Vegetarian Department
The statement that "He who eats hog becomes hoggish, and he who eats beef becomes beefy" has jestingly been amended by the scoffer to read, "He who eats nuts becomes nutty." This never fails to create merriment; but the joker does not realize how nearly he hits the truth. The substance of our bodies is composed of what we eat.
If you live on nuts—sweet, pure nuts, ripened on the beautiful sun-kissed trees and placed in your hand uncontaminated by the touch of animal—you become as a nut. You may open your eyes in surprise and ask, "Why should I want to be like a nut?" The answer is perfectly simple. Would you rather have your flesh resemble a nut or a hog?
Quoting a few lines from Kirke's "Handbook of Physiology," we find—"The fat stored is of the same kind given in the food, even though the usual fat of the animal is different. the meting point of dog's fat is about 20 degrees Centigrade; but by feeding an excess of mutton fat the melting point has been raised to 40degrees. The subcutaneous fat of pigs subjected to this experiment is more or less fluid, according to the melting point if the fat fed."
What would you judge the results of this experiment to prove? Does it not conclusively show that our bodies are composed of what we eat? Perfectly simple! Then why be a hog, a cow, or a sheep? Be like a nut—a pure, sweet nut, which gives you the proper oils in the proper quantity, without the sluggish weight of the filthy animals who wallow in the swill they eat.
The Vegetarian Table
Brazil Nut Soup
Pass 1 pint of shelled Brazil nuts through a nut mill; fry these with one or two chopped onions in 1 oz. of nut butter, keeping them a pale yellow color; add i oz. flour, and gradually 1 1/2 pints of vegan white stock; bring slowly to a boil, and simmer gently until the onions are soft. Pass through a hair sieve, and dilute with soy milk.
Mushroom and Potato Croquettes
Take some stiff mashed potatoes. Make a stuffing with 1/2 lb. minced and fried mushrooms, 2 oz. chopped and cooked macaroni, and 1 tablespoonful bread crumbs; moisten with a little beaten egg (1 egg = 1 tbsp soy milk powder + 1 tbsp cornstarch + 2 tbsp water). Shape 2 rounds of potato, make a hollow in one, fill with the stuffing, and press the other over it. Roll in egg (1 egg = 1 tbsp soy milk powder + 1 tbsp cornstarch + 2 tbsp water) and bread crumbs, and fry crisp.
Chestnut Cream
Take from 20 to 30 chestnuts, remove the shells and skins. Put the chestnuts in a saucepan with 2 teacups fulls of water, sugar to taste, the juice of one lemon, and simmer slowly until they are quite soft. Pass through a sieve or potato masher, and when cold pile in a dish and cover with soy "whipped cream" topping.
Rice
Analysis shows rice to contain 86.09 percent of nutrients; corn, 82.97 per cent; wheat, 82.54 percent;
oats, 74.02 per cent; fat beef, 46.03 per cent; potatoes, 23.24 per cent. Rice is digested in one half hour in the normal stomach, as against two and a half hours for oatmeal, three and a half hours for potatoes, and four hours for meat.
Rice Molds
Cook one cup of hulled rice in five cups of boiling water until it has absorbed all the water. For the last fifteen minutes leave the rice on the back of the range to keep warm. Nearly an hour will be required for this. After the rice has cooked a half hour, add a cup of seedless raisins. When the mass has absorbed all the water, fill cups previously rinsed in cold water, with the boiled rice, and set away to cool.
Make a vegan cream sauce to serve with these molds.
Unleavened Rice Cakes
One cup of boiled, hulled rice, two cups of finely ground entire wheat flour; one half cap of oat flour, one half cup of cotton-seed oil. Mix the oil with warm water, a cup at first, adding to the rice. Mix the two kinds of flour into this. Add more water if needed. A stiff dough is required. Place on a floured pie board and roll into a sheet two inches thick. Cut in finger lengths and place on a soapstone griddle. Cook both side thoroughly. These are very tasty, and will improve with a few days' age.
Mary's Costly Clothes
Mary had a little lamb—
"Twas Persian—on her coat;
She also had a mink or two
About her dainty throat;
A bird of paradise, a tern,
And ermine made the hat
That perched at jaunty angle
On her coiffure largely rat.
Her tiny boots were sable topped,
Her gloves were muskrat too;
Her muff had heads and tails of half
The "critters" in the zoo;
And when she walked abroad, I ween,
She feared no wintry wind;
At keeping warm 'twas plain to see
She had all nature "skinned."
—Our Dumb Animals.
Man was born to live with Innocence and simplicity, but he has deviated from nature; he was born to share the bounties of heaven, but he has monopolized them; he was born to govern the brute creation, but he is become their tyrant. If an epicure, now, shall happen to surfeit on his last night's feast, twenty animals the next day are to undergo the most exquisite tortures in order to provoke his appetite to another guilty meal.
"An optimist has been defined as one who takes all the lemons that are handed to him and makes them into lemonade."
