Are you a girl who works, and worse still who rooms and eats in restaurants?
The problem is a harder one for you. To talk of whole grains, food values, mineral salts and vita-mines and to be obliged to order your food in the average eating house is a joke.
Let us see if we can’t work it out. Your breakfast and lunch will be easy enough.
For your breakfastMilk and fruit. I do not say this because it is easy to manage, but because it is the best thing for you. (Read the chapter on the Semi-milk Diet.) Now and then some breakfast grains, if you can manage the cooking of the whole grain. With this you will be well nourished. You can’t say that of the average breakfast of toast and coffee.
For your lunchesMilk and fruit or just fruit or whole wheat bread with something green; or any of the light lunches suggested in the Menu Section.
The problem lies in managing your dinners. If you cannot get access to a kitchenette or a gas plate, buy an electric grill. They are made with two and three compartments so that two or three things can be cooked at the same time. They cost twelve to fifteen dollars. That is a lot of money, but you can save the cost of one in a short time by the difference in the cost of your meals, besides having what you want to eat. Perhaps two or three of you could share the cost of one and eat at some central point. (That’s fine.) If not, then buy one on the installment plan and pay for it with the money you don’t give the restaurant. Imagine going to the market and having for your dinner tonight fresh asparagus (or green peas) and tender young carrots and crisp head lettuce with olive oil and whole wheat bread and butter. You have no idea what this kind of food will mean to you and how soon you will wonder how you ever got along on chops and greasy fried potatoes. If you can also get a fireless cooker it will mean a great deal to you.
The one thing you can’t manage on your grill is a baked potato. Slice them and boil in as little water as possible don’t drain let the water boil into them, then add a little milk or when the water has boiled quite well down, add a generous piece of butter and keep turning them until deliciously flavored. Don’t fry.
Now and then you can cook a real lamb chop or even a spring chicken and even then your meals won’t cost you what they do at the restaurant.
Perhaps your landlady will object. This stumbling block will be met sometimes. But if you are scrupulously neat you can almost always get consideration for the sake of your health. I am not talking impossibilities. These suggestions are practical. I have had the experience, having been with-out money and without a home.
Your biggest problem will be your whole wheat bread. But if you value your health be sure to get it. Find a McFadden’s Physical Culture Restaurant and buy it there or find some housewife who will bake it for you. Promise her a list of customers and keep your word. The bread is the most important of all.
At one of the leading battery depots in Detroit there are employed about eight or ten girls and twice as many young men. They have made an agreeable arrangement whereby they share both the cost and the work and have light nutritious lunches at noon. Five of those girls are rooming. They have now started getting their dinners there on the “Whole wheat bread, two green vegetables and a salad” plan taking their turns in preparing the meal. They eat promptly at 5:45, get through early and never wash the dishes at night. That part is the bugbear. The superintendent is very human, approves of the plan and doesn’t object to their taking care of that part in the morning. He believes that they work better, and I think he is right.
Start a similar plan for yourself.