Most for your money cookbook

But nowadays steak is too expensive for most of us, so we often take our protein in the form of: Eggs. Some like 'em white, some like 'em brown, but all of us like 'em fresh. In New York City eggs selected for their pearly whiteness fetch a few cents more a dozen, while mid- West customers fancy the brown egg as fuller flavored and are sometimes willing to pay a cent or two more for their preference. It's all a matter of taste, just so long as the eggs are fresh and of good size. The only honest way to sell eggs is by weight, but dealers make more money grading them as to color and size. Back in a Chicago suburb forty years ago a woman on our street. Old Miss Prouty, used to go to the store and pick out the biggest eggs in person, which got to be a town joke because she was rich and everybody said she got that way by getting her money's worth — a thing considered hardly respectable by us poorer families, well-trained by both grocer and butcher to telephone in our orders and accept their word for quality and weight. No housewife would think of being seen with a market basket, and as a result, in a year or two the grocer in our town had bought up half the vacant lots around and the butcher got himself a nice string of race horses, not for slaughtering purposes. In ordering fish from him, for example, the housewife would pick up the receiver and say, "Otto, send up four pounds of fish." Just fish. No thought as to whether he sent a cheap fish that cost him three cents a pound, or a really flavorsome one for which he had to pay six. And that helped him get rich, because we always paid fifteen. It was almost the same with meat, **Otto, how's your chicken today?" "All right, send her up if she's plump." Never any questions of price, quality or weight, only unconsciously intimate little questions like '*Otto, how are your hams today?" Or, "your sirloin?" It wasn't often that a bride asked, "Are your kidneys nice? How's your liver, lamb fries, or heart?" Such giblets were supposed to be bought, if at all, only for the cat. So Otto might have heaved his cleaver at a customer who asked, "Have you got any brains?" For brains, although good, cheap food out of which fine dishes can be made quickly and simply, were taboo. You might have whispered "calves' brains" to him, but if you asked for pigs' brains, which many people prefer for their substance and flavor, the story about your poverty-stricken taste would have been all over town by night. PIGS' BRAINS WITH BLACK BUTTER Boil a bone with some onion, thyme and half a bay leaf, or use a beef cube in place of the bone, and in this broth slowly poach the pigs' brains for 15-20 minutes, then remove membranes and simmer the brains golden in blackened butter pepped up with a couple tablespoons of vinegar, using this for a sauce at the finish and saving the delicate and delicious broth in which the brains were cooked to start your next soup. CALVES' BRAINS Prepare and serve same as pigs' brains, or vary the sauce from black butter to ravigote, the French "pick-me-up" mixture of minced tarragon, chervil, chives and burnet, made into a sauce with melted butter, salt, pepper, and a squeeze of lemon juice. SADDLE OF RABBIT