This Is What People Ate When They Had No Money During The Depression

TBI ^ | 11-18-2011 | Vivian Giang

[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>

[piasa]

My grandmother called those “toad-in-the-holes.”

[Bellflower]

You can grow marijuana with grow lights in your garage and then take the money you make and buy food.

Thanks, but no thanks. I try not to sell or give anything away that I myself feel is wrong. I would, though, like a hemp dress I saw in a hemp store but it was too expensive for my budget. I also have hemp protein in the frig right now and it is very good for you but a little hard to eat.

[firebrand]

I have to laugh at the current bar food called “chicken fingers.” My grandmother used to cook the chicken feet in broth and give them to us as a treat.

[3D-JOY]

You are so right. Isn’t this a nice change from all the politics and government corruption?

I am thinking of noodles, peas and bacon...My husband asked me to make it like MOM did. She told me how, but I never succeeded in making it as well..

I like to think it was because I just couldn’t serve bacon ends and pieces and with all the bacon fat left in the pot when the cooked noodles were added!

Memories are good tonight!

[GeronL]

My dad had to walk miles, probably uphill both ways to the store to buy that block of ice and carry it home. He says. lol. Sometimes his stories would get a little far-fetched (especially when he drank) but at least they would still be entertaining.

[Bellflower]

Seems to me that you are a wealth of information. Do you have your own site?

[GeronL]

History that might repeat itself fairly soon....

[goat granny]

I remember mayonnaise sandwiches for lunch, if lucky, had lettuce on it...but loved them...Dinner=large ring bologna, mashed potatoes and some vegetable...it was good. A great meal all my kids love. In frying pan, 1 lb hamburger, browned, add 1 pkg philly cream cheese until melted, one can of tomato soup 1/2 can of h2o, Pour over egg noodles and bake at 350. Mom made her own noodles, and it was my job to uncurl them. (salt goulash to taste when plated). Freezes well also.(forgot, cook noodles for about 4 minutes.)

Sugar sandwiches also....just sugar on white bread. Hubby loved bacon grease on toast...This was at the tail end of depression, circa: early 1940's. dad was lucky and worked for the city as a mounted cop...the cities actually printed their own money called script. You would take the script and buy what you needed. The store would then turn in the script to the city to get paid in cash...Some stores wouldn't take script, so you shopped at the one's that would.

[Ruy Dias de Bivar]

**If the SHTF, I won’t be in near the trouble city folk will.**

Don’t bet on it! My deceased brother-in-law was raised on a ranch in West Texas. They kept a cellar full of home canned goods to feed themselves and the hired hands in the winter.

One day, during WWII someone dropped a dime on them and the government agents raided the ranch, claiming they were “food hoarding”.. They confiscated every bit of food they could and left them with nothing.

How did they survive? Back in the hills they had a second cellar hidden and it was full of home grown produce.

[goat granny]

It takes several years to produce, but asparagus is prolific and seeds itself so your patch keeps on growing bigger...It will produce until you get tired of eating it and then it will just go to seed if not cut. Old plants never die, the asparagus just gets fatter as it ages..

I made the mistake with my patch to mulch it one year to keep the weeds from growing. It killed the plants.

[dancusa]

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.

I miss my Memere. She taught me how to fish when I was 7. She was born in 1903. Every summer we used drive 14 hours to northern Maine and visit for a week. A very hardy lady who knew how to fish, farm and gather.

[goat granny]

any grease from cooking was put in a coffee can and the stores bought it by the pound for the war effort...The whole country worked to defeat the nazi and japan...You would also grow victory gardens in the back yard...

I still have my old ration book someplace. There was one book for every member of the family...mine still had some stamps in it.

[magslinger]

My dad used to tell us he got so tired of corn bread and honey for breakfast that he once refused to eat it and it was still there when he got really hungry that night.

You only got one chance to turn something to eat down in my dad's family. With 10 brothers and sisters, it you didn't eat it, someone else would.

[goat granny]

tender greens from the dandylion would make a salad, men also found out how to make wine from them....

[GeronL]

I bet there was a lot of trading back then, someone who didn’t need sugar trading it for something they did want.

[goat granny]

that brings up the memory of toast cubed and soaked in warm milk...little salt and pepper...was tasty..

[GOP Poet]

me too :-D. Great idea. Spoons up for Moms & Grandmas!!

[Kate_Malloy]

We had eggs from our chickens, but some of our other meals consisted of borscht (beet soup); a can of peas drained and heated with milk with a little butter, salt and pepper; can of tomatoes heated with pieces of bread; heated milk with pieces of toast (graveyard stew as my Dad called it); and I remember loving sandwiches with butter and sugar.

Actually, I remember taking sandwiches to school that were made from most anything we might have had left over from the night before meal. We had bread with every supper so that whatever we ate would stretch to feed our very large family.

[GeronL]

I hear that. My dad probably got taught a lesson because he was a small kid. He wasn’t getting anything else until he ate THAT meal. :p

[RinaseaofDs]

Bookmarking.

I can’t thank you all enough for this thread. I miss my grandmother.