Food and health

the meal ; but the new process meal keeps better. All the old-fashioned rules for cooking Indian meal have to be changed for the new kind, as the latter needs more wetting and more fat added. Perhaps you know where your meal is ground, and can tell if it is new or old fashioned. If it comes in a box with a label, it is probably new process. Com or Indian meal mush. How to cook. This is cooked by the same method as the other cereals, except that the amount of water is larger and the first boiling should continue longer. The meal must be scattered slowly into the boiling water, or else be mixed first with cold water, as it lumps very easily. The second stage of the process should continue several hours. A word about rye and rye meal. We Americans are forgetting to use rye as our forefathers used it. This is a great pity. Rye is a most wholesome grain, ground into meal and made into " mush.'' Mixed with corn meal it gives us delicious yeast bread and quick breads. If rye is raised in your neighborhood, do supply yourselves with rye meal, and use it. Rye flour is easier to find for sale than rye meal, but it cannot be used in quite the same way. The rye flour will make a yeast bread. Cooking rice. Rice varies very much in quality and in the shape of the grain. Louisiana and Chinese rice are among those that have a firm and large grain, keeping its shape well when cooked. Inferior varieties become too soft, and the finished product is pasty and poor in color and flavor. Much is said at present about From Hart's " Cereals in America." Published by the Orange Jvdd Company. Fig. 72. — Sections of a rice kernel: i, bran coat; 2, aleurone layer, containing valuable mineral salts ; 3, cells packed with starch grains; 4, germ, containing fat and mineral matter. the harmful effect of the polishing process upon the quality of the rice. An unpolished rice may sometimes Courtesy 0/ New York College of Agriculture at Cornell UniversUy. Fig. 73. — Pure food regulations require the dealer to label coated rice. be found on the market, brownish in color and with a good flavor. Boiled rice. Rice may be cooked in the double boiler by the same method as other cereals, by allowing i part of rice to 3 of water. The rice should be well washed in cold water. It will cook in from three quarters of an hour to an hour. Use milk sometimes in place of half of the water. The Chinese cook their rice in this way. A very large amount of water is used, — several quarts for one cup of rice, — and when the water is boiling violently the rice is scattered in very slowly. The boiling continues from twenty minutes to half an hour, or until the grains are tender. Then the water is drained off through a colander. The rice in the colander should then be placed where the remaining moisture will steam off. By this method some food value is lost, but the grains of the rice stand out distinctly and are light and dry. The grains should be tested after boiling twenty minutes to see if they are tender. Fruit and rice or other cereal. When the rice is cooked in • the double boiler, add a handful of stoned raisins and cook with the rice, or add a few soaked prunes cut in pieces. One morning Barbara Oakes tried putting raisins with the oatmeal. Once after she had been blueberrying she put some berries into the breakfast food to surprise the family. Suppose you try some other berry. Look back at the lesson on fruit and see what else might go into the hot cereal. Eating cereal. We should eat our cereal slowly, instead of bolting it. An easy way to make oneself do this is to eat it with toast or a cracker. When shall we cook the cereal .? On account of the fact that cereal should be cooked a long time, it is best i6s