CUT OUT WASTE!

New Zealand Listener, Volume 12, Issue 305, 27 April 1945, Page 19

CUT OUT WASTE!

(Written for "The Listener" by Dr.

Muriel

Bell

Nutritionist to the Health

Department).

F your wartime paper bag bursts in Queen Street or Cathedral Square and your apples or tomatoes go hither and thither, your bacteriphobia, coupled with your pride and confusion, may justify you in abandoning them to the footpath; if your railway restaurant sandwich gets bumped out of your hand, most certainly the waste: of bread, regrettable though it may be, in ,the interests of hygiene, is the only course open to you. ) But those crusty ends or stale pieces of bread, or the oddments of fat, leftover vegetables-there is no justification to waste them at any time, but specially | in wartime or the post-war, period. The oddments of bread can all be used upin making breadcrumbs for rissoles, fish pies, meat-rolls or steamed puddings (thereby made the. lighter in texture); they can be converted into sweet breadpuddings or savoury cheese-custards;* they can be diced and served as sippets for soup, or they can be baked for scrunch. Emphatically, there must be no waste, especially of wheat, flour or bread, in this year, when the perversity of the weather has resulted in droughts in Australia and floods in New Zealand. The | less self-reliant we are’ in respect to. wheat now that the world’s supplies are : particularly short, at a time when famine is rife in Belgium and the other liberated countries, the less credit will be given us by those newly organised international bodies which are going to see to the proper distribution of food supplies to the stricken countries. An extra shipload of wheat means two components that can be ill spared-the wheat and the ship. A black mark against us may mean quite a lot in hatder times-we haven’t forgotten the daprsesiqn of the early thirties, have we! Fat, too, is in desperately short ainhinty in the European countries\ Imagine how you would dislike being restricted not only in edible fats, but being like European households on ‘small rations of soap. Organisations like UNRRA will surely welcome donations of soap. When vegetables are scarce and dear, or even when you have grown your.own, it is not right to waste them when to grow them it has ‘taken fertilizerprecious at present. It is wonderful how left-overs will enrich your soups. Pop them into your stock pot. -- vy

Soups are the recognised. method of using your vegetable water. The liquor in which green vegetables, cauliflower or swedes have been cooked is tog rich in vitamin C to be wasted and it contains other vitamins,- as well as minerals, too, It can be added to your soup or meat stock just before it is served. Boiling a little sliced beetroot, Russian style, adds a golden to red colour, while parsley adds flavour and vitamin Cc. ~