Substitutes Replace Typical Dishes In German Daily Diet

Southland Times, Issue 23652, 29 October 1938, Page 16

Substitutes Replace Typical Dishes In German Daily Diet

"Let them eat ‘ersatz’ ” is the decree of Adolf Hitler. And as a result the daily fare in the German household today is a sorry thing, for “ersatz” means substitute and “ersatz” is the biggest word in Germany today. Gone are the typical dishes which have endeared the German hausfrau to the world. Missing are the Holstein schnitzel, the liver sausage, the roast goose, and the other delicacies that gave robustness to mein herr and rotundity to his frau. In their place are ersatz menus—substitutes, invented by the Nazi Government’s Committee for Economic Enlightenment and administered by Hitler’s right-hand man, FieldMarshal Goering. Almost like some devil’s brew or witch’s potion read the receipes for these strange dishes which the German Government is trying to convince the people are just as good as the real thing. Here is the idea of how “good meatballs” are made: “Take some pigskin,” reads the official cook-book—pigskin which probably was used yesterday to flavour pea or lentil soup. ‘Put it through a meat grinder or chop it fine. Add grated onions and grated hard rolls' so that a tough dough results. Form the dough into a meatball shape and boil in salted water or bouillon tube soup.” The result is supposed to be the equivalent of the American hamburger. AGE OF SUBSTITUTION No phase of German life today' is without its ersatz. The tyres the German citizen puts on his car are not rubber, but the product of chemistry; the petrol he puts in his tank is made from wood, the necklace his wife wears is made from resin, his child’s woollen sweater is made from cellulose, and even a high-protein yeast he feeds his cow is made from lumber. Glass is a very popular ersatz material. Glass is used in construction, razor blades are made from it, curtain rods and even toothpaste tubes. In fact, wherever you found metal before you are apt to find glass now. What is back of this huge programme of substitution which Germany is trying with might and main to get its people to accept with a smile? It is all a part, of a still greater programme to make Germany self-sufficient, to make her capable of supplying all her

needs, both military needs and the necessities of life, without depending upon other nations for anything, in case she goes to war. She remembers the disastrous effects of the last war, when the allied nations blockaded her coast with a ring of steel, end finally starved her into submission.

Hie principal reason for the ersatz programme is Germany’s huge armament programme. This is of such proportion that Germany must import iron and copper, zinc, mercury, and phosphorus to make munitions. It must also be remembered that Germany has never been self-sufficient in the matter of food-stuffs. She could never grow or raise enough for her own needs. Let us look at a few of the choice

titbits which have been concocted tor the German palate. “MEAT” PIE Do you like pie? Here is a receipt for a delicate Nazi morsel. Take two pounds of potatoes. Peel them, grate and mix them with flour. Add a halfpound of pork, cut into cubes. Then put a laver of meat and another of potato dough. Add salt and cook for two hours in the oven. Here is one for hash. Take a pig’s ear or snout arid chop it roughly. Then prepare a thick gravy of flour, salt, pepper, lemon juice, and condensed soup cubes. The “chopped meat” ir boiled in the gravy and capers added. Serve with lemon slices and potatoes, the Nazis advise, and say it tastes good. Or maybe you like stuffed cabbage. There is even an ersatz for that. It consists, of cabbage leaves boiled over, oats softened in milk and mixed to a. dough with salt, pepper, grated onion, and one cube of condensed soup and grated bread. The mixture goes between the cabbage leaves and is fried in fat from vegetables. Even the humble loaf of white bread is subject to tinkering. The Nazis make it out of pumpkin and say it tastes just as good as the real thing. But ersatz goes further. Suppose Germans tire of a day-to-day diet of oatmeal, pig’s ear, and pumpkin? What then? There will be new, tasty titbits to teinpt them, the authorities assure us. EVERYTHING. BUT THE SQUEAL The Chicago meat packers, who boast that they "use everything but the squeal,” can learn a few things from Germany’s ersatz food programme. The Research Institute of the German labour front reports that hogs’ blood which used to be thrown away, and which amounted to about 130,000,000 quarts annually, has now been found valuable, due to new methods of extrhcting food value from it devised by the institute. The organization points out that the blood is equivalent to twice its weight in meat, and that through a new oxydising process it can be converted into a “pleasantly smelling, light yellow food product, which can be mixed with all sausages.” The use of blood in this manner is expected to save at least 10 per cent, of Germany’s meat consumption. .

The programme extends even to the staff of life —bread. German bakers are told to use half the normal amount of fat in baking a cake, and to replace the missing fat with curds. Then, a new so-called “foam-souring” process of bread-baking has been invented that does away with yeast. It is said to improve the bread and increases its nutritive value.

In the home, putting sawdust instead of flour on the bottom of the loaf is now commonly practised to keep the bread from burning while in the oven. If, after all these ersatz receipes and suggestions, the German citizen is still not satisfied, he is everywhere confronted with slogans which tell him "To eat little is to live long” and “To fast is sometimes the best medicine.” USED TO PRIVATION How do the people react to ersatz? As yet it is hard to tell. To many it is a sort of game. It is a challenge to thrifty housewives to use their wits to contrive ersatz menus other than those the Government recommends. It encourages children to scout around and rescue scraps that might otherwise have found their way into a garbage can. Then, too, privation is not new to the German people. Many of them still remember the war days, when there also was no sugar or butter or meat Even if some do object to ersatz they dare not voice their objection. One source of opposition is likely to be the German hausfrau. One must remember that one of the cardinal points of Hitler’s programme is a policy of “Kirche, Kueche, und Kinder” for women. He has ordered women back into the kitchen. But, having put them there, he takes away their chief joy—pride in cooking. The Germans will have four years to decide whether or not they like ersatz, because it will certainly last as long as Goering’s four-year plan, and as long as Germany continues to put everything she .has into armaments. Marie Antoinette, who said, “Let them eat cake,” lost her head. What will happen to Hitler, who says, “Let them eat ersatz,” only history can tell.