VEGETABLES , peas, corn, beans, and many of the vegetables which are universally used, receive fair treat ment, but in American kitchens there is still much to learn on the subjeCt of how to make the best of what a country cook calls " greens." In the spring, one craves this sort of food for the well-being of the body and because appetite demands it. The earth yields with the seasons exactly the sort of food we ought to eat, and eat liberally, for it is nature's own medicine. First, let us divide vege tables into classes. There are such cereals as rice, then corn, and le gumes, which include the large fam ily of beans, peas, and lentils. In the root class we have beets, carrots, parsnips, turnips, and radishes. Green vegetables include a variety of things herbaceous, from cabbage to dande lions. In bulbs there is the onion family and garlic; then what are called fruit vegetables, eggplant, pep pers, okra, cucumbers, and squash. There is also the fungous class, such as mushrooms and truffles. Each class has a different food value; they require different treatment in cook ery and are suited to accompany dif ferent foods, although our nation would be in no way the loser, either in health or economy, if it learned, like the French people, to make an excellently cooked vegetable serve for one course.
Before we consider the cooking of vegetables, let us study what their properties are and what they do for our bodies. Every vegetable contains more or less of what is called cellulose tissue. This helps to keep the stomach and intes tines perfectly healthy. For instance, when we eat meat, we put into our stomachs a highly concentrated food that requires the addition of other foods, bulky and less easily digested, to make a perfectly balanced meal. Strange as it may seem, the value of vegetables lies in the fact that they are made up largely of a membranous substance so bulky and full of refuse that the stomach expels it to the in testines almost in an unchanged con dition. Meanwhile, the blood has taken to itself such mineral matter and salts as are necessary to the hu man system. While digestion is in progress, the loose mass of cellulose is keeping up the peristaltic action that goes on for several hours after eating in the healthy stomach. It is not necessary that there be nourish ment in everything we eat. We re quire the pure distilled water and salts of green vegetables just as much as we do the proteid of meat and the nitrogen of legumes.
To get the fullest value from vege tables, they must be fresh. The coun
try woman, who can pick green things from ber garden before the dew has dried from them, is lucky indeed. The best that can be done by Et city housewife is to do her own market ing intelligently and carefully. In marketing, beware of root vegetables which are overclean about the roots. The greengrocer has his method of reviving stale goods; roots are soaked from a withered condition back to es fresh appearance. Cabbage and let tuce are skillfully stripped of their outer leaves, and although dirty, sandy spinach is less attractive in looks than cleaner leaves, it is apt to be fresher than that which has been revived by washing. Even cucumbers.
eggplant, and tomatoes can be re vived by an ice7water bath. Within thin, membranous walls vegetables in close a semifluid mass that stores up minute cells of starch or other ma terial. As soon as the tender growth of the young plant is over, these cells grow woody and tough.
You can readily see this process in old asparagus, something we hesitate to eat; yet in thousands of families stale vegetables, which have devel oped the same conditions as if they were old, are used for economy's sake. It would really, in such a case, be better to omit vegetables from a menu. One is eating woody fiber, which can be torn apart like threads, and is almost as easy as thread to di gest. Suppose we see for ourselves just what this fibrous mass is like. Take two messes of peas, one of them green things fresh from the pod. Cook in boiling water. They will be ready for the table in ten minutes, but first make them into a puree by forcing the pulp through a potato ricer. They contain little but pulp. Nothing ex cept skins is left in the strainer. The value of fresh green peas lies in the sugar and mineral salts they contain. Now, take old dried peas such as are used as a base for soup. They have been soaking for twenty-four hours in cold water. Afterwards long, slow cooking softens them so they can be squeezed through the ricer. Then it actually takes muscle to get a puree from them, and it is small in propor tion to the residue retained by the strainer. They are not only the dry, husky skins of the peas, but a quan tity of pure waste which no stomach can properly digest. Still, this pulp made into a soup is a nutritious dish. That is why so many people with slow digestion can take in soup such vege tables as corn, tomato, beans, lentils, and celery, when the vegetable in its entirety would cause no end of dis tress.