E. Phillips Oppenheim - "The Great Secret "

Sewell Peaslee Wright - "The Infra Medians"

Baron Trenck - "The Life and Adventures of Baron Trenck Volume 1"

Anonymous - "The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume III"

Annual Bibliography of Commonwealth Literature 2007
This paper argues that discourses of love in Ghanaian market literature for youth offer a view into complex negotiations of agency and empowerment. Drawing on Deborah Durham's notion of youth as "social `shifters'" and Francis Nyamnjoh's conception of the "interconnectedness" of agency, I take Ghanaian market literature as one specific case of how African literature for youth foregrounds questions of continuity and change as African societies enter into increasingly complex global relations. In this literature for youth, received notions of love, often constructed out of impressions from American pop and hip hop music, carry new notions of agency that compete with existing "domesticated" forms. Authors like Ike Tandoh and Evelyn Tay employ discourses of love to offer youth alternative avenues for empowerment in a context of socio-economic disenfranchizement. In a creative process of "straddling", this writing both reveals and reproduces the contradictions that obtain in youth configurations of agency.

A Handbook of Health

W >> Woods Hutchinson >> A Handbook of Health




Their Place in our Diet. The wholesomeness of fats is well shown by
our appetite for them, which is very keen for small amounts of
them--witness, for instance, how quickly we notice and how keenly we
object to the absence of butter on our bread or potatoes. To have our
"bread well-buttered" is a well known expression for comfort and good
fortune; yet a very little excess will turn our enjoyment into disgust.
Fat, and particularly the cold fat of meat, "gags" us if we try to eat
too much of it.

Fortunately, most of these fat-foods are quite expensive, pound for
pound, and hence we are not often tempted to eat them in excess. Within
proper limits, then, fats are an exceedingly important and useful
food--a valuable member of the great family of Coal foods.

The Advantages of Fat as a Ration. The high fuel value and the small
bulk of fats give them a very great practical advantage whenever
supplies of food have to be carried for long distances, or for
considerable lengths of time, as in sea voyages and hunting and
exploring trips. So that in provisioning ships for a long voyage, or
fitting out an expedition for the Arctic regions, fats, in the shape of
bacon or pork, pemmican,[9] or the richer dried fishes, like salmon,
mackerel, and herring, will be found to play an important part. Fats
also have the great advantage, like the starches, of keeping well for
long periods, especially after they have been melted and sterilized by
boiling, or "rendering," as in the case of lard, or have had moderate
amounts of salt added to them, as in butter.

If you were obliged to pick out a ration which would keep you alive,
give you working power, and fit into the smallest possible bulk, you
would take a protein, a sugar, and a fat in about equal amounts. Indeed,
the German emergency field-ration, intended to keep soldiers in the
field for three or four days without their baggage-wagons, or
cook-trains, is made up of bacon, pea-meal, and chocolate. A small
packet of these, which weighs only a little over two pounds, and which
can be slipped into the knapsack, will, with plenty of water, keep a
soldier in fighting trim for three days.

Butter. The most useful and wholesome single fat is the one which is
in greatest demand--butter. This, as we have seen, is the churned and
concentrated fat of milk, to which a little salt has been added to keep
the milk-acid (_lactic acid_) which cannot be entirely washed out of it,
from "turning it sour" or rancid. The rancid, offensive taste of bad or
"strong" butter is due to the formation of another acid call _butyric_
("buttery") _acid_.

Butter is the best and most wholesome of our common fats because it is
most easily digested, most readily absorbed, and least likely to give
rise to this butyric acid fermentation. We should be particularly
careful, even more so almost than with other foods, to see that it is
perfectly sweet and good, because when we swallow rancid butter, we are
simply swallowing a ready-made attack of indigestion. Most people's
stomachs are strong enough to deal with small amounts of rancid butter
without discomfort; but it is a strain on them that ought to be
avoided, especially when good butter is simply a matter of strict
cleanliness and care in handling and churning the cream, and of keeping
the butter cool after it has been made.

Plenty of sweet butter is one of the most important and necessary
elements in our diet, especially in childhood. And if children are
allowed to eat pretty nearly as much as they want of it on their bread
or potatoes, and plenty of its liquid form, cream, on their berries and
puddings, it will save the necessity of many a dose of cod-liver oil, or
bitter physic. Cream is far superior to either cod-liver or castor oil
for keeping us in health.

Oleomargarine. On account of the expensiveness of butter, there are a
number of substitutes sold, which go under the name of _oleomargarine_.
These are made of the fat, or suet, of beef or mutton, mixed with a
certain amount of cream and real butter, to give them an agreeable
flavor. They are wholesome and useful fats, and for cooking purposes may
very largely be substituted for butter. Owing to the fact that their
fat is freer from the milk acids, they keep better than butter; and
sweet, sound oleomargarine is to be preferred to rank, rancid butter.
But it is not so readily digestible as butter is; is more liable to give
rise to the butyric acid fermentations in the stomach; is not nearly so
appetizing; and its sale as, and under the name of, _butter_ is a fraud
which the law rightly forbids and punishes.

[Illustration: A SMALL STORE, CLEANLY AND HONEST

The milk is well kept, the bread and candies are under glass, and
"butterine" is not sold as butter.]

Lard. The next most useful and generally used pure fat is lard--the
rendered, or boiled-down, fat of pork. It is a useful substitute for
butter in cooking, where butter is scarce. But, even in pastry or cakes,
it has neither the flavor nor the digestibility of butter, and the
latter should always be used when it can be had.

Bacon and Ham. The most useful and digestible fat meats are bacon and
ham, as the dried, salted, and usually smoked, meat of the pig is
called. Like all other fats, they can be eaten only in moderate amounts;
but thus eaten, they are both appetizing, digestible, and very
nutritious. One good slice of breakfast bacon, for instance, contains as
much fuel value as two large saucers of mush or breakfast food, or two
eggs, or two large slices of bread, or three oranges, or two small
glasses of milk, or a quart of berries.


NUTS

How Nuts should be Used. Another form of fat is the "meat" of
different nuts--walnuts, pecans, almonds, etc. These are quite rich in
fats, and also contain a fair amount of proteins, and are, in small
quantities, like other fats, appetizing and useful articles of food. But
they should not be depended upon to furnish more than a small amount of
the whole food supply, or even of its necessary fat, because nearly all
nuts contain pungent or bitter aromatic oils and ferments, which give
them their flavors, but which are likely to upset the digestion. This is
particularly true of the peanut, which is not a true nut at all, but is,
as its name indicates, a kind of pea grown underground. Peanuts, on
account of their large amount of these irritating substances, are among
the most indigestible and undesirable articles of diet in common use. A
certain amount of these irritating substances present in nuts may be
destroyed by careful roasting and salting; but this must be most
carefully done, and it shrinks them in bulk so that the finished product
is far more expensive than butter or fat meat of the same nutritive
value. Good salted almonds, for instance, cost fifty to eighty cents a
pound.

The proper place for nuts is where they usually come on our tables--at
the end of a meal. Those who attempt to cure themselves of dyspepsia by
a nut diet are simply making permanent their disease.


FOOTNOTES:

[9] Pemmican is a sort of "canned beef" made originally out of the best
parts of venison and buffalo-meat. This is boiled, and packed into skin
bags; then melted fat is poured in, so as to fill up all the chinks and
form a thick layer over the surface. It is now made of beef packed in
canvas bags, and is much used by polar expeditions and Alaskan miners.




CHAPTER VII

KINDLING AND PAPER FOODS--FRUITS AND VEGETABLES


The Special Uses of Fruits and Vegetables. We come now to the very
much larger but much less important class of foods--the Kindling foods,
which help the Coal foods to burn, and supply certain stuffs and
elements which the body needs and which the coal foods do not contain.
These are the vegetables--other than potatoes and dried peas and
beans--and fruits.

Fruits and vegetables contain certain mineral elements, which are not
present in sufficient proportions in the meats, starches, and fats.
Furthermore, the products of their digestion and burning in the body
help to neutralize, or render harmless, the waste products from meats,
starches, and fats. Thirdly, they have a very beneficial effect upon the
blood, the kidneys, and the skin. In fact, the reputation of fruits and
fresh vegetables for "purifying the blood" and "clearing the complexion"
is really well deserved. The keenness of our liking for fruit at all
times, and our special longing for greens and sour things in the spring,
after their scarcity in our diet all winter, is a true sign of their
wholesomeness.

Not the least of their advantages is that they contain a very large
proportion of water; and this, though diminishing their fuel value,
supplies the body with a naturally filtered and often distilled supply
of this necessary element of life. One of the best ways of avoiding that
burning summer thirst, which leads you to flood your unfortunate stomach
with melted icebergs, in the form of ice water, ice cold lemonade, or
soda water, is to take an abundance of fresh fruits and green
vegetables.

Many of the vegetables contain small amounts of starch, but few of them
enough to count upon as fuel, except potatoes, which we have already
classed with the Coal foods. Most fruits contain a certain amount of
sugar--how much can usually be estimated from their taste, and how
little can be gathered from the statement that even the sweetest of
fruits, like ripe pears or ripe peaches, contain only about eight per
cent of sugar. They are all chiefly useful as flavors for the less
interesting staple foods, particularly the starches. In fact, our
instinctive use of them to help down bread and butter, or rice, or
puddings of various sorts, is a natural and proper one. Like the
vegetables, they contain various salts which are useful in neutralizing
certain acid substances formed in the body. Soldiers in war, or sailors
upon long voyages, who are fed upon a diet consisting chiefly of salted
or preserved meat, with bread or hard biscuit and sugar, but without
either fruits or fresh vegetables, are likely to develop a disease
called scurvy. Little more than a century ago, hundreds of deaths
occurred every year in the British and French navies from this disease,
and the crews of many a long exploring voyage--like Captain Cook's--or
of searchers for the North Pole, have been completely disabled or even
destroyed entirely by scurvy. It was discovered that by adding to the
diet fruit, or fresh vegetables like cabbage or potatoes, scurvy could
be entirely prevented, or cured.[10]

Their Low Fuel Value. How little real fuel value fruits and
vegetables have, may be easily seen from the following table. In order
to get the nourishment contained in a pound loaf of bread, or a pound of
roast beef, you would have to eat: 12 large apples or pears (5 lbs.);
4-1/2 qts. of strawberries; a dozen bananas (3-1/2 lbs.); 7 lbs. of
onions; 2 doz. large cucumbers (18 lbs.); 10 lbs. of cabbage; 1/2 bushel
of lettuce or celery.

Apples, the most Wholesome Fruit. Head and shoulders above all the
other fruits stands that delight of our childhood days, apples. Well
ripened, or properly cooked, they are readily digested by the average
stomach; though some delicate digestions have difficulty with them. They
contain a fair amount of acids, and from five to seven per cent of
sugar. Their general wholesomeness and permanent usefulness may be
gathered from the fact that they are one of the few fruits which you can
eat almost daily the year round, or at very frequent intervals, without
getting tired of them. Food that you don't get tired of is usually food
which is good for you.

Dried apples are much inferior to the fresh fruit, because they become
toughened in drying, and because growers sometimes smoke them with fumes
of sulphur in the process, in order to bleach or whiten them; and this
turns them into a sort of vegetable leather.

Other Fruits--their Advantages and Drawbacks. Next in usefulness
probably come pears, though these have the disadvantage of containing a
woody fibre, which is rather hard to digest, and they are, of course,
poorer "keepers" than apples. Then come peaches, which have one of the
most delicious flavors of all fruits, but which tend to set up
fermentation and irritation in delicate stomachs, though in the average
stomach, when eaten in moderation, they are wholesome and good. Then
come the berries--strawberries, raspberries, blackberries,--all
excellent and wholesome, when fresh in their season, or canned or
preserved.

One warning, however, should be given about these most delicious,
fragrant berries; and as it happens to apply also to several of our most
attractive foods, it is well to mention it here. While perfectly
wholesome and good for the majority of people, strawberries, for
instance, are to a few--perhaps one in twenty--so irritating and
indigestible as to be mildly poisonous. The other foods which may play
this kind of trick with the stomachs of certain persons are oranges,
bananas, melons, clams, lobsters, oysters, cheese, sage, and parsley,
and occasionally, but very rarely, eggs and mutton. This is a matter
which each of you can readily find out by experiment. If strawberries,
melons, and other fruits agree with you, then eat freely of them, in due
moderation. But if, after three or four trials, you find that they do
not agree with you, but make your stomach burn, and perhaps give you an
attack of nettle-rash or hives, or a headache, then let them alone.

The banana is of some food value because it contains not only sugar, but
considerable quantities of starch--about the same amount as potatoes.
But, if bananas are not fully ripe, both their starch and sugar are
highly indigestible; while, if over-ripe, they have developed in them
irritating substances, which are likely to upset the digestion and cause
hives or eczema, especially in children. Bananas should therefore be
regarded rather as a luxury and an agreeable variety than as a
substantial part of the diet.

Food Values of the Different Vegetables. The vegetables depend for
their value almost solely upon the alkaline salts and the water in them,
and upon their flavor, which gives an agreeable variety to the diet.
Parsnips, beets, and carrots are among the most nutritious, as they
contain some starch and sugar; but they so quickly pall upon the taste
that they can be used only in small amounts.

Turnips and cabbages possess the merit of being cheap and very easily
grown. They contain valuable earthy salts, plenty of pure water, and a
trace of starch. But these advantages are offset by their large amount
of tough, woody vegetable fibre; this is incapable of digestion, and
though in moderate amounts it is valuable in helping to regulate the
movements of the bowels, in excess it soon becomes irritating. Both of
them, particularly cabbages, contain, also, certain flavoring extracts,
very rich in sulphur and exceedingly irritating to the stomach, which
cause them to disagree with some persons. If these are got rid of by
brisk boiling in at least two waters, then cabbage is a fairly wholesome
and digestible dish for the average stomach. And because of its
cheapness and "keeping" power, it is often the only vegetable that can
be secured at a reasonable cost at certain seasons of the year.

Onions, especially the milder and larger ones, are an excellent and
wholesome vegetable, containing small amounts of starch, although their
pungent flavor, due to an aromatic oil, makes them so irritating to some
stomachs as to be quite indigestible.

Sweet corn, whether fresh or dried, is wholesome, and has a fair degree
of nutritive value, as it contains fair amounts of both starch and
sugar. It should, however, be very thoroughly chewed and eaten
moderately, on account of the thick, firm indigestible husk which
surrounds the kernel.

Tomatoes are an exceedingly valuable, though rather recent addition to
our dietary. Their fresh, pungent acid is, like the fruit acids,
wholesome and beneficial; and they can be preserved or canned without
losing any of their flavor. They were at one time denounced as being
indigestible, and even as the cause of cancer; but these charges were
due to ignorance and distrust of anything new.

Lighter Vegetables, or Paper Foods. The lighter vegetables such as
lettuce, celery, spinach, cucumbers, and parsley have, in a previous
chapter, been classed with the paper foods. They are all agreeable
additions to the diet on account of their fresh taste and pleasant
flavor, though they contain little or no nutritive matter.

The Advantages of a Vegetable Garden. Notwithstanding their slight
fuel value, there are few more valuable and wholesome elements in the
diet than an abundant supply of fresh green vegetables. Everyone who is
so situated that he can possibly arrange for it, should have a garden,
if only the tiniest patch, and grow them for his own use, both on
account of their greater wholesomeness and freshness when so grown, and
because of the valuable exercise in the open air, and the enjoyment and
interest afforded by their care.

[Illustration: THE JOY OF HIS OWN GARDEN PATCH]


FOOTNOTES:

[10] As vegetables and fruit are bulky and likely to spoil, on the long
voyages of sailing vessels before steamships were invented bottles of
the juice of limes (a small kind of lemon) were added, instead, to the
hard-tack and "salt-horse" of the ship's stores. Because of this custom,
the long-voyage merchantmen who carried cargoes round the Horn or the
Cape were for years nicknamed "Lime-juicers."




CHAPTER VIII

COOKING


Why We Cook our Food. While some of all classes of food may be eaten
raw, yet we have gradually come to submit most of our foods to the heat
of a fire, in various ways; this process is known as _cooking_. While
cooking usually wastes a little, and sometimes a good deal, of the fuel
value of the food and, if carelessly or stupidly done, may make it less
digestible, in the main it makes it both more digestible and safer,
though much more expensive. This it does in three ways: by making it
taste better; by softening it so as to make it more easily masticated;
and by sterilizing it, or destroying any germs or animal parasites which
may be in it.

Cooking Improves the Taste of Food. It may seem almost absurd to
regard changing the taste of a food as of sufficient importance to
justify the expense and trouble of a long process like cooking. Yet this
was probably one of the main reasons why cooking came into use in the
first place; and it is still one of the most important reasons for
continuing it. No one would feel attracted by a plate of slabs of raw
meat, with a handful of flour, a raw potato or two, and some green
apples; but cook these and you immediately have an appetizing and
attractive meal. Any food, to be a thoroughly good food, must "taste
good"; otherwise, part of it will fail to be digested, and will sooner
or later upset the stomach and clog the appetite.

Cooking Makes Food Easier to Chew and Digest. The second important use
of cooking is that it makes food both easier to masticate and easier to
digest. As we have seen, it bursts the little coverings of the starchy
grains, and makes the tough fibres of grains and roots crisp and
brittle, as is well illustrated in the soft, mealy texture of a baked
potato, and in the crispness of parched wheat or corn. It _coagulates_,
or curdles, the jelly-like pulp of meat, and the gummy white of the egg,
and the sticky gluten of wheat flour, so that they can be ground into
tiny pieces between the teeth.

[Illustration: THE KITCHEN SHOULD BE CARED FOR AS ONE OF THE MOST
IMPORTANT ROOMS IN THE HOUSE]

We could hardly eat the different kinds of grains and meals and flours
in proper amounts at all, unless they were cooked; indeed they require
much longer and more thorough baking, or boiling, than meats. The amount
of cooking required should always be borne in mind when counting the
cost of a diet, as the fuel, time, and labor consumed in cooking
vegetable articles of diet often bring up their expense much more nearly
to that of meats than the cost of the raw material in the shops would
lead us to expect.

Cooking Sterilizes Food. A third, and probably on the whole, the most
valuable and important service rendered by cooking is, that it
sterilizes our food and kills any germs, or animal parasites, which may
have been in the body of the animal, or in the leaves of the plant,
from which it came; or, as is far the commoner and greater danger, may
have got on it from dirty or careless handling, or exposure to dust.
While it was undoubtedly the great improvement that cooking makes in the
taste of food that first led our ancestors--and probably chiefly induces
us--to use the process, it is hardly probable that they would have
continued to bear the expense, trouble, and numerous discomforts of
cooking, had they not noticed this significant fact: that those families
and tribes that had the habit of thoroughly cooking their food, suffered
least from diseases of the stomach and intestines, and hence lived
longer and survived in greater numbers than the "raw fooders." We are
perfectly right in spending a good deal of time, care, and thought on
cooking, preparing, and serving our food, for we thus lengthen our lives
and diminish our sicknesses. Civilized man is far healthier than any
known "noble savage," in spite of what poets and story-tellers say to
the contrary.

The Three Methods of Cooking. The three[11] chief methods
of cooking--_baking_, or roasting; _boiling_, or stewing; and
_frying_--have each their advantages as well as disadvantages. No one of
them would be suitable for all kinds of food; and no one of them is to
be condemned as unwholesome in itself, if intelligently done; although
all of them, if carelessly, or stupidly, carried out, will waste food,
and render it less digestible instead of more so. In the main, the
methods that are in common use for each particular kind of food, or
under each special condition, are reasonable and sensible--the result of
hundreds of years of experimenting. The only exceptions are that, on
account of its ease and quickness, frying is resorted to rather more
frequently than is best; while boiling is more popular than it should
be, on account of the small amount of thought and care involved in the
process.

Roasting, or Baking. Roasting, or baking, is probably the highest form
of the art of cooking, developing the finest flavors, causing less waste
of food value, and requiring the greatest skill and care. On general
principles, we may say that almost anything which can be roasted or
baked, should be roasted or baked.

On the other hand, roasting or baking has the disadvantage of taking a
great deal of fuel and of time, and of being exceedingly fatiguing and
annoying for the cook, making the labor cost high; and it cannot be used
where a meal is needed in a hurry. If the process is carelessly done and
carried too far, it may also waste a great deal of the food material,
either by burning or scorching, or by the commoner and almost equally
wasteful process of turning the whole outside of the roast--particularly
in the case of meat--into a hard, tough, leathery substance, which it is
almost impossible either to chew or to digest.

Boiling. The advantages of boiling are that it is the easiest of all
forms of cookery, and within the grasp of the lowest intelligence; that,
on account of keeping the food continually surrounded by water, it leads
to less waste and is far less likely than either baking or frying to
result in destroying part of the food if not carefully watched; and that
it can be used in cooking many cheap, coarse foods, such as the mushes,
graham meal, corn meal, hominy, potatoes, cabbages, turnips, etc., which
furnish the bulk of our food.

On the other hand, from the point of view of fuel used, it is the most
expensive of all forms of cooking; and unless a fire is being kept up
for other purposes, which allows boiling or stewing to go on on the back
of the stove as an "extra," without additional expense, careful
experiments have shown that the prolonged boiling needed by many of
these cheaper and coarser foods, especially such as are recommended by
most diet reformers, brings their total cost up to that of bread, milk,
eggs, sugar, and the cheaper cuts of meat,--all of which are more
wholesome and more appetizing foods.

[Illustration: A KNOWLEDGE OF COOKING IS A VALUABLE PART OF A GOOD
EDUCATION]

The supposed saving in boiling meat, that you get two courses, soup and
meat, out of one joint, is imaginary; for, as we have seen, the soup or
water in which meat has been boiled contains little, or nothing, of the
fuel value, or nourishing part of the meat; and all the flavor that is
saved in this is lost by the boiled meat, rendering it not only much
less appetizing, but also less digestible. You cannot have the flavor of
your food in two places at once. If you save it in the soup, you lose it
from the meat.

Frying. The chief advantages of frying are its marked saving of time,
of fuel, and of discomfort to the cook; it also develops the appetizing
flavors of the food to a very high degree. A wholesome, appetizing meal
can be prepared by frying, much more quickly than by either baking or
boiling, and with less than half the fuel expense.

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