Posted on 11/18/2011 7:47:54 PM PST by blam
This Is What People Ate When They Had No Money During The Depression
Vivian Giang
Nov. 18, 2011, 12:25 PM
Image: Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, FSA-OWI Collection
If you've ever visited anyone's house for dinner and a big, sloppy "secret family recipe" dish is flopped down in front of you, chances are high that the messy goodness could have originated from the Depression era.
Families were taught to creatively stretch out their food budgets and toast, potatoes and flour seem to be the popular, inexpensive ingredients. Expensive meat was typically eaten only once a week.
Some foods were invented during the Depression, such as spam, Ritz crackers, Krispy Kreme doughnuts and Kraft macaroni and cheese, according to livinghistoryfarm.org.
We've compiled some simple, easy recipes from 90-something Clara who shares her childhood dining memories during hard times. They may help you save money during our own Recession.
Click here to see what people ate>
(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...
Peanut butter and syrup, yep, and a real treat for our school lunch bag, was peanut butter sprinkled with sugar...
Dandelion greens, not my favorite, but edible.
One of the reasons I mention cabbage and kale is that if you start them one season, they will grow up and often make it through the next winter.
When it warms up, they will start to leaf up again to flower. And at this time, the greens are EXCELLENT!
Cabbage plants produce a type of sugar in the leaves as an antifreeze.
Early in the year, the cabbage greens are sweet as any fruit you might find. Really sweet. Probably pound for pound as much sugar as apples!
I do this in the spring - but with fiddleheads and brookies
My Memere' used to cook up the best fiddleheads. This was a great vegetable in northern Maine other than potatoes and wild berry picking in the summer.
***When you are hungry enough, everything looks like food. :p***
I remember reading a book by Elmer Keith about one of his kin in the Civil war.
He was on sniper duty and so hungry every time he thought of his mom’s rancid lard tub that she saved to make soap, his mouth would just water.
No THAT’S hungry.
My dad saw lots of real hunger in WWII Europe. Refugees from the war starved for anything, even GI garbage.
I think my dad mentioned something about flour and water fried pancakes used as bread. He made them once in a while and we put syrup on them and eat them up.
Growing up in the 60's, I'd spend the summers on my grandparents farm. Oh those were the days.
My cousin and I would have sald dressing or Miracle Whip sandwiches. YUUUM!!!
I make it now, or a variation of it. I use good pastrami, half and half, butter with flour in it to thicken it and put a little mustard in it for a little kick and add a little good beef bouillon type product for extra flavor with a little salt and pepper. MM MM good!
It’ll be the 1930’s all over again and this time no way out. The Dem’s will keep raising taxes and raising taxes and wind up bringing everything to a standstill. Then the trouble will begin, I think.
I’ve had gravy & bread as the main course in a meal, and fried taters on the side if we could afford it.
You should record it, I wish I'd recorded my dads stories.
can we call you a cotton pickin freeper...:O)
I seem to remember the old recipe for creamed chipped beef.
4 oz beef
4 Tab flour
4 Tab fat( butter for me!)
gently fry it to a gooey mess and slowly add...
4 cups of milk
I never had to look up a recipe
whoa.
rancid lard.
I hope I’m never THAT hungry
You can grow marijuana with grow lights in your garage and then take the money you make and buy food.
My dad picked it when he was a kid, LONG before I was a thought
Animal Crackers--Mae Questel (1935)
I remember my Memere would cook up swiss chard and all the kids
would accuse her of picking leaves in the yard and feeding them
to us.... miss her.
You can grow marijuana with grow lights in your garage and then take the money you make and buy food.
yep
We kids used to get out of school in the fall 2-3 weeks to pick potatoes.
We loved it. We got to work alongside the grownups as equals, we learned hard work - but loved it. It was in the sunshine and out of school - and we got jingle money in our pockets...the amount directly commensurate with how many potatoes we picked. Good growing up lesson.
When I was a kid there was one family on the block that still had an ice box. The ice man would come in a truck and throw a piece of burlap over his left shoulder and then heave the block of ice on top of it with tongs.
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