Evening star., 1943-05-30
Eating Habits From All Sections of Country
Are Reflected by Seruicen1en at Canteens
Dissertations Made
Guide in Selecting
Attractive Foods
By Lillian Arthur.

By Lillian Arthur.
Two servicemen on a downtown
bus the other day were talking
about canteen food in Washing
ton. Said one to the other:
Did you ever hear who that
girl is who plans the food at the
Stage Door Canteen?"
NO." the other man said, II
didn't, but she certainly knows
how to pick food"
Here is the answer to his uues-
ton as to the identity of that
girl"
AS a matter OF fact there are
two Of that girl"-Mrs. Norman
Gerstenfeld, who does all the buy
ing for the canteen is one-and
the other half of the team Is Miss
Mary Turner, who has the reputa-
ton of having taught more wom-
en- to cook than any other woman
in Washington.
Mrs. Gerstenfeld and Miss
Turner work together as CO.
chairmen of the Food Bar Com
mittee of the canteen, and in her
capacity as co chairman Miss
Turner acts as a consultant, sits
in on executive meetings and
more or less supervises the plan
ming of the food that is served at
the canteen.
But on Thursdays Miss Turner
steps out of her role as co-chair-
man and consultant and becomes
captain of the Food Bar Commit
tee and personally helps to pre-
pare the food served that evening.
Miss Turner has been working
with foods for nearly 10 years
almost continually since she grad
uated from Notre Dame Convent
and after she finished her home
economics training at George
Washington University.
She Is at present home service
director Of a local business firm
and who have donated her serv-
ices to the canteen as their con-
tribution to the work.
In her leisure time Miss Turner
collects cook books and writes
cook books. If she could do exactly
as she wanted to do she would
collect more cook books and would
travel around the country hunt
ing up new ways to cook familiar
foods-so that she could write
more cook books. Her next book,
she says, probably will be one in
which travel stories and recipes
will be used together and will be
a discussion of the food prefer
ences of different sections of the
country.
Her travelling and writing am
bitions temporarily have been
pushed into the background, she
says, and "just now my first job
Is to teach women to use and cook
the foods that are available at
the present war period
Although Miss Turner is in
terested in unusual recipes and in
the different kinds of food found
in various sections of the country,
at the canteen she sticks to con-
servative foods.
The men at the canteen rep
resent a cross-section of the
country and so, Miss Turner says,
the foods provided for them must
also represent cross-section Of
the country's food preferences.
Over a period of months since
the canteen was started she has
found that the No. l favorite
snack of the serviceman on fur
lough is ham-on-rye. No matter
what branch of the service he
representative Army, the Navy,
the Marine Corps. the Air Corps
or the Coast Guard-his favorite
is still ham-on-rye. He may gar
nish it with pickles or he may
half cover it with a generous dab
of mustard. But no matter what
he does to it it is still just a ham
sandwich - and the servicemen
love it!
Next to the ham sandwich in
popularity is the egg salad sand
wich and at the canteen they
make the kind that does not run
as soon as you bite into it!
Split pea soup, Miss Turner has
found, is general favorite with
servicemen on cold nights. An
other thing that she has dis
covered Is that servicemen like
salad plates so there Is always
salad on the canteen fare on
Thursday nights.
Miss Turner likes to watch the
serviceman to see how frequently
he displays the eating prefer
ences of his home State in the
food he selects. After meat was
put on the ration list Miss Tur-
ner one night served a tomato
cheese rarebit A young officer
helped himself to a generous
portion. Instinctively Miss Tur-
ner put him down as coming
from Wisconsin. Sure enough,
he began at once to tell her how
many pounds Of cheese his State
shipped out each year and then
launched into Chamber of
Commerce sales talk extolling the
beauties of Wisconsin all the way
from the Dalles to the Brule and
back again.
The next man served was a
small chan in the uniform of a