10 QUART PRESSURE COOKER

For those who do not care for made-up dishes, remember that plain steamed or boiled legumes are just as nutritious as those which have been made into sausages, rissoles, etc. Some folk prefer their eggs coddled, poached, scrambled, etc., to having them mixed into other foods such as souffles, puddings, etc. Remember an egg is an egg and can be used to nourish the body even if it forms part of a cake.
MILK, EGGS AND CHEESE
The animal protein foods are more easily digested if cooked at temperatures below boiling point. So to heat milk, place in a basin or saucepan over boiling water (double boiler) and eggs should be cooked at simmering point. All custards should be stood in a pan of hot water to prevent temperature rising too high. When adding cheese to savoury dishes, sauce, etc., stir in after removing from fire, or have other foods cooked first, then add cheese and eggs and cook as for baked custard, i.e., over boiling water or in slow oven, temperature about 200-300 degrees F.
NUTS
These are best raw, with the exception of peanuts, which are really a legume, and chestnuts. These two contain much starch and should be cooked by roasting or, in the case of chestnuts, boiling before eating.
THE CEREALS
These require long, slow cooking to make the starch available, and besides forming the basis of bread, cakes, etc., can be used as the basis of savouries and desserts. As brown rice is not available at present, whole wheat or barley can be used, but they require longer cooking, barley taking 2-2 1/2 hours for a milk pudding and wheat 3 hours. If in a hurry wheat may be boiled in water half an hour, then baked as a milk pudding, two hours being sufficient time.
SAVOURIES
Sausages and rissoles are useful as tasty substitutes for meat. Even meat sausages are half bread, so bread or cooked boiled cereal may form the basis of any sausage or rissole. To this is added salt, pepper, thyme and sage, or mixed herbs and very finely chopped or minced onion. The extra protein is added by boiling peas, beans or lentils, or roasting nuts and mincing through nut grinder or mincer. These may be rolled in flour, then shaped into rissoles or sausages, dipped in egg and bread crumbs and fried.
ROAST MEATS
These may be the same mixtures as above, but placed in a greased piedish and baked. These suit some digestive organs better than fried foods. Eggs or cheese or both may be added to the above mixture and

extra cereal allowed to absorb the extra moisture. Weetbix and granose make good cereal basis for such savouries, and macaroni and vermicelli are also available for this purpose.
RULES
1. Every adult should have one pint of milk daily and every child, adolescent and pregnant or nursing mother 1 3/4 pints daily.
2. Use 1 oz.-4 oz. cheese or 1 egg daily, or 4 oz. cooked legume.
3. Use wholemeal flour and other brown cereals in making porridge, puddings, bread, scones, cakes and biscuits.
4. Use at least one green and one yellow vegetable every day besides potato.
5. Have some raw fruit or vegetable daily.
6. Drink 6-8 cups of liquids daily, i.e., water, vegetable water, soup or tea. Remember that milk, though appearing as a liquid, is dietetically a solid.
7. Should an unusual hunger arise, it is probably because the protein intake is too low. Have some nuts on hand and eat a few, chewing very thoroughly.
COOKING OF VEGETABLES
1. Use as fresh as possible, home-grown and straight from garden are far the best.
2. Wash thoroughly, scrubbing roots and then removing bad spots. DO NOT PEEL OR SCRAPE. Use cold salted water for greens to remove insects and their eggs, rinse well and drain.
3. Cut greens finely and place all vegetables in boiling salted water and use as little water as possible. Boil gently till done.
4. Keep lid on when cooking greens; this helps to retain their vitamin content. Never, NEVER use soda; it destroys vitamins, it spoils the mineral salts and softens the cellulose so much that it is useless.
5. Pour liquid off cooked vegetables into a basin and use it at once, if possible, or use it for tomorrow's cocktails or gravy.
6. Serve vegetables whole or mashed. The papery skin may be removed from roots now, if it is required to mash them.
Roots and fruits, such as potato, kumara, pumpkin, marrow, choko, etc., are nicest if steamed or baked or pot roasted, and less vitamin and mineral salts are lost.
Vegetables supply very minute quantities of proteins which are of value in the vegetarian diet, but are insufficient for the maintenance of a healthy, active body. The "wilting" of vegetables is the best way to cook them. It is not suitable for the very starchy onesa€”potatoes and kumaras - but any other vegetable may be wilted.

Day 17 - Full Irish Breakfast (Northern Europe)

I live in Upper Darby, a melting pot of South Asian, Greek, South America, Vietnamese, West African, Caribbean, Chinese, Korean, Mexican and Irish immigrants. The culinary benefits are many, but foremost among them is the excellent hangover cure known as the Full Irish Breakfast. We have not one, but two Irish Coffee Shops serving full meals and selling Irish/British grocery items.

The steaming pile of pig parts on the right hand side of the plate will be dealt with bit by bit. The rest of the plate includes a grilled tomato wedge, two eggs, potatoes (a choice of home fries, french fries or homemade "chips"), and what must be a half can of Heinz baked beans.

The two links at the top of the pigpile are traditional Irish sausages. They are creamy and delicious on the inside, and are similar to bangers in texture.

The scorched pink pig part underneath sausages is Irish bacon. Irish and British bacon is more akin to Canadian bacon than it is to the delicious belly meat we eat here in the states. It's made from the back of the animal (where the tenderloin is) and so is often called "back bacon." It's very salty and hammy.

Towards the foreground of the right side of the plate are two sets of what appear to be sausage patties. These are the black and white breakfast puddings, and they are the best thing on the entire plate.

The word "pudding" has the same roots as the French word "boudin," which means 'sausage." Pudding was used to describe any mixture that was placed into a casing and cooked, including a family of steamed cakes that are popular in Britain and Ireland. The dessert puddings became so popular that the word expanded to mean any dessert item, and we Americans have restricted it to define only the creamy dessert you normally associate with the word.

These puddings are true to the original meaning. The black puddings are popular throughout Ireland and Britain. Black pudding is a nice way of saying "blood pudding." It is a soft mixture of meat bits, grains and blood. You slice it into discs and fry it up. If you're repulsed by the description, too bad. Ask anyone who's ever tried it and they'll tell you they LOVE it.

The white puddings are a similar sausage, made without blood, that are popular in Ireland, Scotland, Cornwall/Devon, Iceland and Nova Scotia. Aside from Iceland, it's basically a gaelic thing.

"Full Breakfast" is a term used throughout Britain and Ireland. There are distinct Welsh, Scottish, English, Irish, an Cornish Full Breakfasts, all with such internal local variation as to make the broader categories a little silly.

Also, there is something called an "Ulster Fry" which adds two different types of fried bread and an order of pancakes. I had an Ulster Fry once. Once is all you need. I'm still digesting mine three years later.

The American "Country Breakfast" of bacon, sausage, eggs, toast and potatoes is descended from the British/Irish Full Breakfasts, and there is even a Central American variant that must be a Belize thing.

The reason we call a disappointing pile of fruit and pastry a "Continental Breakfast," is because the other European breakfast traditions are nowhere near as substantial as this lovely bit of slow-motion suicide.

Nothing in Europe pissed me off quite so much as being fed salami, cheese and mini-baguettes with fruit for breakfast.