Part 20

Supper

Zweibach Oatmeal bread Malted nuts Ripe olives Canned fruits Bananas Dates

EXTRA DINNERS

Yolks hard boiled eggs Baked potatoes Beets Prune pudding Vegetable soup Cabbage salad Corn bread Baked custard

Scrambled eggs Baked lyonnaise potatoes Beet and lettuce salad Dates with whipped cream

Macaroni with tomato sauce Whole wheat gems Egg salad Apple tapioca pudding

Baked beans Tomato, chili sauce Mashed turnips Lettuce with French dressing Lemon jelly

Pea soup Corn pones Potato and onion salad Cabinet pudding

Peas patties with tomato sauce Mashed potatoes Carrots with butter sauce

Baked nuttolene with cream sauce Baked sweet potatoes Stewed tomatoes Baked apples and cream Lima beans (fresh or dried) Baked sweet potatoes Lettuce Corn pones Stuffed dates

Baked beans Lettuce Corn (canned or sweet) Nuts and raisins

RECIPES

Vegetable soup: Cut in dice three turnips, three carrots, three onions, three potatoes. Cover with water and simmer for thirty minutes. Cook one can of tomatoes, or one quart of fresh tomatoes, strain and thicken a little with flour. Add to vegetables and cook thirty minutes. Add butter and sprinkle with parsley.

Corn pones: Three cups corn meal, 1 heaping teaspoon salt, 1 tablespoon sugar, 1 heaping tablespoon butter. Add boiling water until meal is scalded, pat it into flat, thin cakes and bake three-quarters of an hour.

Mayonnaise dressing: Yolk of egg; add 1½ cups olive oil, drop by drop, stirring in one direction. Juice of two small lemons, 1 teaspoon salt.

Macaroni with tomatoes: Half package macaroni; drop into a kettle of boiling water. Boil vigorously for thirty minutes. To one can tomatoes add two onions chopped fine. Simmer until onions are done, then strain and thicken with flour. Put macaroni into colander and rinse with cold water. Add the tomato sauce and simmer gently for fifteen minutes. It is well to do this in double boiler to prevent burning.

Bean or pea soup without meat or pork: Soak two cups of split peas over night. In the morning slice and add two large onions and simmer for several hours. Strain.

Beans baked without pork: Use butter or nut butter instead.

Bean and nut croquettes: Cook dried beans until soft. Strain through colander to remove all skins. Add equal parts of walnut meat ground in chopper; season with salt and a little sage. Mix with beaten egg. Form into croquettes and bake until dry and nicely browned. Serve with tomato or cream sauce.

Baked egg plant: Boil egg plant until tender; pare and mash; mix with bread crumbs and eggs, and bake until nicely browned. A little finely chopped onions may be added if desired.

Peas cutlets: One cup pea pulp, one cup steamed rice, one grated onion, one-half teaspoon sage, one-half cup tomato juice, one-third cup browned flour. Mix together and mold in cakes two-thirds of an inch thick. Bake half an hour. Serve with tomato or cream sauce.

XII

BREATHING AND EXERCISE

We have devoted most of our space to the problems of nutrition, since nutrition is the most important factor in the question of how to keep in health. We wish now to speak of other matters, of great importance in the art of keeping well; these are breathing, bathing, and exercise.

Many people have lived for more than a month without food. You can go for days without water. But if you are deprived of air for but a few minutes, your death is certain. Sixteen to eighteen times a minute the normal person respires, one breath being taken for every four beats of the heart, the central engine of life. Each time you breathe, the amount of air which passes into the lungs is about twenty-five cubic inches; which represent, however, but a small part of the actual capacity of the lungs. The average man can take into the lungs with an ordinary inspiration one hundred or more cubic inches, and is able to force out an equal amount with an ordinary expiration. If you have striven your utmost to expel all the air possible from your lungs, there will still remain about one hundred cubic inches of air within them. The total lung capacity of the average man is about three hundred and twenty-five cubic inches, or nearly one and a half gallons of air.

THE INDISPENSABILITY OF OXYGEN

Sunlight is the basis of all life. It is sunlight which plants absorb, and which they transform into materials which go to make up the living tissues of all things. The place of breathing in the process of life is manifold. But its primary function is to make available for the body’s uses the sunlight, or energy, which is stored up in the food we eat. It does this by means of the oxygen which it contains, and the purpose of breathing is to obtain from the air an adequate supply of oxygen. Oxygen is one of the essential materials required for the support of life. Without oxygen the whole life process would come to an end. From every breath that is taken into the body, about one and a quarter cubic inches of oxygen must be obtained by the body, to keep up the fire of life within us. You cannot burn a match, or your reading lamp in the evening, unless there is an adequate supply of oxygen; and even so does the body require this indispensable and all powerful element in order to maintain itself.

We have noted the fact that of the myriads upon myriads of swarming cells which the blood contains, a large proportion are the oxygen-conveyers. When you take air into your lungs, these cells absorb the precious element, and rush with it to all parts of the body. After distributing the oxygen wherever it is needed, they pick up for the return journey to the lungs all manner of débris and gases—the poisons which are produced by the organs of the body as they carry on their work. As Metchnikoff has shown us, it is the accumulation of poisons produced by the activity of our various organs which, unless properly disposed of, or kept below excessive quantities, bring about premature old age, the majority of all diseases, and early death. The amount of poisons which the average person throws off from the body with a single breath, as has been shown by delicate laboratory experiments, is enough to contaminate and render unfit for breathing three cubic feet or three-quarters of a barrel of air. Assuming an average of twenty breaths per minute, which is the normal rate for breathing for adults, the amount of air each person contaminates per minute will be sixty cubic feet, or one cubic foot a second.