Part 9

There is no better drink for anyone than clear pure water, and no better food and drink in one than pure fresh milk.

V. LITTLE COOKS

If you have to come so far to school that you cannot go back to dinner and so must bring a luncheon with you, be sure to take plenty of time to sit down and eat it slowly and chew every piece of food thoroughly. Many children who bring luncheons to school just grab a piece of food in each hand and "bolt" it down as fast as they can possibly bite it off and swallow it, and then rush out to play.

Play is good and very important, but you had better spare ten or fifteen minutes of it in order to chew your lunch thoroughly and swallow it slowly, and then to sit or move about quietly for a few minutes before starting to play hard. This will give your stomach a chance to get all the blood it wants to use in digesting the food; for, you remember, when you romp and play, your blood moves outward toward your skin and away from your stomach. Don't think that, just because you "picnic" at lunch, it is not as important as any other meal.

I hope, however, that it will not be long before almost every school will have a school kitchen and a lunch room; first, so that every girl at least can learn to cook. It is well worth while being able to do; indeed, no girl ought to be considered properly educated until she has learned to cook, and no boy either, for that matter. Then, if the school has this kitchen, it can be used to furnish hot luncheons, or dinners, for those children who cannot conveniently go home in the noon recess. Hot lunches are much more digestible than cold ones, and they taste much better, and are much less likely to be eaten in a hurry.

But why should we learn to cook? Why shouldn't we eat our food raw instead of taking all this trouble and pains to cook it?

I know of a boy--a big lazy fellow--who is always forgetting to do things. He used to go away in the morning without leaving wood enough for the kitchen fire. So his mother said to herself one day, "I'll teach him to remember." The next morning he went off again and left no wood. At noon he came back "hungry as a hunter." She called him in to dinner; and in he came, sat down, picked up the carving knife--then he stopped! What do you suppose was the matter? The beef was raw! Then he lifted the cover of the potato dish, and there lay the potatoes raw! Then he tried another dish and found nice green peas, but hard as little bullets. They were raw, too! Not even the bread had been cooked; it was a soft, sticky mass of dough. His mother, who is a jolly old lady, fairly shook with laughter when she told me about it. She said she never again had to tell him to split wood.

Now that boy didn't need to be told one reason for cooking. We don't like our food raw; it doesn't taste so good. At first, perhaps, that doesn't sound like a very good reason; but it is more important than you think. For it is a fact that, just as soon as you smell food, your stomach begins to get ready the juice that is to digest it. If this very first juice, which is called the appetite juice, is not poured out, then the food may lie in the stomach some little time before it begins to be digested at all. So it is quite important that our food should smell and taste and look good, as well as have plenty of strength and nourishment in it.

Another reason for cooking is that it either softens or crisps our food so that we can chew it better and digest it more readily. You know what a difference there is between trying to eat a raw potato and a nice, mealy, well-baked one, or trying to eat popcorn before it is popped and after.

Another good thing, too, cooking does, which is very important. It kills any disease germs, or germs of decay, that may happen to have got upon the food from dust or flies, or from careless, dirty handling.

Of course, some of our food, such as apples and other ripe fruits, and celery and lettuce and other green vegetables, we can eat raw and digest quite well; but we should be careful to see that they have been thoroughly washed with water that we know to be pure. Grocers often have a careless way of putting fruit and vegetables out upon open stands in front of the shop, or in open boxes or baskets inside the store, and leaving them there all day. This is very dangerous, because dust from the street, which contains horse manure and all sorts of germs, may blow in upon them; flies, which have been eating garbage or feeding at the mouths of sewers, may come in and crawl over them. You ought to be very sure that anything that you are going to eat raw, or without thorough cooking, has been well washed. And you ought to ask your mother to speak to your grocer, if he is careless in this way, and have him keep his fruit and vegetables, as well as sugar and crackers and beans and dried fruit, either under glass or well screened from flies and dust.

More important than almost anything else in good cookery is to keep the food and the kitchen and the dishes and your hands perfectly clean all the way through, so that nothing that will upset your digestion can get into the food. After things are well cooked, it is very important that they should be nicely served on clean dishes, on a clean table cloth, with polished knives and shining spoons and forks. This means not only that everything about the table and the food will be perfectly clean and wholesome, but that you will enjoy eating it a great deal more. And when you enjoy your food, you remember, your stomach can secrete the juice that is needed to digest it, very much faster and better than when, as you say, you are just "poking it down."

If you have a school kitchen and a lunch room, you can learn the best way of cooking and serving things; and then, perhaps, you can do these same things at home and be a real help. Most children are fond of trying to cook, and I am glad that they are. Everyone, boys and girls both, should know how to cook simple things. Perhaps some day you will be stranded, like Robinson Crusoe, on a desert island! Perhaps the rest of the family may be sick. How nice it would be for you to be able to prepare breakfast for them. I know a family where the youngest boy often rises early and gets breakfast for five. He can fry the bacon and boil the eggs and make the coffee and mush and biscuit just as nicely as his mother can; and he takes pride in it and enjoys it.

Cooking is what we call an art. Everyone, of course, can learn to do it; but some people can do it much better than others, just as some boys and girls can draw better than others. I hope some of you will be what we might call "artist cooks." Take pride in the art and learn all that you can about it. There are so many things a cook should know.

A great deal of good food is spoiled by bad cookery, particularly by frying slowly in tepid grease, or fat, so that it becomes soaked with grease. You should have the frying pan just as hot as possible before you begin to fry; and then the meat or potatoes or cakes will be seared, or coated over, on the outside, so that the fat cannot soak into them, and they will not only taste better, but will be much more digestible.

In baking you will have to be careful not to let the oven become too hot, or else the meat or bread will be burned or scorched. Even if the heat does not do this, it may harden and toughen the outside of the meat so that it is almost impossible either to chew or digest.

Sugar is really a very good food if you do not eat too much at once, and so pure candy is good for you if you do not eat too much. The very best time to eat it is at the end of a meal. If you learn to make it at school or at home, you can always have some to eat after your luncheon without having to buy it. If you do buy candy, don't get the bright colored kind; it looks pretty, but it may hurt you. And be sure to see that it has been kept under a cover, where the dust and flies could not get at it. Dust is dirty, and flies don't wipe their feet. You want clean, pure candy.

Of course, after cooking, you will always be very careful to wash up all the pots and pans and dishes that you have used. Food and scraps that are left sticking to dishes and cooking utensils very quickly turn sour and decay; and then the next time the dishes are used, you will perhaps have an attack of indigestion, and wonder why.

There are two things you should always notice: Whether the bread you eat is sweet and thoroughly baked; if it is soggy and sour, it will make trouble in your stomach. Whether all your food is clean and fresh before it is cooked; this you can tell by your eyes and nose.

VI. TASTING AND SMELLING

When, at home, you give the baby a ball or a key or a watch to play with, what does he do with it the very first thing? He is never quite happy, is he, until he has put it into his mouth? Does he want to eat it? No, he wants to feel it; and he has not yet learned to feel very carefully with his hands, as you do.

Can you feel with your mouth? If you have the least little hole in one of your teeth, you know it as soon as you rub your tongue against it. How big it feels and how rough the edges seem! If you take a looking-glass, you find, if you can see the hole at all, that it is just a tiny, tiny hole.

Your tongue and lips, like the rest of your skin, are always touching and feeling things for you and sending messages to the brain. They say whether your milk is hot or cold, and whether the food you eat is soft enough and quite right in other ways. Your tongue is a very busy little "waiter": he passes the food about in your mouth for the teeth to chew, and he rolls it about at a great rate. But he does more than this; he tells you something about how it tastes--not everything, as you may think, but only whether it is bitter, sweet, sour, or salty. Queer as it may seem, your nose tells you the other "tastes," which are really smells. It is your nose that says whether you have a strawberry or a piece of onion in your mouth, whether it is coffee or cocoa that you are drinking.

Of what other use is your nose?--for only a little patch in the upper part is for smelling and tasting. The greater part of the nose is to breathe through. You see, your nose warms and moistens the outside air that you take in, so that, by the time it reaches your throat, it is as warm as your body and does not hurt your throat. Your nose also strains, or filters, out of the air the dust, lint, and germs that may be floating in it.

You should always keep your lips closed and breathe through your nose. Whenever you cannot breathe through your nose, there is something the matter. It may be that your nose is swollen shut with a "cold"; but that will last only a few days. If, however, your nose often feels "stuffed up," there is probably something in it or behind it, that ought to be taken away. A throat doctor can easily cure you; and, when he has, you'll be surprised how much better you feel and how much faster you grow.

(Follow the arrows.)]

I once knew a little girl whose nose was always blocked up. She had headache and felt tired most of the time and was behind in her classes. The doctor told her what was the matter, but her father and mother were afraid that it might hurt her to have the doctor take out what was clogging her nose. Well, what did she do? Instead of crying and being afraid, one day she walked right into the doctor's office and asked him to take out the adenoids, as we call these growths that block up the nose. And after the doctor had taken them out, she began to grow well and fat and strong so fast that she soon "caught up" in her classes.

When you breathe well through your nose, you can smell and taste better, too. In fact, when your nose is clogged, you cannot smell at all.