Page:The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, vol. 1.djvu/77

 hygienic rules, as Dr. Allinson would say), and was put upon a diet of rice and mug-water. Recovery was marvellous.

Next come green vegetables. These are prepared in much the same way as pulses. Oil and butter play an important part in the preparation of vegetables. Often gram flour is mixed with them. Simply boiled vegetables are never eaten. I never saw a boiled potato in India. Not infrequently they make a combination of many vegetables. It is needless to say that India would far outbid France in cooking vegetables nicely. Their proper use is much the same as that of pulse. In importance they stand next to it. They are more or less a luxury, and are generally supposed to be a source of disease. Poor people have hardly one vegetable once or twice a week. They would have cakes and dal. Some of the vegetables have an excellent medicinal value. There is one vegetable called tandalja. It very closely resembles spinach in taste. Physicians prescribe it to persons who have indulged in too much cayenne pepper and spoiled their eyesight thereby.

Then come fruits. They are used chiefly on "fruit days", but are rarely, if ever, used at the end of ordinary meals. People generally take them now and then. Mango-juice is very greatly used in the mango-season. It is eaten with cakes or rice. We never cook or stew ripe fruits. We preserve unripe fruits, chiefly mangoes, while acid. Medicinally, fresh fruits, being generally acid, are supposed to have a tendency to give fever. Dried fruits are much used by children, and dried dates deserve some notice. We suppose them to be strength-giving, and therefore in winter, when we take concentrated foods, we prepare them with milk and various other things too numerous to be mentioned, and eat an ounce every day.

Lastly, nuts take the place of English sweets. Children eat a great quantity of sugared nuts. They are also largely used on "fruit days". We fry them in butter, and even stew them in milk. Almonds are supposed to be very good for the brain. I will just point out one of the various ways in which we use the cocoanut. It is first ground and then mixed with clarified butter and sugar. It tastes very nice. I hope some of you will try at home those coconut sweet balls as they are called. This, ladies and gentlemen, is a sketch--a most imperfect sketch--of foods of India. I hope