Life — October 11, 1917 — page 10: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

RESIDENT WILSON sent word to some drafted men the other day that he would like to be with them on the field and in the trenches. Not many of us can get into the field, and still fewer will ever see the trenches, but the war is to be won—is being won— in many places other than those, and one of them is the kitchen. It is much more feasible to get into the kitchen than into the trenches, and more people than one supposes are getting there. An early caller on a contemporary working statesman found him in his apartment, and quite alone. He opened the door and then hurried back to the kitchen, where he was getting breakfast. “It’s incredibly easy,” he said, and it looked so. His kettle was boiling on a gas range, and he was watching two large slices of toast in an electric toaster. In four or five minutes he had tea, toast, but- ter, jam and two boiled eggs on the dining-room table and was eating them up. He wasn’t doing it to help Hoover, but only because his wife and his serv- ants had not yet got back to town. He admitted that a woman came in later in the morning and washed the dishes and got lunch for him. That is an ideal solution of the feed- ing problem. If we really get into a tight place for food, no doubt there will be a good deal of this personal provision for personal needs. To feed oneself is not really much of a job if we eliminate superfluities. If there are Germans still left alive after the war they may be able to tell us something about it, and the information will be supplemented from other countries. The papers have reported that last year there were sixty-five million pigs in the country and this year there are only sixty million, which is hardly more than half a pig apiece for us. Accordingly, an argument can be made for feeding more of some things to our pigs and not so much immediately to people. In households where po- tatoes are still peeled before cooking instead of being boiled or baked with the skins on, if there are pigs to eat the skins it takes some of the curse off of that practice. All the same, a potato “LIFE: Thoughts on Food that comes on the table out of its nat- ural uniform imparts a sense of slack- ness to right-feeling people. They wonder what Hoover would j No doubt all families have set up bread boards by this time, and cut their bread as they eat it. No doubt Hoover would prefer to have us let wheaten bread entirely alone, and shift our patronage to corn bread and po- tatoes. In restaurants and homes corn bread gets more and more frequent, and since potatoes got cheaper the pro- vision of potatoes in families is more liberal than it was. “wuo's THE “He's a ELF-SATISFIED LITTLE MA ISTANT SECRETARY TO OD D THE BIG, GENIAL MAN WI “HE'S THE OWNER OF THE Our billion extra bushels of corn ought to help us about our pigs; also about our chickens. It has been noticed that chickens eat corn, and no doubt they will eat still more, now that the grasshopper season is over. With chickens, eggs, bacon and potatoes, life can go on, Oats are a good crop this year, and there will be oatmeal, and when it comes down to simple sub- sistence oatmeal has uses. And simple subsistence no doubt is what we all should come down to, and we will, mighty quick, just as soon as we begin to do our own cooking. Hit WITH THE VERY IMPORTANT AIR?” e OF THE VICE-PRESID ig TH THE MODEST MA’ BUSINESS.” comicbook fr xun |