The best vegetables for very young children are peas, asparagus tips, string beans, carrots, squash, spinach, and very young beets. All these vegetables must be well cooked to be easily digested. Baked sweet potatoes, which children like very much, cauliflower, onions, and turnips may be permitted at rare intervals; but, even with a child in good health, they should not be served until he is six or seven years old. A very good combination for children is carrots and peas. The carrots are first boiled in salted water until tender; then canned or fresh peas are added; and, finally, milk which may be thickened slightly with flour and butter rubbed smooth. Salads, which are considered so important in the diet of grown-ups, should not be given to children until they have passed the tenth year. Well-made soup is important in the child’s diet. Mutton and chicken broths should be the foundation for most of these soups. After the meat has been strained out, the broth may be thickened with rice, barley, or a little cornstarch or flour. Tomato soup should not be given to very young children; but purées made of peas, spinach, celery, or asparagus, rubbed through a sieve, may be given to children seven years old or more. In preparing cereals for children, bear in mind that the coarser cereals are the more nourishing. The ready-to-serve cereals do not give out the strength which the old-fashioned food-stuffs do. Oatmeal, cracked wheat, rice, or hominy should be cooked in a double-boiler for hours; and even those cereals which are advertised as “prepared” or partly cooked should be recooked thoroughly, and well salted, and be served with top milk, or cream and milk, or a little butter. No child should be given hot breads of any kind, griddlecakes, shortcake, nor even newly made bread. Homemade zwieback is the best possible bread-stuff to offer children; next to that stale bread cut thin and dried in the oven until it is crisp. Cornbread, split and toasted or dried until crisp, is very desirable as a luncheon and supper dish. Oatmeal, graham, or gluten crackers are better than plain white wheat crackers. Desserts form a very important item in the dietary of the child, because they contain starch and sugar, important to the up-building of the system. Custards, junket, rice pudding without raisins, and an occasional dish of pure ice-cream should be the desserts up to six or seven years. These can be varied by stewed fruit, or ripe fruit in season, making sure that all the seeds and stems are removed. No young child should be given pies or pastry of any description, rich preserves, nuts, or candy. The child who has not been given candy in his babyhood grows up with very little taste for it. Food, like fresh air and sleeping, is very much a habit.