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.