[Kirkwood]

During the worst of it, my father’s family ate cucumbers, mustard sandwiches, and hot milk and rice gruel. My mother’s family was better off because they ate cracked eggs that they couldn’t sell.

[napscoordinator]

mustard sandwiches,

My Mother also ate these with her 10 person family. When we were younger, she wanted our family to sorta experience what they did so that we appreciated what we ate. BIG PROBLEM THOUGH......We loved them. lol.

[One Name]

Bacon grease sandwiches. My grandmother got sent out to work and live with another farm couple because her folks couldn’t feed all the kids. The woman she worked for would inspect her potato peelings to make sure none of them would snap or she would get in trouble for wasting potatos.

[tiki]

I didn’t know that Ritz crackers were new then. My mother’s main story about the depression involved Ritz crackers.

My mother was one of 10 children and she was very lucky because her best friend’s widowed mother had a small pension and made sure that my mother had lunch every day and often that was her only meal.

One day she came home from school and her mother was crying because their youngest sister hadn’t had anything to eat all day. My mother went to the corner grocery store whose owners were so good to her family and stole a box of Ritz crackers. It haunted her all her life and she was still very ambivalent about it because her sister needed food but she stole from someone who had treated she and her family well.

We used to spend every other summer in her home town and the corner store was still there and we spent a lot of money in that store. She did tell them what she did and she tried to make amends and they said that they knew what she’d done and understood.

[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.

[Georgia Girl 2]

We are Irish and my dad said some nights all they had was potatoes. My Mom said sometimes they just had cornbread with milk on it. Meat was a luxury.