We often think of fruit as a pleasant thing to eat; but we do not realize that it is a food needed to keep the body in health, and that we should use it every day. In what other ways may fruit be prepared for serving?

At one of Miss Travers' lectures before a Farmers' Institute, one man who owned a large apple orchard and sold many barrels of apples, said to her that he had thought people ate apples because they liked them, and that it was news to him that fruit is food.

Indeed, we do like fruit, and we may be glad that so many kinds grow in our own country. When the early settlers began to clear and burn over the land, how happy they must have been to find blueberries and huckleberries and blackberries growing wild for them to gather ! What do you suppose the children said when they saw their first wild strawberries and checkerberries in the new land? They found, too, the cranberries in the bogs and the wild red plum on the sandy beaches of the coast. Perhaps in your own home country, wild fruit grows now for you to gather.

Have you ever heard of Johnny Appleseed? He traveled through the forests and over the plains, so the story goes, planting apple seeds wherever he went, and warning the settlements of the coming of unfriendly Indians. Many people who never heard his name have wondered, perhaps, at finding apple trees in unexpected places. Do you know what the word "benefactor" means? - A blessing maker. Do you not think that Johnny Appleseed was a benefactor?

Planting fruit trees. You are all benefactors if you celebrate Arbor Day, as they do at the Pleasant Valley School, by setting out a shade tree somewhere near the schoolhouse every year. But let us have more than one tree day, and set out fruit bushes and trees for home use. They do not cost very much; and there are pamphlets and books that tell you what kinds to buy, and how to set them out and care for them. The ground can be enriched with wood ashes and with fertilizer from the barn and henhouse. Fruit trees and bushes will more than repay what they cost, on account of the value of the fruit in the diet.

More about the value of fruit. We have talked about this in the first lesson on fruit drinks, but it is worth while to study the fruit question again. Have you heard the rhyme :

"An apple a day, Keeps the doctor away"?

This is too much to claim for one apple, but the rhyme is worth remembering because it keeps the importance of fruit before our minds.

What fruit contains. Although fruits are largely made up of water, they contain sugar, a very little protein, and so little fat that it is not important. The mineral matter is the treasure in fruit, including iron, phosphorus, lime, magnesia, potash, in forms that the body can use. The fruit acids, especially in a meat diet, do away with the need of medicine. Fruit is so valuable in the diet that you should make Fruit every day one of your home mottoes.

Fig. 54. - The composition of the apple makes it a valuable fruit in the diet.1

1 United States Department of Agriculture. Office of Experiment Stations, A. C. True, Director. Chart prepared by C. F. Langworthy, Expert in charge of Nutrition Investigations.

Why does fruit sometimes disagree with us? If we eat too much unripe fruit or if the fruit is not fresh, it may not agree with us. Cooked fruit can be taken by some people who cannot eat it raw, because the cooking softens the fruit and kills bacteria that might cause some trouble. Cooked fruit is better for little children than raw fruit.

Fruit juice again. Clear fruit juice squeezed from the pulp - orange juice, for instance - is given to very young children, who ought not to eat the pulp, and to invalids sometimes.

How shall we prepare fresh fruit for the table? Large fruit should be washed, pared, or peeled with clean hands. Slice it, sprinkle with sugar just before eating, and serve it as cool as you can make it. You have used bananas, oranges, and peaches in this way. Try mellow apples and pears, and serve with milk or cream and sugar. Berries should be picked over and washed, and served in the same way as sliced fruit.

How shall we cook fruit? We have said very little as yet about the effect of cooking on our foods. Compare a baked apple with a raw apple, and describe the changes. With your eye you see a change in color. You can easily cut the baked apple with a spoon; but you need a knife for the raw apple. The cooking, then, has softened the skin and the fiber of the apple. Taste the apple. Even if it has been cooked without sugar, you will find that it has a new flavor.

The cooking of fruit on the fire goes on with the work of the sun in ripening fruit on the tree. The difference between cooked and raw ripe fruit is somewhat like the difference between ripe and green fruit. Can you see how? Heat does work miracles. Have you ever heard the true "fairy" story, that all our heat comes from the sun? So, when we "bake" fruit, we are really putting it where it becomes a little riper with the heat of the sun, are we not?

One other thing that the heat accomplishes, we have learned in the lesson on canning. Now you can tell quite a story in your notebook about heat and an apple, illustrated with the picture of a fine, smooth fruit.

Stewing and baking fruit. You have seen apple sauce and baked apples at home, and perhaps have prepared both yourself. Miss James asked her cooking class to describe nice ways of cooking apples and other fruit used at home, and to see what they could find in cook books. These are some of the suggestions.

Mollie Stark's grandmother told her about cooking fruit slowly for a long time in an old-fashioned brick oven (see Frontispiece), making a clear, dark red apple sauce. "The longer and the slower, the better,'" she said; and Mollie's grandmother was quite right. You have not a brick oven, but you can slice apples into an earthen pot, add a very little water and sugar, cover and cook when the fire is low. You will find the apple sauce delicious.

One of the girls described tart (slightly sour) apples baked with the cores taken out, and with sugar and a tiny bit of butter and cinnamon in each hole. That suggested something else to put in the hole, - a little jelly or a few seeded raisins. When the apples are imperfect, cut them in two, crosswise, for baking. Cut out the core, and in its place put the tiny bit of butter and sugar and the spice, a raisin that has been soaked, or a canned cherry. This is a very pretty way to serve baked apples.

Marjorie Allen reported that her father was fond of baked pears, cooked very slowly in the oven. Miss James said that it is best always to use as little water as possible, and to learn to like the cooked fruit with only a small amount of extra sugar.

Cranberry sauce or jelly. Cranberries are delicious stewed with a little sugar; but, if you want a mold of jelly for the Thanksgiving dinner, stew them with a little water, put through a strainer, and heat the pulp. Add as much sugar as you have pulp, cook until the sugar is dissolved, and put in a mold to cool. A few cranberries combine well with other fruit. Try cranberries and raisins in a pudding, and use a little extra sugar.

Barberries. This is an old-fashioned fruit that few people use; and yet its tart flavor is quite unlike any other. If the bushes grow wild on your farm, do not let the animals destroy them, but transplant them to the garden. The berries can be used in several ways. They make a delicious jelly, and cooked with molasses I and put away in jars they afford a refreshing drink stirred into cold water in the summer. Miss White of Pleasant Valley suggests that barberries and sweet apples make an excellent jam.

How can dried fruit be made palatable? The girls in the cooking class were quite sure that they could not like dried fruit, prunes being the poorest of all. We all "change our minds," which means our opinions, sometimes; and so did they. Stewed figs are good; and so are dates, cooked and spread on bread. Try dried prunes, peaches, apples, apricots, plums, and berries in this way: