EVERYDAY FOODS IN WAR TIME
by
MARY SWARTZ ROSE
Assistant-Professor, Department of Nutrition, Teachers College, Columbia
University
New York
1918
The time has come, the Aggies said,
To talk of many things,
Of what to eat, of calories,
Of cabbages and kings,
Of vitamines and sausages,
And whether costs have wings.
_Journal of Home Economics_,
November, 1917.
PREFACE
"FOOD IS FUEL FOR FIGHTERS. Do not waste it. Save WHEAT, MEAT,
SUGARS AND FATS. Send more to our Soldiers, Sailors and Allies."
The patriotic housewife finds her little domestic boat sailing in
uncharted waters. The above message of the Food Administration disturbs
her ordinary household routine, upsets her menus and puts her recipes out
of commission. It also renders inoperative some of her usual methods of
economy at a time when rising food prices make economy more imperative
than ever. To be patriotic and still live on one's income is a complex
problem. This little book was started in response to a request for "a war
message about food." It seemed to the author that a simple explanation of
the part which some of our common foods play in our diet might be both
helpful and reassuring. To change one's menu is often trying; to be
uncertain whether the substituted foods will preserve one's health and
strength makes adjustment doubly difficult. It is hoped that the brief
chapters which follow will make it easier to "save wheat, meat, sugars and
fats" and to make out an acceptable bill of fare without excessive cost.
Thanks are due to the Webb Publishing Company, St. Paul, Minnesota, for
permission to reprint three of the chapters, which appeared originally in
_The Farmer's Wife_.
TEACHERS COLLEGE, Columbia University, New York City.
December 1, 1917.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I. THE MILK PITCHER IN THE HOME
II. CEREALS WE OUGHT TO EAT
III. THE MEAT WE OUGHT TO SAVE
IV. THE POTATO AND ITS SUBSTITUTES
V. ARE FRUITS AND VEGETABLES LUXURIES?
VI. FAT AND VITAMINES
VII. "SUGAR AND SPICE AND EVERYTHING NICE"
VIII. ON BEING ECONOMICAL AND PATRIOTIC AT THE SAME TIME
APPENDIX--SOME WAR TIME RECIPES
EVERYDAY FOODS IN WAR TIME
CHAPTER I
THE MILK PITCHER IN THE HOME
(Reprinted from _The Farmer's Wife_, by permission of the Webb
Publishing Company.)
There is a quaint old fairy tale of a friendly pitcher that came and took
up its abode in the home of an aged couple, supplying them from its magic
depths with food and drink and many other comforts. Of this tale one is
reminded in considering the place of the milk pitcher in the home. How
many housewives recognize the bit of crockery sitting quietly on the shelf
as one of their very best friends? How many know that it will cover many
of their mistakes in the choice of food for their families? That it
contains mysterious substances upon which growth depends? That it stands
ready to save them both work and worry in regard to food? That it is
really the only indispensable article on the bill of fare?
Diet is like a house, a definite thing, though built of different kinds of
material. For a house we need wall material, floor material, window,
ceiling, chimney stuffs and so forth. We may, if we like, make floors,
walls, and ceilings all of the same kind of stuff, wood for example, but
we should need glass for windows and bricks or tile for chimneys. Or,
again, we may choose brick for walls, floors, and chimneys but it would
not do any better than wood for windows, would be rather unsatisfactory
for ceilings, and impossible for doors. In other words, we could not build
a modern house from one kind of material only and we really need at least
four to carry out even a simple plan.
In a similar fashion, diet is constructed from fuel material,
body-building material and body-regulating material. No diet is perfect in
which these are not all represented. Now, foods are like sections of
houses. Some correspond to single parts, as a floor or a window or perhaps
a chimney; others to a house complete except for windows and roof; still
others to a house lacking only a door or two. It takes some thought to put
them together so that we shall have all kinds of parts without a great
many extra ones of certain kinds and not enough of others.
Milk is unique in that it comes nearest of all foods to being a complete
diet in itself. It is like the house with only a door missing. We could be
quite comfortable in such a house for a long time though we could make a
more complete diet by adding some graham bread or an apple or some
spinach.
We all associate milk with cows and cows with farms, but how closely is
milk associated with the farm table? Is it prized as the most valuable
food which the farm produces? Every drop should be used as food; and this
applies to skim milk, sour milk, and buttermilk as well as sweet milk. Do
we all use milk to the best advantage in the diet? Here are a few points
which it is well to bear in mind:
_Milk will take the place of meat._ The world is facing a meat famine. The
famine was on the way before the war began but it has approached with
tremendous speed this last year. Every cow killed and eaten means not only
so much less meat available but so much less of an adequate substitute.
Lean meat contributes to the diet chiefly protein and iron. We eat it
primarily for the protein. Hence in comparing meat and milk we think first
of their protein content. One and one-fourth cups of milk will supply as
much protein as two ounces of lean beef. The protein of milk is largely
the part which makes cottage cheese. So cottage cheese is a good meat
substitute and a practical way of using part of the skim milk when the
cream is taken off for butter. One and one-half ounces of cottage cheese
(one-fourth cup) are the protein equivalent of two ounces of lean beef.
Skim milk and buttermilk are just as good substitutes for meat as whole
milk. Since meat is one of the most expensive items in the food bill, its
replacement by milk is a very great financial economy. This is true even
if the meat is raised on the farm, as food for cattle is used much more
economically in the production of milk than of beef.
_Milk is the greatest source of calcium (lime)._ Lime is one of the
components of food that serves two purposes; it is both building material
for bones and regulating material for the body as a whole, helping in
several important ways to maintain good health. It is essential that
everyone have a supply of lime and particularly important that all growing
infants, children, and young people have plenty for construction of bones
and teeth. There is almost none in meat and bread, none in common fats and
sugars, and comparatively few common foods can be taken alone and digested
in large enough quantities to insure an adequate supply; whereas a pint of
milk (whole, skim, or buttermilk) will guarantee to a grown person a
sufficient amount, and a quart a day will provide for the greater needs of
growing children. Whatever other foods we have, we cannot afford to
leave milk out of the diet because of its lime. Under the most favorable
dietary conditions, when the diet is liberal and varied, an adult should
have _at least_ half a pint of milk a day and no child should be
expected to thrive with less than a pint.
_Milk contains a most varied assortment of materials needed in small
amounts_ for the body welfare, partly for constructive and partly for
regulating purposes. These are rather irregularly distributed in other
kinds of food materials. When eggs, vegetables, and cereals are freely
used, we are not likely to suffer any lack; but when war conditions limit
the number of foods which we can get, it is well to remember that the more
limited the variety of foods in the diet the more important milk becomes.
_Milk will take the place of bread, butter, sugar, and other foods used
chiefly for fuel._ The body is an engine which must be stoked regularly in
order to work. The more work done the more fuel needed. That is what we
mean when we talk about the food giving "working strength." A farmer and
his wife and usually all the family need much fuel because they do much
physical work. Even people whose work is physically light require
considerable fuel. A quart of milk will give as much working force as half
a pound of bread, one-fourth of a pound of butter, or six ounces of sugar.
And this is in addition to the other advantages already mentioned.
_Milk contains specifics for growth._ Experiments with animals have taught
us that there are two specific substances, known as vitamines, which must
be present in the diet if a young animal is to grow. If either one is
absent, growth is impossible. Both are to be found in milk, one in the
cream and the other in the skim milk or whey. For this reason children
should have whole milk rather than skim milk. Of course, butter and skim
milk should produce the same result as whole milk. Eggs also have these
requisites and can be used to supplement milk for either one, but as a
rule it is more practical to depend upon milk, and usually more
economical.
For little children, milk is best served as a beverage. But as children
grow up, the fluidity of milk makes them feel as if it were not food
enough and it is generally better to use it freely in the kitchen first,
and then, if there is any surplus, put it on the table as a beverage or
serve it thus to those who need an extra supply--the half-grown boys, for
instance, who need more food in a day than even a hard-working farmer.
A good plan is to set aside definitely, as a day's supply, a quart apiece
for each person under sixteen and a pint apiece for each one over this
age. Then see at night how well one has succeeded in disposing of it. If
there is much left, one should consider ways of using it to advantage. The
two simplest probably are, first, as cream sauce for vegetables of all
sorts; for macaroni or hominy with or without cheese; or for hard cooked
eggs or left-over meats; and next in puddings baked a long time in the
oven so that much of the water in the milk is evaporated. Such puddings
are easy to prepare on almost any scale and are invaluable for persons
with big appetites because they are concentrated without being
unwholesome.
The milk pitcher and the vegetable garden are the best friends of the
woman wishing to set a wholesome and economical table. Vegetables
supplement milk almost ideally, since they contain the vegetable fiber
which helps to guard against constipation, and the iron which is the
lacking door in the "house that milk built."
Vegetables which are not perfect enough to serve uncooked, like the broken
leaves of lettuce and the green and tough parts of celery, are excellent
cooked and served with a cream sauce. Cream sauce makes it possible also
to cook enough of a vegetable for two days at once, sending it to the
table simply dressed in its own juices or a little butter the first time
and making a scalloped dish with cream sauce and crumbs the next day.
Vegetables which do not lend themselves to this treatment can be made into
cream soups, which are excellent as the hot dish for supper, because they
can be prepared in the morning and merely reheated at serving time.
Finally, the addition of milk in liberal quantities to tea and coffee
(used of course only by adults); its use without dilution with water in
cocoa; and instead of water in bread when that is made at home, ought to
enable a housewife to dispose satisfactorily of her day's quota of milk.
If it should accumulate, it can be dispatched with considerable rapidity
in the form of ice cream or milk sherbet. When there is much skim milk,
the latter is a most excellent way of making it popular, various fruits in
their seasons being used for flavor, as strawberries, raspberries, and
peaches, with lemons to fall back on when no native fruit is at hand.
The world needs milk today as badly as wheat. All that we can possibly
spare is needed in Europe for starving little ones. In any shortage the
slogan must be "children first." But in any limited diet milk is such a
safeguard that we should bend our energies to saving it from waste and
producing more, rather than learning to do without it. Skim milk from
creameries is too valuable to be thrown away. Everyone should be on the
alert to condemn any use of milk except as food and to encourage
condensation and drying of skim milk to be used as a substitute for fresh
milk.
When the milk pitcher is allowed to work its magic for the human race, we
shall have citizens of better physique than the records of our recruiting
stations show today. Even when the family table is deprived of its
familiar wheat bread and meat, we may be strong if we invoke the aid of
this friendly magician.