Waterbury evening Democrat., 1907-12-30
WEEDS THAT ARE WHOLESOME.
Scorned by Our Ancestors, They Are
 Now on Our Tables.


 Since the pure food law has gone
 into operation, one has new and
 strange thoughts forced upon him by
 recalling the number of weeds, fungi
 and vegetable parasites regarded as
 wholesome to-day but thought to be
 dangerous, as we'll as repellant, to our ancestors.
 Our grandparents regarded toma-
 toes as the fruit of the weeds, utter
 ly unfit to eat. The bushes grew
 wild in the middle west, where I
 passed my boyhood, and were to be encountered in the corners of worm" fences. The tomato was d yellow or red skinned pod of seeds about the size of plum. In shape it was perfectly round. The fruit of this neglected weed has been devel- oped by cultivation into the large and succulent vegetable of to-day. It has become one of the most valued accessories to culinary art-invalu able in the preparation of sauces and l dressings for meats of many kinds. And yet physicians insist that it con tains the cancer germ.
 When farmers cut their full grown cabbages from the stalks which lift ed them nearly a foot above the ground, preparatory to burying the cabbages in the ground of slowing them in the cellars of their smoke houses" they noticed that young bulbs sprouted around the tops of the decapitated stalks. Nobody thought of eating them in our Amer ican grandparents days. Hogs and sheep were observed to be very fond of them. Goats, also, ate them with avidity: but then, goats throve upon newspapers and were currently be- lieved to feed on tin cans. Those little bulbs are the Brussels sprouts of our present dietary system. Opin- ion is greatly divided as to the origin of the cabbage, and for that reason the vegetable hasn't taken a high rank among the family of edible plants. Germans rot 1t in a barrel, ! pickle it. and name it ''sauerkraut. That it is q development by evolu- i tiOn from the ''skunk-cabbage" of ! the ponds is doubtful. because its 1 leaves are quite dissimilar in form. | But it is a food of very low origin. !! The same may be said of turnips, beets. and pOtatoes-amOng the lat ter must be included the yam or sweet potato.
 When the French cOlonized the country that is now Louisiana, they found weed growing amid the bay ous and Overfiowed lands along the Mississippi to which the aborigines gave the name of ''okra"-a word meaning a muddy place and prob ably referring to the localities in which the herb grew. II bore a mucilaginOus pod. which, when cut. exuded a milkwhite juice. When the Creoles got their cooking outfits fin working order, they tried the weed as a thickener for their DOT ridges and found it very eatable The men or woman who ate the first dish of Okra soup must have been worthy of a Carnegie medal. However, the weed became one of the staples of New Orleans epicurianism. The CreOles called 1t 'gumbo," a ref erenee to its glutinous character. From that day its place in culinary art never has been in danger. Gum bO" is hardly known in Paris; a French cook will have naught of it: but it is king of all American soups. being to this country what mutton broth. with barley. is to Scotland; what bouillabaisse is to France and puChaTa to Spain.
 But the milk weed of the Louis jana sUamps remains one of the food of the world The Roman whose palstes were so highly trained that they could tell the difference In taste between lam preys fed upon human flesh and those fstrened upon goats, would have appreciated okra, or more prop erly. "gumbo" stew. With chicken II is delight to the palste.-Julius Chambers. in the Brooklyn Eagle.