A Wolf At the Door
Fisher keeps in mind the women who have just returned from the munitions factory. For the end of the month, when the wolf is stalking more closely than ever, the rationing points have run down, and a paycheck may be tight, there is her famous recipe for "sludge": Take 15 cents of ground beef and whatever vegetables are in the grocer's bin. Using a food grinder, grind them into a pot, cover the mixture with "what seems too much water," and cook it. After an hour, add 10 cents' worth of whole-grain cereal, and cook two more hours. "It is obvious to even the most optimistic," Fisher writes, "that this sludge, which should be like stiff cold mush, and a rather unpleasant murky brown-gray in color, is strictly for hunger."
But hunger can be appeased, charmed, and wiled. And all human beings dance with this wolf, no matter where they live. Fisher had traveled extensively throughout Europe during the '30s, and How to Cook a Wolf reminds readers of the world before war, when everyone sat down to the table knowing that eating, and loving what was eaten, was life, pure and simple. It was one of the things people were fighting for, then and always.
The Oleo Wars
Margarine was an instant success in 1869 when it was invented from beef suet and milk. In 1887, there were more than 30 margarine factories in the United States, many using yellow dye to make the impostor look like butter. But traditional dairies squawked, and by 1902, some 32 states had passed laws banning the dye. WWII butter rationing made margarine popular nonetheless. And more people used the spread with the news in the late 1960s that butter was high in saturated fat. The later concern over trans fats has converted some back to dairy. Still, Americans today eat about twice as much margarine as butter.
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