XI DIET REFORM IN THE FAMILY

The reader is now familiar with the new ideas upon the subject of human nutrition. It is obvious, of course, that if these ideas should ever come into general acceptance, there would be enormous changes in the every-day habits of human beings. And we can well imagine that a person might be fully convinced of the soundness of all the arguments which have been advanced in this book, and yet shrink in dismay from the complications incidental to applying them.

We ourselves have faced these difficulties in many forms. We have wished to have two meals, and yet felt obliged to have three, because all our friends had them, and we did not wish to be hermits. We have wished to avoid meat, and yet have eaten it, because it was on the table, and we did not like to startle our hostess—and perhaps find ourselves involved in an argument about vegetarianism, in the course of which we had either to permit a good cause to go down into defeat, or else to tell facts about meat which would take away every one’s appetite for meat, and for vegetables as well. But in the end, the desire for health has conquered all other motives with us, and we have broken with every trace of the old ways. It seemed to us that we would help and interest others if we gave some account of how the new ideas have worked out in practice, and the daily regimen of a family which adopts them.

This book is written in Bermuda, where the writers have been living in co-operation, along the lines worked out at Helicon Hall, only upon a much smaller scale. Their party consists of eight adults and three children—this including two governesses, a secretary, and a servant. They live in an isolated neighborhood, upon the waterfront. Most of the party sleep out of doors on the broad verandas of the house, while the wide doors and windows of the other rooms afford ample ventilation. Daily sea-bathing is the habit of all of the group.

The married women of the party assume in turn the direction of our dietaries; that is to say, they choose the menus, and attend to the ordering of the food supplies. We eat but twice a day, and the menus are made up entirely of fruits, grains, nuts and vegetables, with the occasional use of eggs. We obtain from the Battle Creek Sanitarium a great number of the foods we use, availing ourselves of its splendidly managed food-department. The children eat three times a day, but their breakfasts are very light, consisting of orange juice and a fig or two, or perhaps a banana. The children have this light breakfast immediately after arising. At ten o’clock comes the principal meal of the day for the whole household. An effort is made to make this meal “well balanced”; that is to say, to have the proportion of proteids, carbohydrates and fats. There are usually not more than two, or at the most, three cooked dishes. Sometimes the main dish is a soup; sometimes it is baked or boiled macaroni with tomato dressing; sometimes it is bean or pea croquettes; sometimes it is scrambled eggs, or the yolks of hard boiled eggs.

We have a constant supply of fresh vegetables, the justly celebrated Bermuda onion; beets, turnips, egg plant, raw cabbage, potatoes, white and sweet, rice, hominy, green peas, tomatoes, and lettuce.

We have corn pones, corn bread, brown bread containing oatmeal, ordinary white bread, and oven toast—that is to say, slices of bread baked in the oven until it is brown all the way through. From Battle Creek we have malt honey, malted nuts, ripe olives, olive oil, fig and prune marmalades made without cane sugar, various crackers and grain preparations, and several other nut products. The Sanitarium health-chocolate, a sweet made without the use of cane sugar, and with chocolate divested of its caffeine, also appears on our table. We have eliminated dessert at dinner, having learned not only at Battle Creek, but in the sore school of experience, that the heterogeneous mixtures of cream or milk and cane sugar and various mushy stuffs, along with butter or lard, in the shape of pies and puddings and cakes, are extremely undesirable foods. We find the sweet, pure taste of malt honey an adequate and highly satisfactory substitute.

The Daily Swim

Fruits rarely appear on the table at dinner, since we do not wish to mix them with vegetables. They make their appearance in great abundance at supper, which we have at five o’clock. At this meal we have various cooked fruits, such as prunes or apricots or baked or stewed apples; and of uncooked fruits, oranges, apples, figs, bananas, grapes, and whatever else the market affords. With these we have zweibach and common bread or crackers. At both meals appears Yogurt, an acidulous and agreeable beverage which gratefully checks thirst and in itself nourishes, and is also the vehicle whereby millions of beneficial germs are introduced into the body.

The work of preparing and serving these two meals is done by one person—and that person has time left to play tennis and go in swimming with the rest of us. The total cost of the food is less than thirty dollars a week; cooked and served, its cost is about three dollars and a quarter a week per person. In this connection it should be explained that Bermuda prices, for even the commonest things, are in excess of prices in New York. We pay five cents each for eggs and twelve cents a quart for milk. We have oranges by the barrel, but they come from California, or from Jamaica by way of New York. We have olive oil at four dollars a gallon, and sterilized butter at fifty cents a pound. And in addition the figures quoted include expressage and steamer charges, and ten per cent. duty as well. We mention these things for the light they throw upon the relative costs of the vegetarian and carnivorous life.

The reader will also wish to know about the health of a family living in this manner. When we came here all our children were half-sick from too long contact with cities, and we were not used to the climate, and so one of them caught a severe cold. With this exception there has not been a day’s sickness among them, nor the remotest trace of an ailment. If we were to describe their looks the reader might attribute it to parental blindness, and so the proper plan seems to us to insert a picture of them, and let the reader come to his own conclusions.

For the guidance of any housewife who may wish to try our regimen, we give a few typical menus, and also recipes for some of the favorite dishes of our family. We are all hungry when mealtime comes in our household, and we enjoy the surprises of the menu with all the zest that we ever welcomed roast turkey and pumpkin pies in the old days. And this seems in some magical way to be true, not only of ourselves, but also of such guests as happen along. It is worth noting that three different persons, who have never before known or thought anything about vegetarianism, have stayed with us for periods of several months; and all of them have fallen into the ways of our household, have been well and strong, and untroubled by craving for meat—and in two cases have found, to their great dismay, that they were gaining in weight upon two “low proteid” meals a day!

The first of the tables which follow contains a typical menu for a week; and the second gives an extra list of dinners. The third shows what we do upon some special occasion; it was the banquet which we prepared for Mark Twain—only, alas, his physician had ordered him to be home by sundown, and he couldn’t stay to partake of it.

Inasmuch as all people cannot change their meal hours in accordance with those we have suggested, we give these menus upon the basis of three meals a day, with the various food elements properly balanced. We have also included simple desserts, for the benefit of those who do not care to dispense with this feature. The menus in our own home are similar to these, with the exclusion of the breakfasts and the dessert.[1]

Monday Breakfast

Oranges

Poached eggs

Graham gems

Dinner

Lima beans, dried or fresh

Baked potatoes

Mixed nuts

Whole wheat bread

Lettuce salad

Tapioca pudding

Supper

Oven toast brown bread

Cottage cheese

Apple sauce

Almond cream

Figs

Bananas

Tuesday Breakfast

Grape fruit

Corn meal mush with cream

Buttered toast

Dinner

Baked macaroni

Mixed nuts

Brown bread

Tomato salad with mayonnaise dressing

Indian meal pudding

Supper

Zweibach

Brown bread

Ripe olives

Stewed prunes

Dates

Bananas

Hot malted nuts

Wednesday Breakfast

Baked apples and cream

Omelet

Pop overs

Dinner

Peas patties with tomato sauce

Baked sweet potatoes

White bread

Boiled onions

Baked custard

Supper

Oven toast

Whole wheat bread

Nut butter

Stewed fruit

Cottage cheese

Apples

Bananas

Thursday Breakfast

Oranges

Hominy with cream

Currant puffs

Dinner

Bean and nut croquettes with cream sauce

Baked egg plant

Graham bread

Boiled rice

Dates with whipped cream

Supper

Oven toast

Graham bread

Honey

Ripe olives

Apple sauce

Grapes

Bananas

Friday Breakfast

Grapes

Scrambled eggs

Whole wheat gems

Dinner

Vegetable soup

Assorted nuts

Beet and lettuce salad with mayonnaise dressing

Corn pones

Cottage pudding

Supper

Golden maize crackers

Graham bread

Nut butter

Canned fruit

Bananas and apples

Saturday Breakfast

Grape fruit

Toasted corn flakes with cream

Buttered toast

Marmalade

Dinner

Baked beans

Cabbage slaw

Baked potatoes

Mashed turnips

Brown bread

Baked apples with cream

Supper

Oven toast

Brown bread

Cottage cheese

Sliced pineapple

Bananas

Figs

Sunday Breakfast

Grapes

Soft boiled eggs

Corn meal gems

Orange marmalade

Dinner

Pea and tomato soup

Succotash

Corn bread

Potato salad

Baked bananas

Mixed nuts and raisins

Supper

Zweibach

Oatmeal bread

Malted nuts

Ripe olives

Canned fruits

Bananas

Dates

Extra Dinners

Yolks hard boiled eggs

Baked potatoes

Beets

Prune pudding

Vegetable soup

Cabbage salad

Corn bread

Baked custard

Scrambled eggs

Baked lyonnaise potatoes

Beet and lettuce salad

Dates with whipped cream

Macaroni with tomato sauce

Whole wheat gems

Egg salad

Apple tapioca pudding

Baked beans

Tomato, chili sauce

Mashed turnips

Lettuce with French dressing

Lemon jelly

Pea soup

Corn pones

Potato and onion salad

Cabinet pudding

Peas patties with tomato sauce

Mashed potatoes

Carrots with butter sauce

Baked nuttolene with cream sauce

Baked sweet potatoes

Stewed tomatoes

Baked apples and cream

Lima beans (fresh or dried)

Baked sweet potatoes

Lettuce

Corn pones

Stuffed dates

Baked beans

Lettuce

Corn (canned or sweet)

Nuts and raisins

Recipes

Vegetable soup: Cut in dice three turnips, three carrots, three onions, three potatoes. Cover with water and simmer for thirty minutes. Cook one can of tomatoes, or one quart of fresh tomatoes, strain and thicken a little with flour. Add to vegetables and cook thirty minutes. Add butter and sprinkle with parsley.

Corn pones: Three cups corn meal, 1 heaping teaspoon salt, 1 tablespoon sugar, 1 heaping tablespoon butter. Add boiling water until meal is scalded, pat it into flat, thin cakes and bake three-quarters of an hour.

Mayonnaise dressing: Yolk of egg; add 1½ cups olive oil, drop by drop, stirring in one direction. Juice of two small lemons, 1 teaspoon salt.

Macaroni with tomatoes: Half package macaroni; drop into a kettle of boiling water. Boil vigorously for thirty minutes. To one can tomatoes add two onions chopped fine. Simmer until onions are done, then strain and thicken with flour. Put macaroni into colander and rinse with cold water. Add the tomato sauce and simmer gently for fifteen minutes. It is well to do this in double boiler to prevent burning.

Bean or pea soup without meat or pork: Soak two cups of split peas over night. In the morning slice and add two large onions and simmer for several hours. Strain.

Beans baked without pork: Use butter or nut butter instead.

Bean and nut croquettes: Cook dried beans until soft. Strain through colander to remove all skins. Add equal parts of walnut meat ground in chopper; season with salt and a little sage. Mix with beaten egg. Form into croquettes and bake until dry and nicely browned. Serve with tomato or cream sauce.

Baked egg plant: Boil egg plant until tender; pare and mash; mix with bread crumbs and eggs, and bake until nicely browned. A little finely chopped onions may be added if desired.

Peas cutlets: One cup pea pulp, one cup steamed rice, one grated onion, one-half teaspoon sage, one-half cup tomato juice, one-third cup browned flour. Mix together and mold in cakes two-thirds of an inch thick. Bake half an hour. Serve with tomato or cream sauce.