Vegetable Diet: As Sanctioned by Medical Men, and by Experience in All Ages: Including a System of Vegetable CookeryAlcott, William A. (William Andrus)
Science
Vegetable Diet: As Sanctioned by Medical Men, and by Experience in All Ages: Including a System of Vegetable Cookery
Alcott, William A. (William Andrus)
Food; Vegetarianism
I have a wife, a mother aged eighty-eight, and two female domestics. It
is now near three years since we adopted what is called the Graham or
vegetable diet, though not in its fullest extent. We exclude animal food
from our diet, but sometimes we indulge in shell and other fish. We use
no kind of stimulating liquors, either as drink or in cookery, nor any
other stimulants except occasionally a little spice. We do not, as
Professor Hitchcock would recommend, nor as I believe would be most
conducive to good health, live entirely simple; sometimes, however, for
an experiment, I have eaten only rice and milk; at other times only
potatoes and milk for my dinner; and have uniformly found I could endure
as much fatigue, and walk as far without inconvenience, as when I have
eaten a greater variety. We, however, endeavor to make our varieties
mostly at different meals.
For breakfast and tea we have some hot water poured upon milk, to which
we add a little sugar, and cold bread and butter; but in cold weather we
toast the bread, and prefer having it so cool as not to melt the butter.
We seldom eat a meal without some kind of dried or preserved fruit, such
as peaches, plums, quinces, or apples; and in the season, when easily to
be procured, we use, freely, baked apples, also berries, particularly
blackberries stewed, which, while cooking, are sweetened and thickened a
little. Our dinners are nearly the same as our other meals, except that
we use cold milk, without any water. We have puddings sometimes made of
stale bread, at others of Graham or other flour, or rice, or ground
rice, usually baked; we have also hasty puddings, made of Indian meal,
or Graham flour, which we eat with milk or melted sugar and cream;
occasionally we have other simple puddings, such as tapioca, etc.
Custards, with or without a crust, pies made of apple, and other fruits
either green or preserved; but we have no more shortening in the crust
than just to make it a little tender.
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