hen fruits and vegetables are hard to get. Molasses
ginger snaps make, therefore, an excellent sweet for children, much better
than candy, but of course to be eaten only at meal time.

The aim of good home cooking should be to please the family with what they
ought to eat. The chef in a big hotel may have to prove the superiority of
his art over that of a rival chef, and vie with him in novelty and
elaboration, but the home cooking may be ever so simple provided the
result is a happy, well-nourished family. A chocolate layer cake that
takes two hours out of a day is no more nourishing than the same materials
served as poached eggs, bread and butter, and a cup of chocolate. It is
worth while to train a family to enjoy the flavor of simply prepared
foods, and to realize that the food is the thing which counts and not the
way it is dressed up. On the other hand, if one has to use a few food
materials over and over, as one must in many places when the money that
can be spent for food is very little, it is by slight changes in their
form and flavor that one keeps them from palling on the appetite. If one
has to use beans every day, it is a good thing to know a dozen different
ways of preparing beans. One may have the plain bean flavor, properly
toned up by a suitable amount of salt; the added flavor of onions, of
tomatoes, of fat pork, of molasses, or a combination of two or three. One
may have plain oatmeal for breakfast (the flavor developed by thorough
cooking, at least three or four hours in a double boiler or over night in
a fireless cooker); oatmeal flavored with apples in a pudding for dinner;
or oatmeal flavored with onions and tomatoes in a soup for supper; the
same food but quite different impressions on the palate.

Herbs and spices have from time immemorial given flavor to man's diet.
"Leeks and garlic," "anise and cumin," "salt and pepper," "curry and bean
cheese," are built into the very life of a people. The more variety of
natural foods we have the less dependent we are upon such things. Our
modern cooks, confronted in the present crisis with restrictions in the
number of foods which they may use, may find in bay leaves, nutmeg,
allspice, and all their kind, ways of making acceptable the cereals which
make a diet economical, the peas and beans which replace at least a part
of the meat, and dried fruits and vegetables which save transportation of
fresh or canned goods.

Tea and coffee are both flavors and sti