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 ...
Down where I grew up, breakfat was often plantains fried in butter and sprinkled with sugar. The plantains could be had for the pickin’.
great story
My mother wasn’t taught that lesson. She grew up on a farm. Between what they grew, raised and what the gill nets caught in Lake Superior they had plenty. If you left something on your plate, that was all right, pigs gotta eat, too!
She never got any of the choicest parts. Her family were “old country” with famine in living memory. My great grandmother was just over four feet tall because she was so deprived growing up. The men ate first because if they didn’t eat, nobody ate. Mom still doesn’t know if her first try at baking a cake (Dark chocolate cake with seven minute frosting made on a wood stove!) was any good. Like I said, the men ate first...
In Missouri it was Spaghetti Red. Spaghetti with tomato juice and navy beans. Beans first then the spaghetti on top. Momma made it a little more Southern by putting it on cornbread. Nothing could be better on a cold cold day. My other favorite was a can of peas, diced fried potatoes, some hamburger, maybe a few diced carrots and tomato sauce or tomato soup... a luxury meal! Then there is the universal comfort food good any time of day, cornbread and milk!
***He loved pickled pigs feet and use to buy them when I was a kid. No thanks...:O) ****
I was in a grocery store not long ago. They had pickled pig feet AND pickled pig lips.
Also some Pork brains in Milk Gravy.
I guess if you are hungry enough...
things she had saved from my childhood I took...
There’s one sitting on my counter right now, getting rubbery, loads of eyes and starting to sprout roots. Going to pot it tomorrow, after reading your post.
They probably did that also...
Hey GG - my mom also had that. Except she said the ice man would cut the block to size - and knew the size of everyone’s ice box. But perhaps there were only two sizes!?
I mentioned to her that I guess back then you never had a REAL cold glass of anything - no ice for the tea, soda, whatever. (She laughed - SODA!?) But the kids would crowd around the ice man (horse-drawn) and he would make sure to have extra shavings for the kids to have!
She said the milk man had a truck, but the Sheny man (sp?) had a mule. Her mom felt bad for him, so would always have something that the kids could bring out to him.
On milk days my old man said he would sneak down early and drink the cream that rose to the top before his mom could bring it in! Usually he would tell this story as he was drinking from one of the plastic creamers in the restaurant!
Another embarassing moment would be when mom would tuck the leftover rolls or bread in a paper napkin to bring back home. “No sense wasting it as they’ll just throw it out anyway”. And once home she would wrap it in a washed out bread bag to keep it fresh. (”Baggies”? - What are those?)
Those frugal habits die hard. In both her winter and summer home she has spots for the washed bread bags and the washed and smoothed out aluminum foil that she will use over and over!
OUCH!!
:(
People got desperate during the depression. I remember reading about a man found up Largo Canyon in San Juan County, NM. He was found laying over a partially butchered calf, a bullet hole through his head.
Like I mentioned, wild meat was a Godsend. Antelope, deer, elk. The game wardens had one heck of a time trying to keep poachers from killing all game out of an area.
But then there was the rabbit plague, millions of rabbits and few coyotes to eat them! Kiss your gardens goodby!
Hunger had nothing to do with eating pigs feet. Heh. Didja EVER meet my mom? She cooked it...you ATE it!
:)
That was the attitude that kept us strong and safe as a people. Even during the depression crime was not at the rates they are now...
My mom has her “memoirs” on her computer. She’ll think of things and jot a note to herself and later-on add it in. She always says “I suppose that is dumb...” but obviously we all tell her to keep at it.
Those frugal habits die hard.
My depression era parents and relatives frequently would get accusations of being cheap.
They would simply reply, we are resourceful.
ping
That’s funny, but I wasn’t thinking about the taste so much as the nutritional value. Apparently, judging from my aunt’s diminutive frame and defective heart, her dirt diet was grossly inadequate for a growing child.
Civil War writings show that some starving people would clean unbroken corn kernels from horse droppings to boil and eat! There were also “clay eaters’ usually in Tennessee that would add dirt to there meals for it’s minerals.
Prisoners of the Japanese during WW2 lived on very meager rationing and enjoyed finding worms in their gruel,sometimes.
When a person is starving , like N. Korea, people will eat anything and everything.
My Dad Born 1899, on a Hardscrabble farm. living through the Depression and WW2 said when/if starving, a person would consider a skunks a$$ a banquet
I pray to God that our great country never sees that come to pass.
FUBO
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