Kitchen Sweepstakes

The nation's grocers have been pushing the sale of peaches for the past three weeks. Next week they will ask customers in a concerted chorus: "How about a pound of cheese?" This teamwork is the result of an extraordinarily successful plan to distribute surplus commodities (technically: "gluts"). The Department of Agriculture asks patriotic citizens, through their more than 500,000 U.S. grocers, to buy Victory Specials. Thus the grocers sell immediately, in peak seasons at good prices, the superabundant harvests that would otherwise rot on the ground, or sell for less than cost.

Nine surplus commodities have thus been eaten up in the past 13 weeks. Lettuce (featured May 11-25) had a harvest of 55% above average; spinach, 10% more than usual; asparagus, 57% higher than normal (both were featured June 1-8).

The onion crop (June 8-15) was 50% above average. Heavy crops of beets and snap beans were melted down, July 6-11.

From July 16 to 25 the U.S. tried to eat up 19% more broilers and fryers than last year.

To use up the 25%-above-normal bumper crop of peaches, the Department urged the housewives of the country, already canning 50% more than usual (TIME, July 27), to can even more. In the cheese weeks (Aug. 17-29) the Department hopes to liquidate the stock of 165 million pounds of extra American cheddar. Probable best bets in the U.S. kitchen sweepstakes for late August: corn, lima beans, plums and prunes.

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