The organic mineral salts contained in the vegetables readily boil out into the water. If the vegetables, as is the usual custom, are boiled in a large quantity of water, then drained or, what is still worse, pressed out, they have lost their nutritive and medicinal value. The mineral salts have vanished in the sink, the remains are insipid and indigestible and have to be soaked in soup stock and seasoned with strong condiments and spices to make them at all palatable.
Fruits and Berries
Next to the leafy vegetables, fruits and berries are the most valuable foods of the organic minerals group. Lemons, grapefruit, oranges, apples are especially beneficial as blood purifiers. Plums, pears, peaches, apricots, cherries, grapes, etc., contain large amounts of fruit sugars in easily assimilable form and are also very valuable on account of their mineral salts.
The different kinds of berries are even richer in mineral salts than the acid and subacid fruits. In the country homes of Germany they are always at hand either dried or preserved to serve during the winter not only as delicious foods but also as valuable home remedies.
Fruits and berries are best eaten raw, although they may be stewed or baked. Very few people know that rhubarb and cranberries are very palatable when cut up fine and well mixed with honey, being allowed to stand for about an hour before serving. Prepared in this way, they require much less sweetening and therefore do not tax the organism nearly as much as the ordinary rhubarb or cranberry sauce, which usually contains an excessive amount of sugar.
Cooking of Fruits
It is better to cook apples, cranberries, rhubarb, strawberries, and all other acid fruits without sugar until soft, and to add the sugar afterward. Much less sugar will be required to sweeten them sufficiently than when the sugar is added before or during the cooking.
Dried fruits rank next to the fresh in value, as the evaporating process only removes a large percentage of water, without changing the chemical composition of the fruit in any way. Prunes, apricots, apples, pears, peaches and berries may be obtained in the dried state all through the year. Dates, figs, raisins and currants also come under this head.
Olives are an excellent food. They are very rich in fats (about 50 percent), and contain also considerable quantities of organic salts. They are therefore a good substitute for animal fat.
Avoid factory-canned fruits. In the first place, they have become deteriorated by the cooking process and secondly, they usually contain poisonous chemical preservatives. Home-preserved fruits and vegetables are all right providing they do not contain too much sugar and no poisonous preservative.