if they were served with less or no sugar.  The continued use of sugar upon grains has a tendency to cloy the appetite, just as the constant use of cake or sweetened bread in the place of ordinary bread would do.  Plenty of nice, sweet cream or fruit juice, is a sufficient dressing, and there are few persons who after a short trial would not come to enjoy the grains without sugar, and would then as soon think of dispensing with a meal altogether as to dispense with the grains.

Even when served without sugar, the grains may not prove altogether healthful unless they are properly eaten.  Because they are made soft by the process of cooking and on this account do not require masticating to break them up, the first process of digestion or insalivation is usually overlooked.  But it must be remembered that grains are largely composed of starch, and that starch must be mixed with the saliva, or it will remain undigested in the stomach, since the gastric juice only digests the nitrogenous elements.  For this reason it is desirable to eat the grains in connection with some hard food.  Whole-wheat wafers, nicely toasted to make them crisp and tender, toasted rolls, and unfermented zwieback, are excellent for this purpose.  Break two or three wafers into rather small pieces over each individual dish before pouring on the cream.  In this way, a morsel of the hard food may be taken with each spoonful of the grains.  The combination of foods thus secured, is most pleasing.  This is a specially advantageous method of serving grains for children, who are so liable to swallow their food without proper mastication.

COOKING OF GRAINS.—­All grains, with the exception of rice, and the various grain meals, require prolonged cooking with gentle and continuous heat, in order to so disintegrate their tissues and change their starch into dextrine as to render them easy of digestion.  Even the so-called “steam-cooked” grains, advertised to be ready for use in five or ten minutes, require a much longer cooking to properly fit them for digestion.  These so-called quickly prepared grains are simply steamed before grinding, which has the effect to destroy any low organisms contained in the grain.  They are then crushed and shredded.  Bicarbonate of soda and lime is added to help dissolve the albuminoids, and sometimes diastase to aid the conversion of the starch into sugar; but there is nothing in this preparatory process that so alters the chemical nature of the grain as to make it possible to cook it ready for easy digestion in five or ten minutes.  An insufficiently cooked grain, although it may be palatable, is not in a condition to be readily acted upon by the digestive fluids, and is in consequence left undigested to act as a mechanical irritant.

[Illustration:  A Double Boiler.]

For the proper cooking of grains the double boiler is the best and most convenient utensil for ordinary purposes.  If one does not possess a double boiler, a very fair substitute may be improvised by using a covered earthen crock placed within a kettle of boiling water, or by using two pails, a smaller within a larger one containing boiling water.