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The Jaina Philosophy
and boiling, is not cooking, that is, the food should be cooked to such a degree that it is palatable, nutritious and not injurious. Take, for instance, rice. When that is cooked in the ordinary American fashion, it is cooked till it is paste, which might be very good to paste paper on a wall, but is not good to eat.
We know that the growth of nature is slow of process, and must take its natural time, and if you cook any articles too quickly, it will be spoiled. Everything is done in haste in this country. They say that they have no time. How do they utilize the time which is saved? For the public good? But you must make home and yourself happy first, and that is to be done by right management and right regulations in family life, and right preparation of the food; and here you will find a great difference between the people of this country, and the people of my country.
The first education given to a girl in my country is in cooking, but in this country, ladies think it beneath their dignity; therefore, the ordinary diet in this country is only beef, potatoes, coffee, bread, etc., and everything is stereotyped. A progressive nation like America ought surely to study modes of cooking. So many inventions are made every day, it ought not to be a difficult thing to learn to cook. But in the rush and push and hurry of living, care for the body is left in the hands of the physician, the care of the soul is left in the hands of the ministers, and the care of the daily life in the hands of the servants. The right first to be exercised is that of self-government. When one can do that, he can rule other people and teach them to rule themselves. In our schools for girls cooking is one of the branches. The schooi-mistress every day teaches all the different modes of cooking rice, and of making bread and other articles of food, so that at the age or ten or twelve, all the girls know how to cook anything, so that after graduating, the girls are not required to learn anything else, so far as cooking is concerned.
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