True, there are some fine American products for his store, ex- cellent Cincinnati sausage and Milwaukee liverwurst that can compare with the imported original, but in order to live at all, the delicatessen man usually has to sell bad fakes. If you pin him down as to the origin of that sausage called "Cincinnati" in the trade and sold for 49^ a pound solely on the honest reputation it has earned in Ohio, he'll have to admit that his is made in some local slum slaughterhouse in New York, Chicago, almost anywhere, out of whatever's left over, plus a whole lot of cornmeal mush or maybe sawdust, and has never been within 500 miles of its supposed original habitat in Cincinnati. Delicatessens have become the kind of necessary luxury we can't live with, yet can't live without. So all we can suggest is to pass up the 100% American ones and find some honest dealer who still handles imported goods or the best substitutes made by compatri- ots in America, including, of course, all the really good maple sugar, succotash and all-American products. Such a store is a convenience and is most often found in a foreign workers' quarter; in an Italian one you can get fresh-baked hearth breads that your teeth sink into with a contented sigh, spicy hot homemade sausage, bulk ancho- vies, swell cheeses, Mortadello, all sorts of succulent things im- ported in big barrels and tins and sold in most cases for less than the standardized wooden-nutmeg imitation. In a Greek delicatessen you can buy calamatas, those slender, long olives that taste better than any others we know, for as little as 35^ a pound, and a virgin olive oil which comes out as cheap or cheaper than butter, if you get a gallon can. There are even imported grapevine leaves for wrapping around meat melanges to give that sapid oriental savor and for a nickel you can buy enough of them to liven up several meals, or you can pick and pickle them yourself if the right kind grows in your neighborhood, for this wrapping leaf must be bluish on the underside. A real Danish pastry shop is a gold mine com- pared to a typical bakery chain and a freshly stuffed dill pickle is something, when you get it made in true Austrian style; the stores of Chinatown sell smoked pork and duck, honest noodles, soy DAMN THAT DELICATESSEN HABIt! I4I sauce, bean sprouts and superior foods which you can't match for twice the money in one of those typical snack shops that keep alive by staying open to catch you when you come home at mid- night with a big appetite and maybe a little overtime pay to blow on bologna, beer, and biscuits, getting the resultant bellyache and hangover absolutely free. XX Rabbit Food FOR VITAMINS AND BODY-BUILDING MINERALS Immigrant truck farmers, especially Italians, have enriched our fresh vegetable scope enormously with such things as anise, arti- chokes, spaghetti, squash and broccoli. And the Chinese have given us bean sprouts, easy to grow in a big flat pan in the kitchen, and Chinese cabbage. Such domesticated importations, added to our own indigenous potatoes, tomatoes, and pumpkins, grown from coast to coast and climate to climate give us a swell assortment at what should be fair prices the year around. In any case there's al- ways something in season produced and shipped in quantities big enough to make a good buy, if the price isn't held too high by mar- ket racketeers and middlemen.

AI-modernized reading of the original text

True, there are some fine American products for his store, excellent Cincinnati sausage and Milwaukee liverwurst that can compare with the imported original, but in order to live at all, the delicatessen man usually has to sell bad fakes. If you pin him down as to the origin of that sausage called "Cincinnati" in the trade and sold for 49^ a pound solely on the honest reputation it has earned in Ohio, he'll have to admit that his is made in some local slum slaughterhouse in New York, Chicago, almost anywhere, out of whatever's left over, plus a whole lot of cornmeal mush or maybe sawdust, and has never been within 500 miles of its supposed original habitat in Cincinnati. Delicatessens have become the kind of necessary luxury we can't live with, yet can't live without. So all we can suggest is to pass up the 100% American ones and find some honest dealer who still handles imported goods or the best substitutes made by compatriots in America, including, of course, all the really good maple sugar, succotash and all-American products. Such a store is a convenience and is most often found in a foreign workers' quarter; in an Italian one you can get fresh-baked hearth breads that your teeth sink into with a contented sigh, spicy hot homemade sausage, bulk anchovies, swell cheeses, Mortadello, all sorts of succulent things imported in big barrels and tins and sold in most cases for less than the standardized wooden-nutmeg imitation. In a Greek delicatessen you can buy calamatas, those slender, long olives that taste better than any others we know, for as little as 35^ a pound, and a virgin olive oil which comes out as cheap or cheaper than butter, if you get a gallon can. There are even imported grapevine leaves for wrapping around meat melanges to give that sapid oriental savor and for a nickel you can buy enough of them to liven up several meals, or you can pick and pickle them yourself if the right kind grows in your neighborhood, for this wrapping leaf must be bluish on the underside. A real Danish pastry shop is a gold mine compared to a typical bakery chain and a freshly stuffed dill pickle is something, when you get it made in true Austrian style; the stores of Chinatown sell smoked pork and duck, honest noodles, soy [illustration: DAMN THAT DELICATESSEN HABIT! 141] sauce, bean sprouts and superior foods which you can't match for twice the money in one of those typical snack shops that keep alive by staying open to catch you when you come home at midnight with a big appetite and maybe a little overtime pay to blow on bologna, beer, and biscuits, getting the resultant bellyache and hangover absolutely free. Rabbit Food FOR VITAMINS AND BODY-BUILDING MINERALS Immigrant truck farmers, especially Italians, have enriched our fresh vegetable scope enormously with such things as anise, artichokes, spaghetti, squash and broccoli. And the Chinese have given us bean sprouts, easy to grow in a big flat pan in the kitchen, and Chinese cabbage. Such domesticated importations, added to our own indigenous potatoes, tomatoes, and pumpkins, grown from coast to coast and climate to climate give us a swell assortment at what should be fair prices the year around. In any case there's always something in season produced and shipped in quantities big enough to make a good buy, if the price isn't held too high by market racketeers and middlemen.

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