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Posted on 04/24/2011 8:43:39 PM PDT by Bed_Zeppelin
Like a hand to glove, the Great Depression touched on timeless characteristics. Sacrifice. Economy. Generosity within community.
Booyah has not necessarily stood this test of time.
The hobo-stewish mix of beef shank, chicken, oxtails, rutabaga and more will be served for lunch April 30 at the Greater Midwest Foodways Alliance’s “Midwest Eats! Foodways of the Great Depression.” The program runs through May 1 at Kendall College, 900 N. North Branch (west of Halsted).
At 5 p.m. April 29, the Alliance will re-create the “Eight Cent Menu” served on May 7, 1938 at a “relief banquet” in the Gold Room of the Congress Hotel. Chicago Mayor Edward Kelly and other fancy-pants folks attended the dinner to understand how the other half was living.
A stew of chuck, potatoes, carrots, onions and evaporated milk was figured at eight cents by the Illinois Workers of Cook County.
“This meal was for somebody who was receiving what we call ‘welfare’ today,” said Catherine Lambrecht, founder and vice-president of the Greater Midwest Foodways Alliance. “They were trying to show what husbands, wives and two children in Chicago would eat on x amount of dollars per month, which equated to eight cents per meal.”
Lambrecht prepared booyah and eight-cent stew and brought them to our meeting at Won Kow restaurant, 2237 S. Wentworth. The stew was served with two pieces of white bread.
“The real diner only got two half-pieces of bread,” pointed out Chicago food historian Peter Engler.
Lambrecht and Engler wanted to meet at Won Kow because it is one of two remaining restaurants (the Berghoff being the other) in John Drury’s 1931 restaurant guide Dining In Chicago . Drury was a writer for the Chicago Daily News; his book featured more than 200 restaurants.
In the foreword, Carl Sandburg wrote, “Cooking skill and kitchen science has drifted to Chicago from the continents of Asia, Europe, Africa and the archipelagoes of the seven seas.”
Of Won Kow, Drury wrote, “It is as Chinese as your laundry slip in cuisine, appointments and clientele, but Americans come here, too, judges, city officials, newspaper people and theatrical folk . . . .”
Lambrecht got the idea for the Depression-themed program after attending a library talk on the Works Progress Administration writers’ project in Highland Park, where she lives.
She also cited the Pat Willard book America Eats! On the Road with the WPA (Bloomsbury, $25.99) as inspiration. In 1935, writers such as Nelson Algren, Ralph Ellison and Eudora Welty hit the road to explore America’s culinary history. Willard used the WPA’s never-published 1935 America Eats! as a template to revisit the sites and the food, which includes a booyah and crackers cook-off in St. Paul, Minn.
“We could do a whole thing on the WPA,” Lambrecht said. “That generation is fading.”
The Depression forced Americans to be resourceful, which is evident in kaleidoscopic recipes from corned beef hash to a bean sandwich served on Boston brown bread that was popular at E.W. Ricks across from the Chicago Theatre.
The “Crown Roast” was a ring of hot dogs made to look festive with cranberries, sauerkraut or a similar condiment in the middle of the ring.
“Ball canning company in Muncie [Ind.] not only sponsored gardens, they allowed gardens on their property. They did mass canning projects,” Lambrecht said. “They made an embossed jar and gave jars to everybody in the community.”
Residents were encouraged to fill the jars with garden produce that could be canned for the winter.
“Nobody had money,” Lambrecht said. “But everybody had a garden. Everybody was willing to can.”
The program also will present 1930s recipes such as corn pudding, harvest cake made with mashed yams (from Indiana) and macaroni and cheese. Lard was a common ingredient back then.
“We’ll have orange cake where they mixed the juice with sugar, then they took the orange and ground it three times through a sausage grinder with some raisins,” Lambrecht said. “You have to have the oven heated and the pans already greased, because you have no time to wait. You add vinegar and baking soda and race it to the oven.”
“Midwest Eats! Foodways of the Great Depression” is timely, given the tough economic times we’ve been through in the last few years.
In St. Paul, Minn., Lambrecht said, “they still have booyah sheds with 50-gallon pots. Someone starts early in the morning and they serve it for four or five dollars. People are trimming back and not eating out.”
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Eight cents in today’s money would be $1.25, about the price of a McDonald’s burger.
Ping ....garbage soup.
At $4.99 per lb, I don’t think oxtails are on most folks menu for Poverty Cooking.
Back in the late 70’s I did a lot of stir frying with skirt steak because it was 39 cents a lb. It’s been out of my price range for cheap stir fry/fajitas for years now.
While growing up in the 1950s, I often saw my Father, who was a teenager in the 1930s, eat his favorite Depression Era dessert, a slice of bread in a bowl of canned milk with sugar sprinkled on top. He still liked it.
Reacquainting people with what it took to make it through the Great Depression is not a bad idea at all, certainly not in bad taste. I’ve heard about it most of my life from older relatives.
My father’s family were farmers, they ate well and in quantity, that was no problem. They had a lot of land, a lot of kids and little money after my grandfather’s cousins’ bank failed. He made out better than most, ten cents on a dollar. Carried every penny he had on his person from then on until he died, before I was born.
My mother’s family lived in a city. My grandfather was a barber. They had some tough stretches when having enough food to put on the table was a problem.
Both sides of my family recall Christmas as being an orange and a peppermint stick for the most part, as far as presents, and they were grateful. Getting a doll was a very memorable thing for my mother.
Both sides still have an abiding affection for the foods that carried them through, those who are still alive that is. Cornbread, pinto beans, wild greens either cooked or as salad, such as “creasies” which grow wild all over, mustard, dandelion, even young green shoots of pokeweed. Wild persimmons made into a pudding, apples of all kinds, especially those that kept well.
It’s useful knowledge. I’m all for it.
If you go on You Tube there is a lady (I think she is called the Depression lady) who has several videos where she makes the Depression dinners that they really ate when she was a kid. Its very interesting. Some of it looks pretty good.
~Freeper Kitchen Ping~
Other food related posts today:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2709801/posts
Got groceries? Wal-Mart testing home delivery
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2709697/posts
Wal-Mart outlines new strategy
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2709298/posts
Freaking out for freeze-dried food
My father’s favorite ‘cheap’ food back in the 60’s-70’s
(not cheap now)
Can of condensed mushroom soup (or any condensed soup)
Same can amount of water
Same can amount of minute rice
Cook covered until tender (was pretty good and filling)
Was also great for clean-up: one pot, one bowl(optional), one fork.
If you’re not picky about the quality of the rice or the brand of the soup, that’s still pretty darn cheap.
We ate (and I loved) blood pudding and blood sausage when I was a kid in the 1970s, not uncommon for farm familes of German heritage. Grandpa said that when they slaughtered hogs, they "used everything but the oink". :)
My Dad was was born in 1934, but the hard times continued in rural Ohio well into the 1940s. He remembers Grandma selling eggs at a 25 cent profit, which was all the spare cash they had during some weeks. The farm provided food enough for them and cousins who would come for Sunday dinner.
My parents were in their forties when they had me...both lived thru the Depression, and alot of what I grew up on was ‘Depression’ cooking...because that is all mom knew. A favorite was a real treat she called Depression Tea Cakes (honest). Stale bread, cut off the crust (crusts baked and salted for ‘chips’ btw), spread with your favorite jelly or jam or even apple butter, and then fried til golden. Sprinkle with sugar (and add in cinammon if using the apple butter). Amazingly good.
AWESOME.
Thanks.
My late father took cornbread with lard smeared on it to school for lunch, when he got to go to school instead of working in the fields. Many times he had only one potato to eat for dinner.
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