HOME HEALTH GUIDE

Hutt News, Volume 20, Issue 22, 30 October 1946, Page 4

HOME HEALTH GUIDE

* TIPS ABOUT VEGETABLES

(By the Department of Health.) Vegetables are so vital to health that a few tips about them may prove useful. Ventilation is needed for any vegetables you have to store beyond one day. Hang them up in a string bag, or else have them on a slatted shelf or rack. They will soon go mouldy if kept in boxes or cupboards that are dark and airless. This goes for fruit too. It should be spread out on shallow dishes or on well-ventilated shelves or racks. This storage method is not for salad vegetables. Try to use these the day you buy them, if you cannot pick them,fresh from your garden. Otherwise you can keep salad vegetables crisp in a saucepan with a tigluiy-littirig lid placed on a cool floor. Remember to handle salad vegetables gently—no crushing—touch the leaves as little as possible. Save outside . leaves for soup. One green leafy vegetable should always go into any vegetable soup. There may be time when you find it economical to steam your vegetables, having a complete meal in a steamer. When you do this, you should serve a raw vegetable- that day to make up for the vitamin C lost, or else sprinkle the steamed vegetables with freshly chopped parsley just before serving. Steaming is not a recommended everyday way for cooking vegetables. There is much less loss of vitamin C in boiling them the correct way, which is with the minimum of already boiling water in tightly-lidded pots, for the least possible time, and served at once. There will be some days when a salad is the main vegetable, possibly the only green vegetable for that day. You have to eat a fair amount under these circumstances, at least three ounces of raw vegetables per person. This is between one and two breakfast-cups. And see that you don’t get too large a proportion of root vegetables in your salads —beetroot, radish, potato, carrot, etc. At. least half should be green vegetables.