FEEDING THE SOLDIER

Wairarapa Times-Age, 23 June 1942, Page 4

FEEDING THE SOLDIER

WORK OF AMERICAN ARMY COOKS MEN FROM WHOM HOUSEWIVES MIGHT LEARN. RICH & VARIED FARE PROVIDED. Light is thrown on the care and thought given to the feeding of the American soldier on service, wherever lie may be, in the following article by Bernice Stevens, in the “Christian Science Monitor.” Housewives could learn a lot about cooking from the Army—especially when it comes to ingenuity. With the grocery store just around the corner or with a well-stocked emergency shelf, it’s easy enough to whip together a tasty meal for two or three unexpected guests) But with the United States soldiers scattered to many parts of the globe, army cooks have to be able to serve three meals a day to hundreds of hungry men whether in the heat of the tropics or the cold of the arctic and without “all the conveniences of home.” And it is gratifying to know that they are doing it with meals complete from soup to dessert and even, on especial occasions, on down to the nuts. Which is saying a lot for cooks who are thousands of miles from fresh fruits and vegetables, fresh milk, butter, and eggs. That they have the wherewithal to serve well-balanced meals wherever they may be is due in large part to the staff of army food experts at the Chicago Quartermaster Depot Subsistence Research Laboratory, which in plain domestic language, is a large experimental kitchen. Wherever and whenever possible the Army buys fresh foods, but in many of its farflung outposts the cooks have to depend on what they can keep on the shelves or in their limbited ice box space. And the contents of these shelves —concentrated, dehydrated, powdered, and canned foods —come under close scrutiny in this kitchen. On a reportorial mission I became a luncheon guest in the Subsistence Research Laboratory. This was no special spread to impress the press, but I was merely invited to take “pot luck,” which consisted of meat, potatoes, spinach, Army baked bread, canned cream, canned butter, and was topped off with canned pudding. This was a meal which could be duplicated exactly in Iceland or on a remote Pacific Isle. Shredded dried potatoes simmered for five minutes in water, with milk and butter added, made as good mashed potatoes as I have eaten anywhere, the spinach was dehydrated, the beef frozen. I learned also that dried carrots, cabbage, tomatoes and other vegetables can be varied as the extra vegetables. Eggs in the shell will break even under the best circumstances in a placid civilian life, but eggs as eggs are no problem in the Army. I hope I’m not revealing any military secrets when I report that powdered eggs (age two years) plus powdered milk, diluted in water and filled out with dried ham, makes a delicious and yes, a fluffy omelet. And these same powdered eggs, so I was warned by a major who is their particular sponsor, make a creamy custard, and, so I was convinced by a sample, a fine textured angel food cake. The cake, incidentally, brought up other domestic questions such as shortening, which together with yeast, also comes in dehydrated form. So bread and biscuits and cakes and pies are also on the menu anywhere. Like a lot of cooks, those in the Army aren’t revealing their pet recipes, as least not yet. But it’s quite likely that they may some day and that dehydrated foods may become far more important on civilian menus than they are today. And since the proof of the pudding and cake, say nothing of spinach and potatoes, is in the eating, I repeat, housewives could learn a lot about cooking from the Army.