We throw away chicken feet, while in Europe they're made into the very best Strassburg aspic we ever tasted. No other aspic is a scratch on it, even though it may cost ten times as much. Likewise blood sausage is popular abroad, while here they say pig*s blood is used chiefly to adulterate milk chocolate. And few of us believe what good Jewish cooks know, that chicken fat spread on bread is even tastier than butter. Pig*s feet we eat, but the cheaper and tastier French dish of "sheep's trotters" is still to be discovered. When common food prejudices are overcome, as they were recently in Iowa when roast crow went on the menu after "Make him eat crow" had been an insult for centuries, we increase our scope enormously. The "pickled green plums" our fathers turned up their noses at are now indispensable olives, shipped fresh, too, from California and pickled at home at a fraction of the bottled cost. And ever so much livelier. The wings of a skate, which we throw away, mean "rai au beurre noir" to Parisians and Londoners who are delighted to get them at a dollar a plate. While eels, of course, anywhere but here, sell for prohibitive prices, especially when smoked, in Dutch style. Honey, which needn't cost more per pound than plain sugar if bought at the source in family quantities, serves as a cheaper sweetener because you're likely to use less, or maybe because it's sweeter, and there's the added value of the flavor given to many cereals and desserts. The honey-handlers advise us to use less of it and get the full flavor by "drizzling" from a spoon instead of just pouring. This more appetizing method makes the honey jug do double duty for the same cost and can be extended to any syrup. Once you've drizzled you'll never go back to pouring. As for cereals, wheat frumenty and cornmeal mush stretch the breakfast dollar like rubber. In the wheatless and meatless days of the war, books came out with 1 50 different ways to cook corn, cheapest of our grains, and as a change, especially with new top-o'- the-table griddles and ovens, we can be our own hot biscuit bakers and put the saving on in the form of butter and maple syrup. MOST-FOR-YOUR-MONEY COOK BOOK A few grains of buttered popcorn in a cream soup make it a different dish and the possibilities of a-dime-a-pound peanuts are practically unexplored. (One book contains 105 recipes for making fine peanut dishes.) And if you live where pecans are cheap, get a copy of 800 Proved Pecan Recipes. Lentils and Jerusalem artichokes are neglected but economical. Grade A buttermilk at }4 the price of Grade B fresh milk in many places is a whole- some substitute. Canned ripe pineapple is a better buy than fresh. Potatoes baked in their jackets are more nourishing than boiled (the roasted skin is the best part, once you learn to like it). The new spaghetti squash makes a big platter of vegetable spaghetti for half price and furnishes table talk for a week; even its tender seeds are more than edible. There's a free clamjuice cocktail in the juice of every half dozen clams, and besides, this juice and the soft parts of clams serve as oyster sauce at 50% discount, and many like it better. But mussels, tender and more digestible than clams, are disdained. Frogs and crayfish are used chiefly in Creole and French-influenced sections. Broiled salt codfish with garlic is a gourmetic delight.

AI-modernized reading of the original text

We throw away chicken feet, while in Europe they're made into the very best Strassburg aspic we ever tasted. No other aspic is a scratch on it, even though it may cost ten times as much. Likewise blood sausage is popular abroad, while here they say pig's blood is used chiefly to adulterate milk chocolate. And few of us believe what good Jewish cooks know, that chicken fat spread on bread is even tastier than butter. pig's feet we eat, but the cheaper and tastier French dish of "sheep's trotters" is still to be discovered. When common food prejudices are overcome, as they were recently in Iowa when roast crow went on the menu after "Make him eat crow" had been an insult for centuries, we increase our scope enormously. The "pickled green plums" our fathers turned up their noses at are now indispensable olives, shipped fresh, too, from California and pickled at home at a fraction of the bottled cost. And ever so much livelier. The wings of a skate, which we throw away, mean "rai au beurre noir" to Parisians and Londoners who are delighted to get them at a dollar a plate. While eels, of course, anywhere but here, sell for prohibitive prices, especially when smoked, in Dutch style. Honey, which needn't cost more per pound than plain sugar if bought at the source in family quantities, serves as a cheaper sweetener because you're likely to use less, or maybe because it's sweeter, and there's the added value of the flavor given to many cereals and desserts. The honey-handlers advise us to use less of it and get the full flavor by "drizzling" from a spoon instead of just pouring. This more appetizing method makes the honey jug do double duty for the same cost and can be extended to any syrup. Once you've drizzled you'll never go back to pouring. As for cereals, wheat frumenty and cornmeal mush stretch the breakfast dollar like rubber. In the wheatless and meatless days of the war, books came out with 1 50 different ways to cook corn, cheapest of our grains, and as a change, especially with new top-o'- the-table griddles and ovens, we can be our own hot biscuit bakers and put the saving on in the form of butter and maple syrup. A few grains of buttered popcorn in a cream soup make it a different dish and the possibilities of a-dime-a-pound peanuts are practically unexplored. (One book contains 105 recipes for making fine peanut dishes.) And if you live where pecans are cheap, get a copy of 800 Proved Pecan Recipes. Lentils and Jerusalem artichokes are neglected but economical. Grade A buttermilk at }4 the price of Grade B fresh milk in many places is a wholesome substitute. Canned ripe pineapple is a better buy than fresh. Potatoes baked in their jackets are more nourishing than boiled (the roasted skin is the best part, once you learn to like it). The new spaghetti squash makes a big platter of vegetable spaghetti for half price and furnishes table talk for a week; even its tender seeds are more than edible. There's a free clam juice cocktail in the juice of every half dozen clams, and besides, this juice and the soft parts of clams serve as oyster sauce at 50% discount, and many like it better. But mussels, tender and more digestible than clams, are disdained. Frogs and crayfish are used chiefly in Creole and French-influenced sections. Broiled salt codfish with garlic is a gourmetic delight.

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