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 ...
We had a lot of ketchup or mayonnaise sandwiches. Spare ribs was often also macaroni and cheese, Campbell’s alphabet soup was a learning experience, I swapped the corn for lima beans with my brother. Jello outside on the window sill in winter. Boiled cod fish, watch out for bones. Boiled ham & cabbage, save the bone for soup. Childhood obesity was not a problem.
Yes, to the ironing of Christmas paper. Washed out plastic baggies and foil to reuse. I still feel a pang of guilt when I throw those out but that’s one thing I refuse to reuse now days.
I still have flour sack dish towels. They’re the best. The older they get, the softer they get. I remember having to wear flour sack dresses to school. The teachers probably knew what they were but thankfully the other students didn’t know.
My mom always made us green beans, potatoes, and tomato broth in a stew. Grilled cheese sandwiches, and bean soup every Friday (no meat allowed and none anyway).
My dad’s family had a few cows and some pigs and grew vegetables. They ate fairly well during the depression.
I keep giving my kids maps of the back roads but they just roll their eyes. All I can do is hope they never have to stop rolling their eyes.
I can remember quite a few depression stories from when I was a kid. The Robin, squirell, and rabbit population was a lot lower in those days. Families pooled together resources to make sure everyone was chlothed and fed. Gardening was not a hobby, it was survival.
Don’t have to hold off a Swat team.
All I have to do is take a significant divot out of one member.
If the next guy down the road takes a significant divot out of another member, and the third guy does the same, eventually they’re going to run out of enthusiasm.
Alexander Solzhenitsyn wrote of this.
Sorry. I wasn’t picking on or besmirching Waco, Texas at all.
In fact I’m not making any value judgements one way or the other about who was right or wrong - none.
I’m just talking about the logistics, and extrapolating that out to what would happen if it was instead of Mt. Carmel, what if it was one city block?
What if it was ten or twenty city blocks?
What if it was a large condominium apt complex with 1000 units?
They will not go door to door seizing goods. Heck, a good chunk of them would be killing each other before any of them would even try it.
Don’t expect the police/army to come and pick on you.
But be prepared enough so that you don’t have to call and ask the police/army to come and help you, because yur gonna be waiting one H of a long time!!
My father-in-law was well served by growing up in the north woods during the depression when he was taken prisoner in WWII. He was able to better survive because he knew what weeds were edible. His stories of he and a buddy sneaking around to pick the weeds so as not to be caught by either the Germans or other prisoners were chilling.
Just going over all the threads to make sure I answered all, the eyes are not the roots, they are what becomes the plant. Plant eye up with a hunk of potatoe attached...The potato feeds the plant until it grows roots...the potato is attached to the root system underground. If you have several eyes, make sure each eye has potato flesh attached and then plant each one, eye up and about 1/2 inch underground...good luck and if you pot your eyes use a good size pot for each one....I never potted potato but it sure is worth a try. I’d use a little bone meal in the dirt, we fertilized the garden from what we cleaned out of the goat barn, plowed in under then planted the garden. Our garden was great because of the barn cleaning..:O) GG
You were spoiled. My dad had no fridge and he walked 3 miles to school and 4 miles back, uphill both ways. lol. sorry about that...
Apparently here in Texas there is a lot of deer and wild pigs out there. I doubt there’ll be too many in a few years if the economy keeps collapsing.
Apparently here in Texas there is a lot of deer and wild pigs out there. I doubt there’ll be too many in a few years if the economy keeps collapsing.
ahahah - good plan!
I’ve read that nationwide, deer populations were at their lowest ever during the great depression - for that very reason.
I remember some hard times in the late 80’s (we might have been the only ones) when the local donut shop owner was a friend, we KNEW exactly when the bag of unsold donuts was going to be brought out. (of course if we were early we could get them in boxes inside the shop).
My dad worked at the landfill, Dr. Pepper had a promotion where 1 in 6 soda’s had a lid that said “Free Dr. Pepper”... bags of those lids ended up at the ... landfill... he was able to procure one of them once... heh... it was cheating but we were in the soda for a good while.
You left out what my Grandfather added, ‘in the rain and snow, with no shoes, so we ran from cow pie to fresh cowpie, to grab the warmth for our toes.’
Right, my dad never mentioned anything about corn oil, as far as I remember him saying lard and grease were the only things they were using back then.
OK, my dad wasn’t craving the cow pies, this is Texas after all, not as cold. lol.
.....
I guess owning good hunting land will be a good idea when SHTF but defending it will be tough. Probably have to make barter deals with other people, since they’ll likely be hunting there anyway.
Let two or three guys in to hunt.
You get 50% of the take.
Or if you don’t need the meat, then one (or all) of them need to chop wood for you for one hour to get the rights to hunt.
There are a million ways you could work it out. Me, myself, I’d be nervous about having armed people near me if they are desperate.
I think a form of social order would come out very quick simply out of necessity.
In the early sixties we picked a bunch of lambs quarters and cooked it like spinach. A neighbor turned us in to DHS who showed up and tried to take us kids away. My mother met them at the door with a baseball bat. We where not taken away!
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