dishes have little meat in them, as, for example, bitki, or Hamburg steak. Both kascha and schavel are dishes that can be recommended and enjoyed.2

The diet for a Jewish tubercular patient would have less carbohydrate and more protein than is usually found in the Jewish daily dietary. Milk and eggs may be given between meals in both the midmorning and the midafternoon, and before bedtime. This would not interfere with their eating meat at lunch and dinner. The staple borsch may be used, made without meat, and with the addition of sour cream. Sour cream is a favorite dressing for berries or fruit and may be used freely by these patients.

3

For these diets the American way of preparing certain foods should be taught. The Jews like to scramble their eggs with vegetables 3 or bake them in a nest of vegetables. The process of poaching or "dropping" eggs is unknown. A "dropped" egg was prescribed for a patient at a certain food clinic. When it was explained that an egg was broken and its contents dropped into hot water, he shook his head and said, "Oh no! I lose my egg; he get all mixed with the water." When he was taken to the stove and saw an egg poached, he stood in wonder and admiration. He said, "I go home tell my wife; she never knowed that." Since then many mothers and even children have been shown in this same clinic how to poach eggs.

All cereals must be tested as follows: them on

a hot plate.

1 See Appendix, recipe 15. Ibid., recipe 18.

"Place

If no worms or other

2 Ibid., recipes 16, 17.

insects appear they are fit to be eaten; if not fit they must be thrown away." The cereals used by the Jewish people are barley, oats, buckwheat, and rice. These are baked in puddings and eaten with meat. Children soon learn to eat cereals boiled with milk, and will learn more easily if raisins are added. The making of all kinds of milk dishes, from a plain boiled or baked custard to a Bavarian cream, will have to be taught. The Jewish housewife has had to adapt herself a number of times to new foods and their preparation, each time remembering her dietary laws and arranging the recipes to conform to them. This fact makes her an apt pupil.

PEOPLE OF THE NEAR EAST

The Armenians, Syrians, Turks, and Greeks are interesting peoples. With their love for friend and neighbor, creators of works of art, dwellers in the out of doors, they have much to give to any country. In the matter of preparing food we can well profit by knowledge of their ways.1

The majority of those who come to America lived in their native lands in the open country among the foothills or on the high table-lands. A minority dwelt in the smaller cities.

Early in March, in the home country, the whole family changes its mode of living from indoors to out in the open. This is the season for plowing and planting, meals are prepared and eaten out of doors,

1 Comparison at some points may be made with the Mexicans, whose dietary problems deserve special study. See "Dietary Studies of Mexican Families in New Mexico," 1897 (Bulletin 40 of the United States Office of Experiment Stations).

and the evenings are spent under the great canopy of blue and gold, with the family and relatives telling the news of the day and exchanging stories. Some of these stories have been related many times before, but their familiarity only makes them more interesting.

These people practically live out of doors, working in the fields or harvesting their supplies, until late in November. Then they take up different lines of craft work. Many pieces of copper and brass are tooled and etched during the winter months. Some of their wonderfully beautiful rugs are woven then. A pleasant pastime for the older women is dyeing the yarn with the gathered vegetables, mixing a little of this color and a little of that color to get just the shade to harmonize with the design in the mind of the weaver. It is difficult to distinguish between work and recreation among these people.

During the farming season they raise sheep for food and clothing; goats and cows for milk, butter, and cheese; chickens, ducks, and geese for eggs; and grains, vegetables, fruits, and berries in abundance. Their wheat is threshed in the fall, then taken to the one neighborhood caldron, where it is boiled "until all germs are killed," and spread out on great sheets of cloth to dry in the sun. After it has dried it is ground between two great stones to different degrees of fineness. This grain is used in many different ways; it is even burned as incense.

Olives are pickled, both ripe and green, and some are salted. Wines and raisins are made from grapes and the leaves of the grapevines are salted, to be used later for wrapping dolmas. Figs, dates, and

other fruits are preserved in sugar. Potatoes, squashes, onions, garlic, and other vegetables are put in pits in the ground. At least three lambs are salted. In the Orient, lamb is the principal meat used.

Rice has a large share in the daily menu. The use of nuts with rice and meat adds attractiveness to the diet. Pine-cone seeds, or fustuck, hazelnuts, or fanducks, chestnuts, or kestanch, pistachio nuts, and coriander seeds are some of the seeds referred to in Oriental recipes. Cardamon seeds are frequently added to coffee. Chick peas, or nohond, a product of Greece and Turkey, and fava, pakla, or horse beans, two of the leguminous plants used, have a high food value. There are various wheat preparations in which the grain appears in different forms.

In Eastern cookery not a single dish is dependent on the extravagant use of expensive ingredients; every dish is dependent, and very much so, on the flavor of each article used in its making. Oriental food is not highly spiced or flavored, but it is a very fat diet. Butter is not eaten on bread, the fat in the food preparations being sufficient.

The breakfast of these Easterners consists of black coffee and bread for the adults and goats' milk and bread for the children. In some families cracked wheat boiled with milk is used as a cereal

The noon meal may be matzaun, or curdled milk, with a "dressing" of pilaf. Matzaun or yoghourt 1 is the famous beverage or soup of the Orient. It is served either hot or cold or sweetened with sugar. It is as valuable in their diet as buttermilk in ours. 1 See Appendix, recipe 19.

For the dinner or evening meal, shish kibab—lamb cut in walnut-sized pieces and roasted on skewersis a favorite meat dish. All vegetables are first fried in a small amount of olive oil or other fat, then boiled in meat stock. Sometimes tomato is added to give more flavor. Okra is never slimy, and vegetables lose their green taste when first cooked in oil or other fat.

When these people settle in America the men are seldom laborers; almost all choose commercial occupations. Many of our finest fruit stores are owned by Greeks, Armenians, or Syrians. They usually start with a pushcart of fruit, frequently bananas, and gradually work up a trade, buy a horse and wagon, then establish a small store. Others are waiters in restaurants or have shoeblacking stands. Some sell antique rugs, or clean and repair them. Because of their indoor occupations, their incomes are more regular than the incomes of those who are laborers or do other seasonal work.

There are comparatively few Eastern women over here. Often an Easterner and his wife run a restaurant and board a number of men. Sometimes a bulletin board is hung in these places upon which letters received from home are posted for others besides the recipient to read. Eating at these restaurants is a social occasion; the food is well cooked, although the service lacks some of the conventionalities of this country.

In this country these Easterners continue their dietary customs to a large extent. It was interesting to find, during the war, that they were still able to secure wheat in its different degrees of coarseness.