Cracked wheat, pearl wheat, oatmeal, and other course grain preparations to be reheated, require for cooking a half cup of water in addition to the quantity given in the table.  For rolled wheat, rolled oats, rolled rye, and other crushed grains, no more is needed.  Grains may be used for breakfast without reheating, if served with hot milk or cream.  If one has an Aladdin oven, the problem of grains for breakfast may be easily solved by cooking them all night, and if started late in the evening, they may be thus cooked over a single burner oil stove with the flame turned low.

GRAINS AN ECONOMICAL FOOD.—­While grains are pre-eminently among the most nutritious of foods, they are also among the most economical, the average price being from five to seven cents a pound, and even less when purchased in bulk.  If it be objected that they require much fuel to secure the prolonged cooking necessary, we would say that a few cents’ worth of oil a week and a small lamp stove will accomplish the cooking in a most efficient manner.  For a hot-weather food there are few articles which give greater satisfaction and require less time and labor on the part of the housewife than grains, cooked by the aid of a small lamp stove.

WHEAT.

DESCRIPTION.—­Wheat is the most important of the grain foods.  It is probably a native of Southwestern Asia, though like most grains cultivated from the earliest periods, its history is extremely obscure.

Wheat is of two principal kinds, characterized as soft and hard wheat, though there are hundreds of named varieties of the grain.  The distinction between many of these is due to variation in the relative proportions of starch and nitrogenous matter.  Some contain not more than eight per cent of nitrogenous elements, while others contain eighteen or twenty per cent, with a corresponding decrease in carbonaceous elements.  This difference depends upon the soil, cultivation, season, climate, and other conditions under which the grain is produced.

The structure of the wheat grain consists of an external tegument of a hard, woody nature, so coherent that it appears in the form of scales or bran when the wheat is ground, and an inner portion, more soft and friable, consisting of several cellular layers.  The layer nearest the outer husk contains vegetable fibrin and fatty matter.  The second layer is largely composed of gluten cells; while the center comprising the bulk of the grain, is chiefly made up of starch granules with a small proportion of gluten.

The structure of a wheat kernel is well illustrated in the are situated in different parts of the grain, and not uniformly distributed throughout its structure.  The outer husk of the berry is composed wholly of innutritious and indigestible matter, but the thin layers which lie next this outer covering contain the larger proportion of the nitrogenous elements to be found in the entire kernel.  The central portion consists almost wholly of farinaceous matter.