three-fourths of a cup of boiled rice will
sustain you just as well as a medium-sized potato. A banana, baked or
fried, makes an excellent substitute for a potato. An apple is also a very
palatable potato equivalent, if you want something more spicy than hominy
or corn bread. Why mourn over the lost potato?

But how about those mineral salts? Well, the potato has no monopoly on
those, either, though it is ordinarily a very valuable contributor. Milk
has already been mentioned as one of the great safeguarding sources of
so-called ash constituents. Others are vegetables and fruits of different
kinds. These have been a neglected and sometimes a despised part of the
diet: "Why spend money for that which is not meat?" is often taken
literally. Even food specialists have been known to say, "Fruits and
vegetables are mostly water and indigestible fiber; they have little food
value." This is a good deal like saying, "If your coat be long enough you
do not need a pair of shoes." A potato has as much iron as an egg yolk or
a medium-sized chop. This is one more reason why we should be sorry to
take the useful tuber from our tables, but we may feel a certain
independence, even when meat and eggs are prohibitive in price, since by
canning or drying, if in no other way, we can have green vegetables as a
source of iron the whole year through. Some people are afraid that canned
vegetables will prove unwholesome; but if removed from the can as soon as
opened and heated to boiling before they are eaten, we are recently
assured that the danger of food poisoning will be materially lessened.
Even when such vegetables are wanted for salads, boiling and subsequent
cooling are advised. The mineral salts of vegetables dissolve into the
water in which they stand, and in any shortage of such food, or for the
greatest economy, it would seem wise to save the water in the can, which
is often thrown away to secure a more delicate flavor. Water from the
cooking of fresh vegetables which are not protected by skins (among them
spinach, peas, carrots, and asparagus), can often be reduced to a small
amount by steaming instead of boiling the vegetable, or any drained off
can be used in gravy, soup, sauce, or some similar fashion. The strong
flavor of some vegetables, however, makes such economy rather impractical.

Some people discriminate against canned and dried vegetables because they
do not taste like fresh ones. This seems rather unreasonable, as we w