FOR THE BUSINESS-GIRL HOUSEKEEPER

New Zealand Listener, Volume 11, Issue 285, 8 December 1944, Page 24

FOR THE BUSINESS-GIRL HOUSEKEEPER

anxious young women who find it difficult to prepare and serve good and nourishing evening meals when they reach home after the long day at work. Generally it is qa meal for twohusband and wife, or two women living together, and the marketing presents problems, as well as the cooking. | I get letters from, Advice on this very important subject can only be of a general kind; the individual will always have to work out her own problems, since the likes and dislikes of each group must be allowed for. I found the same question being asked in the U.S.A., for, of course, all business women have similar problems, no matter what country they live in. But this particular problem is more easily solved in America, because most business women have refrigerators, and all can buy the invaluable packaged and canned foods which are specially prepared according to the latest scientific processes, under which no food value is lost. Indeed, to many of the packaged foods, additional vitamins and minerals have been added, just as wheat-germ is added to a cereal in New Zealand. The quick-frozen, packaged foods in particular are coming more and more into favour, In these foods the full flavour, food value and delicious freshness are all conserved by the quickfreezing process. Thus one can buy fillets or steaks of flounder, mackerel, swordfish and so on, all trimmed of waste and ready to use; or raspberries, strawberries and peaches in any season; or green peas, string beans, asparagus, carrots, cauliflower, etc., all the year round — all harvested at the peak of quality, and rapidly frozen, so that they retain their colour, flavour and tenderness, with negligible loss of vitamins. All the quick-frozen foods carry precise directions for cooking. Fruit takes about 31% hours to thaw in the package at ordinary room temperature, or 2 to 242 | hours if thawed out of the package.