This Handbook, with its history of nearly

35 years, is dedicated to all those who find

food buying and preparation a creative

outlet, a necessity, or a misadventure upon

occasion. With about 10,000 items in a

supermarket to choose from and many

new cookbooks, homemakers demonstrate

much interest in preparing and serving food

at home. These culinary ventures often

spawn questions: What can I substitute for

cake flour? How can I convert recipes

to metric? How many cups of cooked

macaroni will I get from a pound of raw

macaroni? What s the difference between

natural cheese and cheese food? What are

the basic recipe proportions for a cake?

How long can I keep hamburger in the

freezer? How can I tell if the cantaloupe is

ripe? This Handbook brings together a

wealth of information compiled from a

multitude of resources over the years.

New information has been added. This

includes a section on how to protect and

save nutrients and more about how to pre-

serve food by canning, drying, and freezing.

Other major revisions concern nutrition

labeling, foreign cookery terms, and var-

ious new food products and kitchen

equipment.

The Food and Nutrition Section of

AHEA, and especially the Handbook Revi-

sion Committee, hopes.this publication

will answer many puzzling problems.

My special thanks to the Handbook

revision editor, Margaret McWilliams, Cali-

fornia State University, Los Angeles; Ivy

Celender, of General Mills, Inc., and

former Food and Nutrition Section chair-

man; and E. Karla Vollmar, Missouri

Cooperative Extension Service, and her

committee members, who made valuable

contributions.

MARY P. CLARKE

Chairman, Food and Nutrition Section,

1979-81