Part 18

We have a constant supply of fresh vegetables, the justly celebrated Bermuda onion; beets, turnips, egg plant, raw cabbage, potatoes, white and sweet, rice, hominy, green peas, tomatoes, and lettuce.

We have corn pones, corn bread, brown bread containing oatmeal, ordinary white bread, and oven toast—that is to say, slices of bread baked in the oven until it is brown all the way through. From Battle Creek we have malt honey, malted nuts, ripe olives, olive oil, fig and prune marmalades made without cane sugar, various crackers and grain preparations, and several other nut products. The Sanitarium health-chocolate, a sweet made without the use of cane sugar, and with chocolate divested of its caffeine, also appears on our table. We have eliminated dessert at dinner, having learned not only at Battle Creek, but in the sore school of experience, that the heterogeneous mixtures of cream or milk and cane sugar and various mushy stuffs, along with butter or lard, in the shape of pies and puddings and cakes, are extremely undesirable foods. We find the sweet, pure taste of malt honey an adequate and highly satisfactory substitute.

Fruits rarely appear on the table at dinner, since we do not wish to mix them with vegetables. They make their appearance in great abundance at supper, which we have at five o’clock. At this meal we have various cooked fruits, such as prunes or apricots or baked or stewed apples; and of uncooked fruits, oranges, apples, figs, bananas, grapes, and whatever else the market affords. With these we have zweibach and common bread or crackers. At both meals appears Yogurt, an acidulous and agreeable beverage which gratefully checks thirst and in itself nourishes, and is also the vehicle whereby millions of beneficial germs are introduced into the body.

The work of preparing and serving these two meals is done by one person—and that person has time left to play tennis and go in swimming with the rest of us. The total cost of the food is less than thirty dollars a week; cooked and served, its cost is about three dollars and a quarter a week per person. In this connection it should be explained that Bermuda prices, for even the commonest things, are in excess of prices in New York. We pay five cents each for eggs and twelve cents a quart for milk. We have oranges by the barrel, but they come from California, or from Jamaica by way of New York. We have olive oil at four dollars a gallon, and sterilized butter at fifty cents a pound. And in addition the figures quoted include expressage and steamer charges, and ten per cent. duty as well. We mention these things for the light they throw upon the relative costs of the vegetarian and carnivorous life.

The reader will also wish to know about the health of a family living in this manner. When we came here all our children were half-sick from too long contact with cities, and we were not used to the climate, and so one of them caught a severe cold. With this exception there has not been a day’s sickness among them, nor the remotest trace of an ailment. If we were to describe their looks the reader might attribute it to parental blindness, and so the proper plan seems to us to insert a picture of them, and let the reader come to his own conclusions.

For the guidance of any housewife who may wish to try our regimen, we give a few typical menus, and also recipes for some of the favorite dishes of our family. We are all hungry when mealtime comes in our household, and we enjoy the surprises of the menu with all the zest that we ever welcomed roast turkey and pumpkin pies in the old days. And this seems in some magical way to be true, not only of ourselves, but also of such guests as happen along. It is worth noting that three different persons, who have never before known or thought anything about vegetarianism, have stayed with us for periods of several months; and all of them have fallen into the ways of our household, have been well and strong, and untroubled by craving for meat—and in two cases have found, to their great dismay, that they were gaining in weight upon two “low proteid” meals a day!

The first of the tables which follow contains a typical menu for a week; and the second gives an extra list of dinners. The third shows what we do upon some special occasion; it was the banquet which we prepared for Mark Twain—only, alas, his physician had ordered him to be home by sundown, and he couldn’t stay to partake of it.

Inasmuch as all people cannot change their meal hours in accordance with those we have suggested, we give these menus upon the basis of three meals a day, with the various food elements properly balanced. We have also included simple desserts, for the benefit of those who do not care to dispense with this feature. The menus in our own home are similar to these, with the exclusion of the breakfasts and the dessert.

Very good vegetarian cook books are those entitled “Science in the Kitchen,” and “Healthful Cookery,” both of them by Mrs. E. E. Kellogg, the wife of the superintendent of the Battle Creek Sanitarium. Some of the books which are listed in another place as being those which a student of the new art of health may read will also furnish many good recipes. The “Art of Living in Good Health,” by Dr. Daniel S. Sager, will be found especially helpful in this regard. We give in the Appendix three simple menus of the Battle Creek Sanitarium. These menus have the food values indicated, and will be found very useful in giving a rough idea of the number of calories contained in ordinary foods.

MONDAY

Breakfast

Oranges Poached eggs Graham gems

Dinner

Lima beans, dried or fresh Baked potatoes Mixed nuts Whole wheat bread Lettuce salad Tapioca pudding

Supper

Oven toast brown bread Cottage cheese Apple sauce Almond cream Figs Bananas

TUESDAY

Breakfast

Grape fruit Corn meal mush with cream Buttered toast

Dinner

Baked macaroni Mixed nuts Brown bread Tomato salad with mayonnaise dressing Indian meal pudding

Supper

Zweibach Brown bread Ripe olives Stewed prunes Dates Bananas Hot malted nuts

WEDNESDAY

Breakfast

Baked apples and cream Omelet Pop overs

Dinner

Peas patties with tomato sauce Baked sweet potatoes White bread Boiled onions Baked custard