The Rice belt journal. (Welsh, Calcasieu Parish, La.) 1900-19??, 1908-09-11
An UNIQUE Training School.

time one of the most wholesome food
products of the soil, is now grown in
great quantities in Louisiana, Texas
and parts of South Atlantic Coast
States, vet the demand for this nutri-
cious food for home consumption is
very largely confined to the limited
few who have acquired the art of
properly preparing it for the table.
Rice may be cooked in many palata-
bic STYLES, but the basis OF all Is the
boiling, steaming and drying, which,
when properly done, leaves each grain
whole and thoroughly done. A fam
lily of several persons may obtain am.
pie nourishment at single meal from
10 cents worth of well-cooked rice, but
in nine cases out of ten the housewife
does not know how to cook the stuff,
a soup like Cruel is the result, and the
family depending upon the dish for
dinner expresses disappointment and
yearns for q return TO boiled cabbage
or some other coarser but better un-
derstood food.
A few years ago the Louisiana rice
farmers spent lot of money in estab-
fishing and conducting rice kitchens
in several northern cities in an en-
deavor to educate householders to the
wide difference between properly and
improperly cooked rice, and many
housewives profted by the opportu.
nifty to learn with the result that in
many northern homes rice is now
part OF the regular diet, whereas not
long ago it was either not used at all,
or, at best, only occasionally.
Recently the New Orleans Progress.
sive Union has been making some in
vestigations into the distribution of
rice grown in Louisiana and Texas,
and learned to its surprise that much
of the annual crop is shipped out of
the country to Porto Rico and other
places, and that the amount of rice
consumed per capita in Louisiana,
Texas, Mississippi and Alabama,
states near the source of production,
is relatively small. 1t was then de.
cided to make the preparation of rice
for the table one of the chief features
of the Manufacturers Exhibition,
which the union will hold in New Or
leans during the month of September,
and to this end elaborate arrange
ments are being made. All arrange
ments are being made. All railroads
entering New Orleans have granted
specially low excursion rates-one
and one-tenth fare for the round trip
and some thirty-three excursions will
be run to the city during the life OF
the exhibit. President Philip Wer-
lein estimates that minimum of TO-
600 people will visit the exhibition
from the States of Louisiana, Texas,
Mississippi and Alabama, and that
the usually attractive rice display vii
specially interest all OF them. la the
large rice booth being erected bat
terry OF gas ranges will be placed.
These will be presided over by squad
OF the best cooks imaginable and
there are many such in New Orleans
who will cook rice in a hundred ways
and serve it free to the visitors.
Every method of cooking rice will be
shown from the simple iron pot in
which the rice is boiled and drained
through the clean fingers of proud
Old negro mamma to the modern sieve
equipped steaming vessel used by the
up.to-date chef. There will be rice
cakes of all sorts, rice mullins. rice
custards, savory rice buildings, boiled
rice and creole gravy, and rice deliea-
cies known only to the fortunate few
who have learned the art of cooking
the marvelously versatile and the
most nutricious of all grains.
The rice eaters of the far east prefer
the grain unpublished because the light
brown skin, which the American mills
remove in order to make the grain
white, they obtain the most delicious
part of the rice. A Chinese cook will
be employed to demonstrate the far
eastern methods OF preparing rice.
During many years picturesque old
mammies, with heads done in red ban.
danas, have sold savory rice cakes on
the street corners of the French quar-
ter in New Orleans, but with their de-
mise the making of these toothsome
little morsels is fast becoming q lost
art. Very few of these old women are
now alive, and one of them will pre-.
side over q few pots and pans and