Today I bring you another story from one of
my favourite sources – the scripts of the United States Department of
Agriculture Radio Service program ‘Housekeepers’
Chat.’
Here is the script, (‘For Broadcast Use
Only,) – including recipes of course - of the program of September 26, 1932:
Subject: “Saving Day Hints.” Information
approved by the
Bureau of Home Economics, U.S.D.A.
-OoO-
The
lady around the corner made a call on Uncle Ebenezer and me yesterday afternoon,
and she confessed the food sins of her family.
"My
husband has a prejudice against most vegetables. He just doesn't like them. My
brother lives with us, and he is a vegetarian and won't touch meat. The two
children are just as bad. One of them won't drink milk, and the other dislikes
eggs. With a family like mine, food bills certainly are high. No matter how
hard I try to economize and plan simple and sensible meals, my husband
complains that our food costs too much."
Uncle
Ebenezer looked very serious and shook his head as he listened to our caller.
"Prejudices
about food certainly are expensive," he agreed. "Pampered tastes and
finicky ways need a good fat purse."
The
food experts and nutritionists, who are helping out these days in our problem
of household economy, agree with Uncle Ebenezer. Whims and fancies about food,
refusing this and disliking that, they say, are some of the ways to make the
food bills go sailing up into the stratosphere.
Of
course, if you have all the money you want to spend on food, or if you don't
care how much you spend, these prejudices aren't so serious. If you understand
food values and have the money, you can humor prejudices and indulge preferences
and still feed the family a well-balanced diet. But trouble sets in when you
need to be thrifty, when you want to keep your family well, yet must feed them
at small expense. Then you can't afford food prejudices.
One
good way to overcome food dislikes is to get all members of the family to take
an interest in the facts about food. Facts often drive out prejudices. You
remember that the time was when many people scorned cabbage and prunes, called
them "boarding house food" and felt that their families deserved
better fare. And the time was when liver was a very humble food. A friend of
nine used to say that liver was only fit for feeding cats. But times changed
when the nutritionists began to experiment and discover the facts about food
values. We housewives began to hear how rich cabbage was in vitamins —
especially raw cabbage. And we began to hear that oven, the humble prune had
great virtues. Liver became a food celebrity overnight when we learned its
value for treating anemic people and for supplying us all with good red blood.
So
if you want to feed your family well at low cost, banish prejudices from the
house. To save yourself trouble and expense, let the youngsters learn early to
eat every food you serve them.
All
during the past week, I've "been collecting ideas for economy Monday, jotting
down little notes so I could remember helpful things my friends have been
telling me. And I'm ready today to exhibit my collection to you.
To
begin with, I have some vegetable saving ideas. Some people waste vegetables
without even knowing it. Take celery. That's one of our good fall vegetables.
"If
you're really thrifty," says my Next-Door Neighbor, "you never throw away
a bit of celery. You use both the tender stalks and the large outside stalks,
you use the heart and use the leaves. Hot a bit of the whole bunch goes to
waste."
Of
course, the tender hearts and the white root never go to waste. They're the
delicate part of the bunch, and you eat them “as is” But what about the rest of
the bunch that isn't so good for eating out of hand?
The
tough outside stalks you can use for soup or you can cut them up, boil them and
serve them in cream sauce. Or stew the celery up with tomatoes and serve it as
a combination dish. Carrots and celery diced and cooked together make another
good combination.
Celery
leaves are excellent for seasoning soups, stews and sauces. So don't throw the
leaves away. If you can't use them all at the time, just dry them and put them
away in a jar. They'll be ready then for seasoning any time during the winter.
Peas
are another good vegetable sometimes wasted. I don't mean the young and tender
green peas. I mean the peas in your garden that have grown middle-aged or
somewhat elderly so that they are too hard and tough for serving just cooked
and buttered. What do you do with them? My neighbor cooks hers until tender,
presses them through a sieve and then uses the pulp for cream of pea soup.
As
for beets, haven't we mentioned before that the thrifty housewife makes her
beets go double whenever she can? If you have young beets with fresh unbroken
leaves, serve the beet tops for one meal as greens and on another day serve the
beet roots.
Here
is a point about buying potatoes for economy. Buy smooth potatoes and you'll
avoid the waste of catting out eyes, specks and imperfections such as are often
found in knobby potatoes. If you want potatoes for baking, choose a kind that
is dry and mealy. Waxy potatoes hold their shape well for salad and for frying.
Keep
some small onions on hand to use for seasoning. Oftentimes when a recipe calls
for 2 tablespoons or so of chopped onion, you don't need to bother to measure.
You can just cut up one of these small onions and let it go at that.
Now
here are five little helpful odds and ends of information. I'll just have time
to give them to you before the menu.
Idea
No. 1. To prevent your rug from curling and slipping, sew a triangular piece of
corrugated rubber under each corner, pieces of rubber left from an old inner
tube might do for this purpose.
Idea
no. 2. If you have a new wooden drainboard in your kitchen, apply waterproof
varnish to keep the wood from becoming water soaked and dark in color.
Idea
no. 3. Oilcloth wears much longer if you first pad your table smoothly with
newspapers.
Idea
no. 4. Rubber aprons help save laundry work.
Idea
no. 5. A rubber plate-scraper, sometimes called a “squee-gee”, is very helpful
to the thrifty housekeeper. It makes its way around any mixing bowl much more
closely than a spoon, so removes the last bits of cake batter, whipped cream,
salad dressing or melted chocolate.
Now
for the menu, another economy menu. The main dish is baked tomato with shrimp.
Something new for the family. Then, fluffy boiled rice buttered; Panned
cabbage; whole wheat bread and butter; and for dessert, Stewed fresh pears with
lemon. Hot tea for grown ups.
Here’s
the recipe for baked tomato with shrimp. Eight ingredients:
2
tablespoons butter
1
tablespoon chopped green pepper
1
tablespoon chopped onion
1
cup fine bread crumbs
½
teaspoon salt
⅛
teaspoon pepper
6
firm, ripe tomatoes
1
cup shrimp (canned)
I'll
repeat that list of eight. (Repeat.)
Melt
the butter in a skillet and cook the pepper and onion for 2 or 3 minutes, then
stir in the bread crumbs and the salt and pepper. Cut a slice from the stem end
of the tomatoes and very carefully remove the pulp so the skin is not broken,
and drain the pulp. Combine the seasoned crumbs, the tomato pulp, and the
shrimp which has been rinsed in cold water and cut into even pieces. Add more
seasoning if necessary and mix well. Fill the tomato cups with the mixture and
sprinkle a few buttered crumbs over the top. Bake in a moderate oven until the
tomatoes are tender and the crumbs are brown. Serve from the dish in which
cooked.
Tuesday: “Hints for the Home
Decorator.”
