a pint of warm (not hot) milk. Let it stand half an hour, then cut it, and after an hour drain off the liquid. Let it stand awhile, and drain off more whey.

=Refreshing Drink for a Fever.=—Mix sprigs of sage, balm, and sorrel with half a sliced lemon, the skin on. Pour on boiling water, sweeten and cork it.