ay, your blood moves outward
toward your skin and away from your stomach. Don't think that, just
because you "picnic" at lunch, it is not as important as any other
meal.

I hope, however, that it will not be long before almost every school
will have a school kitchen and a lunch room; first, so that every girl
at least can learn to cook. It is well worth while being able to do;
indeed, no girl ought to be considered properly educated until she has
learned to cook, and no boy either, for that matter. Then, if the
school has this kitchen, it can be used to furnish hot luncheons, or
dinners, for those children who cannot conveniently go home in the
noon recess. Hot lunches are much more digestible than cold ones, and
they taste much better, and are much less likely to be eaten in a
hurry.

But why should we learn to cook? Why shouldn't we eat our food raw
instead of taking all this trouble and pains to cook it?

I know of a boy--a big lazy fellow--who is always forgetting to do
things. He used to go away in the morning without leaving wood enough
for the kitchen fire. So his mother said to herself one day, "I'll
teach him to remember." The next morning he went off again and left no
wood. At noon he came back "hungry as a hunter." She called him in to
dinner; and in he came, sat down, picked up the carving knife--then he
stopped! What do you suppose was the matter? The beef was raw! Then he
lifted the cover of the potato dish, and there lay the potatoes raw!
Then he tried another dish and found nice green peas, but hard as
little bullets. They were raw, too! Not even the bread had been
cooked; it was a soft, sticky mass of dough. His mother, who is a
jolly old lady, fairly shook with laughter when she told me about it.
She said she never again had to tell him to split wood.

Now that boy didn't need to be told one reason for cooking. We don't
like our food raw; it doesn't taste so good. At first, perhaps, that
doesn't sound like a very good reason; but it is more important than
you think. For it is a fact that, just as soon as you smell food, your
stomach begins to get ready the juice that is to digest it. If this
very first juice, which is called the _appetite juice_, is not poured
out, then the food may lie in the stomach some little time before it
begins to be digested at all. So it is quite important that our food
should smell and taste and look good, as well as have plenty of
strength and nourishment in it.

Anot