My grandma had a few of those “Depression recipes” too. One of them was “Irish spaghetti”, which was spaghetti noodles with ketchup instead of tomato sauce. Thankfully, she never cooked that after the Depression was over :)
One that she did make sometimes was “Poor Man’s Cake”... which was a raisin cake cooked with saved bacon grease instead of butter. That was delicious, and my mom still saves her bacon drippings to make it.
My Mom’s depression spaghetti was simply Spaghetti Noodles with Butter.
The problem was, they usually could only afford Margarine. It had a packet of food color included that you had to mix in with it to make it yellow. I can’t imagine how horrible that must have tasted back then.
That’s why my Mother never ate any Margarine when I was growing up. She loved Butter and that’s all she would ever serve us. It’s amazing that I was a skinny kid.
Heck, she used to give me Extra Rich Milk that you can’t even buy anymore. It was probably half and half, but it was delicious, especially with Hershey’s Chocolate Syrup. Yum.
My arteries are clogging up just thinking about it.