Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 16, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 January 1916 — SUBSTITUTE FOR MEAT [ARTICLE]

SUBSTITUTE FOR MEAT

PEOPLE OF UNITEO STATES TURN TO VARIOUS WHEAT PRODUCTS. ♦ • Are Beginning to •Realize the Value of Such Foods as Macaroni, Etc., Which Make for Health and Financial Saving. As Car back as, history records, wheat has been the main food element of the human race, and today, as in the time of King Pharaoh, the products made from this grain figure largely in the sustaining of life the world over. In the United States, we have confined the use of wheat largely to making flour for breadstuffs,’and until recent years have overlooked the use of it in making one of the most healthful, savory and nourishing of foods that could grace our tables, viz.: macaroni, spaghetti, vermicelli, noodles and kindred products. For centries Europeans on the shores of the Mediterranean sea have used macaroni and spaghetti as their prtacipal article of diet, and these people are today the hardiest races in the world. The tardiness of Americans in taking up this food product has been largely due to the surplus production of meats, but for the past few years this surplus has actually changed to a shortage, caused by the passing of the large ranches and cheap grazing lands, and meats have been mounting higher and higher in the scale of prices until meat dinners are fast becoming a luxury. This condition will never be changed—the day of cheap meats in the United States, as in Europe, is forever behind us, so we must find a substitute that is equally as meritorious and nutritious an article of diet.

Macaroni or spaghetti can be cooked in such a variety of ways that the heartiest or most fastidious palate can be pleased—with cheese, with tomatoes, oysters, cheap cuts of meat, mushrooms, fish, eggs or cream, the most toothsome dishes can be prepared and a perfectly balanced meal served in this one dish alone, and that, too, at a financial saving to the good housewife that makes her smile with satisfaction. One reason for the growing popularity of macaroni products in this country is the fact that large and spotlessly clean American factories have been built during the past few years for the manufacture of the finest qualityof macaroni an d — spaghetti —the world has yet produced. Until recently Italy and France were the only nations turning out such products; but Durum wheat, from which macaroni products are made, grows to greater perfection in the middle Western states than in any other place on the globe, even surpassing the product of Russia, from whence the seed was imported by the United States department of agriculture several years ago. The Durum wheat, which is richer in gluten than any other' Variety, is ground into what is technically termed by millers “Semolina:” a fairly coarse flour made from the. berry of the wheat, from which only the outer covering, or bran, has been removed. This is mixed with pure water and kneaded into a dough in large machines. The dough is put into hydraulic presses and comes out through dies in a variety of shapes. The product is then put through a curing process in humidors and. drying .roomfr which must be maintained at a specific degree of humidity and temperature, and finally is packed in dust and mois-ture-proof cartons and boxes. The American system of manufacturing macaroni and spaghetti is so clean, so efficient, and so much superior to the foreign process that it is small wonder the wideawake housewives here are quickly adopting this most healthful food as one of’their staple articles of diet, and it is’ not too much to predict that these products bearing the label “Made in U. S. A.” will be found in use the world over before many years have elapsed.