THE MILK PITCHER IN THE HOME

There is a quaint old fairy tale of a friendly pitcher that came and took up its abode in the home of an aged couple, supplying them from its magic depths with food and drink and many other comforts. Of this tale one is reminded in considering the place of the milk pitcher in the home. How many housewives recognize the bit of crockery sitting quietly on the shelf as one of their very best friends? How many know that it will cover many of their mistakes in the choice of food for their families? That it contains mysterious substances upon which growth depends? That it stands ready to save them both work and worry in regard to food? That it is really the only indispensable article on the bill of fare?

Diet is like a house, a definite thing, though built of different kinds of material. For a house we need wall material, floor material, window, ceiling, chimney stuffs and so forth. We may, if we like, make floors, walls, and ceilings all of the same kind of stuff, wood for example, but we should need glass for windows and bricks or tile for chimneys. Or, again, we may choose brick for walls, floors, and chimneys but it would not do any better than wood for windows, would be rather unsatisfactory for ceilings, and impossible for doors. In other words, we could not build a modern house from one kind of material only and we really need at least four to carry out even a simple plan.

In a similar fashion, diet is constructed from fuel material, body-building material and body-regulating material. No diet is perfect in which these are not all represented. Now, foods are like sections of houses. Some correspond to single parts, as a floor or a window or perhaps a chimney; others to a house complete except for windows and roof; still others to a house lacking only a door or two. It takes some thought to put them together so that we shall have all kinds of parts without a great many extra ones of certain kinds and not enough of others.

Milk is unique in that it comes nearest of all foods to being a complete diet in itself. It is like the house with only a door missing. We could be quite comfortable in such a house for a long time though we could make a more complete diet by adding some graham bread or an apple or some spinach.

We all associate milk with cows and cows with farms, but how closely is milk associated with the farm table? Is it prized as the most valuable food which the farm produces? Every drop should be used as food; and this applies to skim milk, sour milk, and buttermilk as well as sweet milk. Do we all use milk to the best advantage in the diet? Here are a few points which it is well to bear in mind:

Milk will take the place of meat. The world is facing a meat famine. The famine was on the way before the war began but it has approached with tremendous speed this last year. Every cow killed and eaten means not only so much less meat available but so much less of an adequate substitute. Lean meat contributes to the diet chiefly protein and iron. We eat it primarily for the protein. Hence in comparing meat and milk we think first of their protein content. One and one-fourth cups of milk will supply as much protein as two ounces of lean beef. The protein of milk is largely the part which makes cottage cheese. So cottage cheese is a good meat substitute and a practical way of using part of the skim milk when the cream is taken off for butter. One and one-half ounces of cottage cheese (one-fourth cup) are the protein equivalent of two ounces of lean beef. Skim milk and buttermilk are just as good substitutes for meat as whole milk. Since meat is one of the most expensive items in the food bill, its replacement by milk is a very great financial economy. This is true even if the meat is raised on the farm, as food for cattle is used much more economically in the production of milk than of beef.

Milk is the greatest source of calcium (lime). Lime is one of the components of food that serves two purposes; it is both building material for bones and regulating material for the body as a whole, helping in several important ways to maintain good health. It is essential that everyone have a supply of lime and particularly important that all growing infants, children, and young people have plenty for construction of bones and teeth. There is almost none in meat and bread, none in common fats and sugars, and comparatively few common foods can be taken alone and digested in large enough quantities to insure an adequate supply; whereas a pint of milk (whole, skim, or buttermilk) will guarantee to a grown person a sufficient amount, and a quart a day will provide for the greater needs of growing children. Whatever other foods we have, we cannot afford to leave milk out of the diet because of its lime. Under the most favorable dietary conditions, when the diet is liberal and varied, an adult should have at least half a pint of milk a day and no child should be expected to thrive with less than a pint.

Milk contains a most varied assortment of materials needed in small amounts for the body welfare, partly for constructive and partly for regulating purposes. These are rather irregularly distributed in other kinds of food materials. When eggs, vegetables, and cereals are freely used, we are not likely to suffer any lack; but when war conditions limit the number of foods which we can get, it is well to remember that the more limited the variety of foods in the diet the more important milk becomes.

Milk will take the place of bread, butter, sugar, and other foods used chiefly for fuel. The body is an engine which must be stoked regularly in order to work. The more work done the more fuel needed. That is what we mean when we talk about the food giving “working strength.” A farmer and his wife and usually all the family need much fuel because they do much physical work. Even people whose work is physically light require considerable fuel. A quart of milk will give as much working force as half a pound of bread, one-fourth of a pound of butter, or six ounces of sugar. And this is in addition to the other advantages already mentioned.

Milk contains specifics for growth. Experiments with animals have taught us that there are two specific substances, known as vitamines, which must be present in the diet if a young animal is to grow. If either one is absent, growth is impossible. Both are to be found in milk, one in the cream and the other in the skim milk or whey. For this reason children should have whole milk rather than skim milk. Of course, butter and skim milk should produce the same result as whole milk. Eggs also have these requisites and can be used to supplement milk for either one, but as a rule it is more practical to depend upon milk, and usually more economical.

For little children, milk is best served as a beverage. But as children grow up, the fluidity of milk makes them feel as if it were not food enough and it is generally better to use it freely in the kitchen first, and then, if there is any surplus, put it on the table as a beverage or serve it thus to those who need an extra supply the half-grown boys, for instance, who need more food in a day than even a hard-working farmer.

A good plan is to set aside definitely, as a day’s supply, a quart apiece for each person under sixteen and a pint apiece for each one over this age. Then see at night how well one has succeeded in disposing of it. If there is much left, one should consider ways of using it to advantage. The two simplest probably are, first, as cream sauce for vegetables of all sorts; for macaroni or hominy with or without cheese; or for hard cooked eggs or left-over meats; and next in puddings baked a long time in the oven so that much of the water in the milk is evaporated. Such puddings are easy to prepare on almost any scale and are invaluable for persons with big appetites because they are concentrated without being unwholesome.

The milk pitcher and the vegetable garden are the best friends of the woman wishing to set a wholesome and economical table. Vegetables supplement milk almost ideally, since they contain the vegetable fiber which helps to guard against constipation, and the iron which is the lacking door in the “house that milk built.”

Vegetables which are not perfect enough to serve uncooked, like the broken leaves of lettuce and the green and tough parts of celery, are excellent cooked and served with a cream sauce. Cream sauce makes it possible also to cook enough of a vegetable for two days at once, sending it to the table simply dressed in its own juices or a little butter the first time and making a scalloped dish with cream sauce and crumbs the next day. Vegetables which do not lend themselves to this treatment can be made into cream soups, which are excellent as the hot dish for supper, because they can be prepared in the morning and merely reheated at serving time.

Finally, the addition of milk in liberal quantities to tea and coffee (used of course only by adults); its use without dilution with water in cocoa; and instead of water in bread when that is made at home, ought to enable a housewife to dispose satisfactorily of her day’s quota of milk. If it should accumulate, it can be dispatched with considerable rapidity in the form of ice cream or milk sherbet. When there is much skim milk, the latter is a most excellent way of making it popular, various fruits in their seasons being used for flavor, as strawberries, raspberries, and peaches, with lemons to fall back on when no native fruit is at hand.

The world needs milk today as badly as wheat. All that we can possibly spare is needed in Europe for starving little ones. In any shortage the slogan must be “children first.” But in any limited diet milk is such a safeguard that we should bend our energies to saving it from waste and producing more, rather than learning to do without it. Skim milk from creameries is too valuable to be thrown away. Everyone should be on the alert to condemn any use of milk except as food and to encourage condensation and drying of skim milk to be used as a substitute for fresh milk.

When the milk pitcher is allowed to work its magic for the human race, we shall have citizens of better physique than the records of our recruiting stations show today. Even when the family table is deprived of its familiar wheat bread and meat, we may be strong if we invoke the aid of this friendly magician.