Reform Cookery Book Part 27

3 ozs. "Hovis" flour, 3 ozs. semolina, 2 ozs. sugar, 4 ozs. currants or stoned valencias or sultanas, or equal quant.i.ties of all three, 3 ozs.

chopped nut suet or pine kernels, 2 ozs. treacle, 2 ozs. coa.r.s.e marmalade (see p. 83), 1 egg, 1/2 teaspoonful carb. soda, and a little spice. Sour milk to mix. Mix all the dry things; beat egg and add, also treacle, marmalade, and enough sour milk to make fairly moist. Steam for 2-1/2 to 3 hours in basin, well greased and dusted with sugar.

Farola Pudding.

3 ozs. Farola, 4 gills milk or nut cream milk, 2 eggs, sugar, flavouring.

Smooth Farola to a cream with a little of the milk. Put remainder on to boil and pour over Farola in basin, stirring the while. Return all to saucepan, and cook gently for a few minutes. Beat up eggs with sugar, remove Farola from fire, and add, also flavouring. Pour into b.u.t.tered pudding-dish, and bake gently for half-an-hour, or steam in b.u.t.tered mould for 1 hour.

To make Farola Blanc-Mange use only 3 gills milk, and omit the eggs.

Semolina Syrup Pudding.

3 ozs. Marshall's Semolina, 3 ozs. golden syrup, 1 pint milk. For a simple, inexpensive pudding, the following is excellent, and it will, I think, be new to many. Make the Semolina in usual way--that is, bring milk to boil and sprinkle in the Semolina as if making porridge, cook gently for a few minutes with lid on, then pour into steamer-bowl. Allow to stand till cold, then put the syrup on top, and put on to steam for about 1-1/2 hours.

The syrup will find its way through, and the pudding should turn out a lovely golden brown with the syrup for a sauce. No eggs, other sweetening, or flavouring required. Farola or corn flour may be done same way.

Syrup or Treacle Tart.

Cover a flat ashet with either rough puff paste or short crust, and fill in with a mixture composed of 1/4 lb. golden syrup, 2 ozs. bread crumbs, the juice and grated rind of 1 lemon. Ornament with criss-cross strips of paste, and bake in hot oven. For a homely tart make a plain paste with wheat meal, and fill in with treacle and bread crumbs.

Plasmon Custard or Blanc-Mange.

This can be made with addition of Plasmon to any of the custard recipes given, or with the Plasmon and Blanc-Mange Powders. If the latter, to each powder add 1 pint of milk. Stir till custard thickens, but do not allow to boil.

Plasmon Sweet Sauce (for Puddings).

1/2 pint Plasmon stock, 1 oz. b.u.t.ter, 1/2 oz. flour, 1-1/2 ozs. sugar, flavouring of lemon rind, nutmeg, cinnamon, or bitter almonds. Melt b.u.t.ter; remove from fire, and mix in flour till smooth. Add Plasmon stock gradually, cook for a few minutes very gently, then add flavouring. Very good with stewed fruit or any steamed pudding.

HEALTH FOOD SPECIALTIES.

This is an age of seeking after health, and many and various are the means proffered to that end. Drugs, serums, medical and surgical appliances, baths, waters, fearfully and wonderfully conceived methods of exercise, rigid and drastic schemes of dieting, &c., &c., crowd upon each other's heels until the prevailing idea in the mind of any one seeking to solve the health problem is one of hopeless mystification. Life would be too short to give them all a fair trial, even if any one could be found either foolish or courageous enough to attempt the task (I believe some _do_ try everything by turns but nothing long), so one is driven perforce to make a selection; and while dismissing nine-tenths of the nostrums urged upon us as unworthy of any sane and rational consideration, we know the truth lies somewhere, and will be found by those who seek it on simple, common-sense lines. Doctors differ like the rest of us, but there is a broad general ground of agreement upon which we can all go, namely, that cleanliness, in its widest sense, including pure air, food, and water; plain, easily-digested, nourishing food; with rest and exercise in proper proportion, are the main essentials for right living, and so furnish the key to the problem. No one of these is of itself sufficient. All are necessary and inter-dependent, and it is the want of recognising this principle which so often leads to failure and consequent abandonment, or even wholesale denunciation, of the regimen followed. Thus a person may be advised to adopt certain foods, the rules and regulations regarding which he follows to the letter, but acts unhygienically in other ways, as by shutting out the fresh air, inattention to cleanliness, over-exertion or want of sufficient exercise, eating when exhausted, and so on. The food, at least if it has gone in any way against the inclination or prejudice, will of course be blamed, while really it may be quite innocent.

One might multiply instances to show how so many not only fail to find health by their unreasonable methods, but bring ridicule and disrepute on certain of the measures followed. There is no need to waste further time, however, in demonstrating the obvious. One would hope that all readers are genuinely interested in health principles, and sufficiently in earnest to promote these intelligently.

Our business in these pages lies with the food question, and in this chapter I purpose to deal specially with

Health Foods,

of which there are a large and ever-increasing number now upon the market.

How people can complain of want of variety with such a seemingly endless category to choose from pa.s.ses my comprehension, for the difficulty I find is to do justice to even a small proportion of them. If one were to sample a different dish every day it would take months to get over them, and great as is the outcry in these days for variety, I do not think this constant chopping and changing by any means desirable. As I have been at some pains to find out a number of really reliable Health Foods, and can speak of these from personal experience, the information given in this chapter may serve as a guide to their selection, and save considerable time and trouble. I may say that I am indebted to a number of friends and others with whom I am in correspondence for the benefit of their experience, as well as my own. It is always good to have as wide a consensus of opinion as possible, for one finds that tastes and ideas regarding the merit of the several articles vary with the individual, and with the conditions under which used.

It is difficult to know where to begin when so much claims attention.

Perhaps the cla.s.s of foods which have come most largely into the public eye of late years are the so-called

Breakfast Foods,

consisting generally of cereals, pro-digested or so treated as to be easy of digestion. Several of these, such as Shredded Wheat Biscuits, have been frequently referred to in different parts of the book, so that no further words are needed to commend them. If any are sceptical, or even curious, regarding "what they are," a demonstration recently described by a Manchester friend might serve to rea.s.sure them. It was quite on the American "pig and sausage" lines, for one saw the whole wheat grain going in at one part of a machine and coming out at another in the form of a "Triscuit" ready for use.

Among other specially good foods are

Granose Flakes.

These consist of the entire wheat-kernel in the form of delicious, crisp flakes, ready for use, with cream, stewed fruit, &c., or in any way in which bread crumbs may be used. They are very handy to have in the general storeroom to sprinkle over cauliflower or any dish served _au gratin_.

That they are at once nutritious and easily digested is attested by the fact that physicians of high standing put their patients on a diet of "Granose."

I have known personally of cases of extreme gastric debility where the patients were put on this food almost exclusively for months together.

They may also be had in the form of

Granose Biscuits,

and these are excellent for general use. Toasted for a few minutes and then b.u.t.tered--or the b.u.t.ter may be put on while toasting--they furnish a delicacy which few will fail to appreciate.

Avenola, Toasted Wheat Flakes, Nut Rolls, and Gluten Meal, containing 30 per cent. to 60 per cent. Gluten, are among the other products of the same firm--the International Health a.s.sociation, Stanborough Park, Watford, Herts--which I have s.p.a.ce here only to name.

In the chapter on Breakfast Foods and elsewhere the various products of the London Nut Food Co., 465 Battersea Park Road, London, S.W.--Grain Granules, Gluten Meal, &c., are mentioned, besides which they have a great variety of

Nut Cream Rolls and Nut Cream Biscuits,

made from pure wheat meal and shortened with nut b.u.t.ter. They are aerated and free from yeast and chemicals. In the way of

PORRIDGES,

I should like to specially commend

Banana Oats

as being something quite new and appetising. It is very easily prepared, requiring only about 10 minutes' cooking. It is put up in threepenny packets, with which full directions for cooking are given. I may say that I generally make of a stiffer consistency than quant.i.ties given, and cook longer in double boiler.

Another good porridge for those who cannot take the regular oatmeal can be made with

Robinson's Patent Groats.