Never eat boiled vegetables. No one ever hears of a flesh-eater boiling
his staple article of diet and throwing away the liquor. On the contrary,
when he does indulge in boiled meat, the liquor is regarded as a valuable
asset, and is used as a basis for soup. But his meat is generally
conservatively cooked--that is, it is baked, roasted, or grilled, so that
the juices are retained. If he has to choose between throwing away the
meat or the water in which it has been boiled, he keeps the
liquor--witness "beef-tea." For some unknown reason he does not often
treat his vegetables in the same way, and suffers thereby the loss of much
valuable food material.

The vegetarian--being avowedly a thinker and a pioneer--would, it might be
imagined, treat what is now one of his staple articles of diet at least as
carefully as the out-of-date flesh-eater. But no! For the most part, his
vegetables are boiled, and when the best part of the food constituents and
all the flavour have been extracted, he dines off a mass of indigestible
fibre--mere waste matter--and allows the "broth" to be thrown down the
sink, with the consequence that many vegetarians are pale, flabby
individuals who succumb to the slightest strain, and suffer from chronic
dyspepsia.

The remedy is simple. Treat vegetables as you used to treat meat. Bake or
stew them in their own juice. (See recipe for Vegetarian Irish Stew.) At
the least, steam them. A little of the valuable vegetable salts are lost
in the steaming, but not much. Better still, use a double boilerette. A
very little water is put into the inner pan and soon becomes steam, so
that by the time the vegetable is cooked it has all disappeared.

No exact time can be given for cooking vegetables, as this varies with age