By Anna Hunn

The housewife has the duty and privilege of spending for food on an average of about 30 or 40 per cent of the family income. Hers is the tremendous responsibility of seeing that the family is supplied with food necessary for its growth and maintenance at its highest efficiency. Good buying is based on knowledge. This knowledge may be obtained only through practice and study. The housewife should, therefore, be alert and quick to seize every opportunity to know more of the production, the marketing, the nutritive value, and the cost of the vast number of articles which she has to buy. She is expected to be expert in the buying of not only one article, but hundreds. She has an unlimited field for study.

A good buyer plans for the present and for the future. She carefully considers the material in the storerooms, ice-boxes, and gardens, and plans to buy only that which will supplement or enable her to use the food already on hand. The next step is to visit the markets. The good buyer rarely telephones. The exceptions to this rule would be an emergency call or the buying of standard products, such as sugar, cereals, spices, or known brands of goods.

The housewife uses the senses of sight, touch, taste, and smell in her final judgment of food. It is quite as essential that she should use the same senses in buying food. To do this it is necessary that she should go to market. For buying commodities it might be well to have the following points in mind: A definite amount should be ordered in pounds or definite measure; the unit price of the commodity should be ascertained; correct scales and measures should be used and the full amount paid for delivered. To check the measures and weights, correct scales and measures should be a part of every kitchen equipment (page 129).