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Show KATHLEEN NORMS Share Hard Times Bell Syndicate. WNU Features. By KATHLEEN NORRIS "T)ERT is worried to death jD over high prices and hard times," writes Lois Jacks from an Iowa city. "But just the same he gets furious and won't help me at all when I try to cut down. We have two sets of twins; girls of 9 and boys of 3. "Bert and the girls take box lunches every week day. That meant 18 meals a day. I try to make them inexpensive as well as appetizing, but Bert wants hearty dinners meats that cost more than the whole meal cost a few years ago; and all the old trimmings celery, nuts, jelly, rich desserts. ' "It's all his loyalty and love for us, of course; his desire to make everything perfect for the children and me. But It has led to a real difference of opinion between us. Meatless Nights. "For one thing, I inaugurated four meatless nights a week, using cheese and fish dishes to insure proper prop-er nourishment. Out of one old fowl and half a can of ham we had delicious de-licious club sandwiches for one dinner, din-ner, and a hearty rice-and-ehicken soup for the next. But Bert spent both meal-times fretting and arguing, argu-ing, against meat substitutes, butter substitutes, makeshifts generally. "lacidenta'lly, our income is $4,000 a year; we own our home, and rent our garages on the side street for . . . spent meat-times fretting . , . $60. I can manage; I've never got Bert Jacks one cent into debt in our 12 happy years but I'm stumped now. "With my four young children I can't take a job; nobody Is going to leave us any money, and a few unimportant raises in the next few years are all Bert can hope for. We're better off than most, with our car and our garden and our summer picnics; if things don't get any worse we'll be all right." I wonder if this letter con3 to other women the warmly swt and admirable nature that I am sjire the writer has. This gallant tTKi wife and mother only asks a chc to make a success of today's diimi-tic diimi-tic difficulties. She wants to try new dishes, make experiments, challenge rising slim with smarter meals. Millions of women are doing it all over the world; saving fuel, saving fats, serving serv-ing hearty delicious one-dish masfa, drawing husband and children bays the game that will hold the family together through the disturbed years ahead. , To Bert, therefore, and to many another husband, my advice is this: Wait until you've eaten the dinner before you break onto fretful criticism. crit-icism. On the table, soup and muffins and succotash and deep dish apple pie may look rather meaningless. Satisfaction Guaranteed. But if the soup is hearty, the vegetables vege-tables very hot and well seasoned, and the apple pie as good as homemade home-made apple pie should be, then you'll lean back from the table just as satisfied, and really better off gas-tronomically gas-tronomically than if the $2.20 meal had cost $3.40. So you tired businessmen all over the country, or at least as many of you as have good wives like Lois, take this suggestion from me: Eat your dinner before you criticize. Give Mother a chance to prove that inexpensive well cooked foods, seasoned sea-soned by hopeful conversation and the conviction that you are licking high prices rather than letting them lick you open a whole new world of dinnertime satisfaction. Let's hope that lower prices, lower low-er taxes, world peace, better times are ahead. But let's also face the truth that these are nervous and trying times. Harmony at the dinner din-ner table is all-important. And for you, Bert, a special message. To have your own home, two daughters daugh-ters and two sons, and a wife like Lois who faces this world-wide situation of change and panic so gallantly ought to make a dinner of plain bread and milk a Lucullian feast for you. |