BREAD AND MILK.
Bring some fresh, whole or skimmed milk to a boil, pour on dried black bread or crusts, and add a little salt. Let it stand for 10 minutes and serve on soup plates.
CRACKER AND MILK.
Prepare like the foregoing, or pour one cupful of boiling salted water over one large unleavened cracker, let stand 5 minutes. Then add one cupful of hot milk and serve.
DIRECTIONS FOR BOILING RICE.
Wash one cup of rice, and pour into seven or eight cups of boiling, salted water. Boil rapidly until the grains burst; then cover and put into a hot oven or on a platter, and cook for 20 or 30 minutes. Remove from the fire and add a piece of butter and the yolk of an egg, or serve the rice with hot cream. Dried currants, raisins, apricots or prunes may be mixed with the rice. If eaten in place of mush, pour the rice on soup plates, and add hot cream.
MILK RICE.
Allow a pint of water and a pint of fresh milk to come to a boil with vanilla or cinnamon, and put into it three or four tablespoonfuls of Japan or Carolina rice, which has been soaked for several hours. Boil rapidly until the starch granules burst, then boil slowly for 40 minutes longer. If it is not thick enough, mix a little cornstarch in cold water, and add to the rice when nearly done. The yolk of one or more eggs may be added before serving, if desired. It may be eaten plain in the form of a thick gruel or with a fruit sauce. It will serve as a whole meal for children, morning, noon, or evening. A few nuts, or some celery, may be eaten at the end of the meal.
Baked and boiled cereals are more nutritious than bread. In the fermenting process which takes place in rising bread, valuable substances such as lime and salts are lost. It is rendered more acid, and therefore unfit for food for people with weak stomachs. If yeast bread is combined with foods which render the fluids of the stomach alkaline, it is less harmful.