Mother: I am glad you asked that question. Most kinds of foods are better cooked, but many things are made unfit for food at all by being badly cooked. To be able to prepare healthful food in a neat, tasteful way is the best and most useful knowledge a girl can obtain. Every one should know how to make good, light bread, how to prepare vegetables, cook grains and fruits, and lay the table in a neat, pleasing way.
Amy: Will you teach us how, mother?
Mother: Certainly; we will begin this very day. I think we will form a class of four; for the boys will wish to learn too. I am sure you will soon be able to prepare food very nicely.
Elmer: Then we shall not always need to have a cook when we go out camping, but we can do our own cooking and care for ourselves.
Mother: There is still one other thing that I wish you never to forget, and that is that many men become drunkards because they do not have the right kind of food. It may be it is made so hot with pepper, mustard, and spices that it creates thirst, or it may be but half cooked, so they feel poorly fed. Such men are much more apt to go to the bar-room than the man who sits at a neatly-spread table furnished with plain, healthful food.
Percy: But isn’t alcohol a kind of food, mother? I have seen drinking men who looked so fat and strong it seems as if it must build up the body.
Mother: No, my son, it is a great mistake to think there is any food in alcohol or in any drink that contains it. A noted doctor in England says this about it: “There is more nourishment in the flour that can be put on the point of a table knife than in eight quarts of the best beer.”
Elmer: But why do people who drink beer look so fat, then?