Food and health

The boys covered the box with many layers of paper, put on a neat outside cover of white oilcloth, and made a stand to hold the box, with a shelf below for the lamp. Whenever you want to keep a surface from giving off heat, paint it white or use a white cover. A shiny black surface will radiate heat. This has been proved by experiment. At first Mrs. Stark was disappointed because the food came from the oven a pale rather than a rich brown. ^ She found that, like all other conveniences, the cooker did not do all the work. But Mr. Stark declared that he should never know the old fowl cooked this way from a spring chicken, for it was so tender ; and that the brown bread, beans, and Indian pudding tasted more like the old-fashioned kind than any he had eaten for years. Slow cooking is the secret, or charm, in many dishes, * The ready-made oven has a hole in the top with a coVer, and the cover can be taken out when you want to brown something over. A hole can be put in the homemade cooker. developing a richness of flavor that intense heat does not. MoUie became very expert in using this cooker, and could get a whole dinner with it, starting the cooking early in the morning, or boiling or browning one or two things on the other oil stove. This gave time for work in the garden, or for sewing and reading under the trees. They were not afraid of leaving the lamp burning all night ; and it was comfortable on a winter morning to take from the oven, " piping " hot and ready to eat, the cereal, and scalloped potato, and fish started the night before. If you could visit the Stark family, they would advise you to have such a cooker, too. Fireless cookers. One day at school the Pleasant Valley pupils made a fireless cooker. This kind of cooker has another way of keeping heat in a box, and it was used many years ago in Sweden. Some traveler in Sweden describes the way he saw a fowl cooked. The dressed fowl was put in a kettle of water, the water was brought to the boiling point on the stove or fire, and then the kettle itself was covered and placed in a box, and the box was covered with some nonconducting material. Where is the heat? In the kettle of water ; and, as it cannot escape, it cooks the fowl ! Here is a picture (Fig. iii) of a fireless cooker that can be made at home. A fireless cooker made at school. The pupils of the Pleasant Valley School made one from two wooden boxes, one three or four inches smaller than the other. They filled in the space between with sawdust below and around the sides. The inner box was lined with white table oilcloth. They were careful to take a box of the size and shape to hold two pails. They could not put sawdust over the pails, and so they made a cover from an old clean blanket, and covered it with the table oilcloth, too. When the hot kettles were placed in the inner box, the woolen cover was laid over them, and the larger box cover fastened down. The outer box was painted white. Some of the ready-made cookers have a place to slip in a hot iron or soapstone, and hot bricks can be put underneath the kettle in the homemade. Other ways to make a fireless cooker. There are other things of which the home cooker can be ' made. Agnes Groves used an old trunk for the outer box, and painted it, as it looked rather shabby. The space be- Courtesy of Winthrop Normal and Industrial College, Rockhill, S.C. Fig. III. — A fireless cooker made at home.