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Back in the 60's, when times were pretty tough for our family, my mother used to feed a family of 6 on a buck. Tenderoni macaroni was 19 cents, 3 cans of tomato sauce 24 cents, a can of beans was 11 cents and a half-pound of hamburger meat was 35 cents.

Talk about stretching a dollar...and my kids still ask me to make my mother's pasta fagiole. They love it.

In the early 60’s, when my husband was still in school and working only part time, Betty Crocker ran an offer to figure out a monthly food budget with recipes for anybody who would write in.

I had 2 babies at the time, and I submitted our family for the budget help. At the time I was spending $12 a week, and we were eating well — everything prepared from scratch. Betty Crocker wrote back and recommended that I figure out a way to get more money because they were sure that I was depriving my family of essential nutrients!

It turned out that I could not meet their budget criteria because all of their menu plans required the use of Betty Crocker packaged mixes and meal helpers. “Scratch” cooking wasn’t considered an alternative.

OTOH, my local grocery store of the time (the Co-Op in Berkeley, CA) published a free pamphlet with recipes, submitted from other shoppers and members, that promised a month’s worth of recipes that would serve four, for $1 per day. Some of them were really good and I used them often.

I should scrounge through my old recipes to see if I still have that book. I’m sure that we ate better then than we do now.

...and my kids still ask me to make my mother’s pasta fagiole. They love it.

YUMMMM... we used to have that and a salad but we also HAD to have a crunchy loaf of Italian bread along with it to DIP into the juice.

We also had peas and macaroni some nights. The thing was to have some food that was “stick to the ribs” as they said and off we would go. We weren’t hungry and... we ran it off as well with walking to school, school athletic activities, walking to the store for our mom, helping with the chores of the house which meant running up and down stairs. Hanging clothes on the line and taking them off before they freeze :)

I know there is a lot of joy in having so many things today in our homes but the real joy was in making do with what you had on hand. You ate what you had and you knew there wasn’t more. You would trust your mom would have something even better at the next meal because she had to use her head and get clever with whatever she had on hand and guess what???/ She DID it. But...the BEST PART is remembering those days as we are doing right now. I guess we too were poor but...we never knew it. We wore hand me downs and had holes in the soles of our shoes...and only had school shoes and then some other old ones to play...most likely hand me downs as well.
I do not like to see or even think of anyone going hungry. Especially children. I know my mother worked two jobs in the summer and so did my dad. Waht they made went onto the table and into us kids.

My father-in-law recently passed. When he was alive and I was able to, I would cook for him, my MIL and hubby and we both got a kick out of seeing how cheap I could cook a good dinner for 4 using quality ingredients.

Grilled tuna ($1.60 per steak bought at BJs)
baked potatoes ($.50 each with butter and sour cream)
and a salad (approx $.15 worth of lettuce each with home grown tomatoes, cukes and bell peppers grown in garden.)

=$9.00 dinner for 4 ($2.25 each)

Optional:
Chocolate icebox pie
graham cracker crust $1.00
cooked chocolate pudding (not instant) $2.00
Cool Whip $2.00
$.65 per slice

Brunswick stew with cornbread was usually less that $5.00 for a pot that would serve 4 people twice (8 good sized meals) or 4 people and 6 dogs once.

I miss my father-in-law.