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 ...
Opps - see my post 215. My brother (lives near mom) does have some on video, but mom is more comfortable doing it herself. And her mom has a few things written down as well (Now Grandma’s is a story! Spending weeks by herself beginning at the age of 10 tending the goats in Norway, coming to America at the age of 16 by herself not knowing anyone here, etc.....)
lol. Sounds like it was good enough.
soda was an extremely rare treat, and thats later on in the depression for many of them.
well, good night!
The difference between buying seed potato's and using your own is that seed potato's will give you an uniform potato...using your own with eyes the potatoes could be different shapes but still good potatoes...the plant would grown to about 2 1/2 feet, but we used to plow in the goat barn stuff every year also which made everything grow big.
my zinnias were over 5 foot tall when flowering. You harvest when the plant dies back, but if you like small new potato's you'd spade up the plant take a few off the root and set the plant back down in the ground. The skin is so delicate you can just wipe it off with your hands. I'd eat small potatoes while working in the garden. If you want to store some, you don't wash off the dirt, just wipe off with your hands and leave out in the sun for a few days, that allows the skin to harden and don't wash as that takes bacteria off that helps preserve the potato..
You wash the potato when your ready to eat them...I loved spading for potatoes in the fall. Some roots would have 7 or 8 potato's on them..you use a spading fork not a shovel.
Good luck on your planting, put in a window that gets some sun...eye side up when planting...if they are shooting, plant that side up...
1932 -1964 my DAD was engineer at Ice Plants in Miami and South Beach, Royal Palm Inc..
During WW2 they supplied ice to the hotels around the Miami and the Beach where all the Servicemen were housed. Each night he brought ice to our house and the neighbors.
During the war we raised our own vegetables, chickens, turkeys, ducks and rabbits. We also fished a lot in the surrounding waters.
“I pray to God that our great country never sees that come to pass.”
People think these hardships are from long-ago. The young gal that cuts my hair is from South Vietnam. When the North Vietnamese took over they asked her dad (former ARVN officer) to come down to the police station to ask him some questions.
Two years later they finally heard that he was still alive, but in a re-education camp. After another year they were able to write and receive letters. I think it was four years until they saw him.
She said her brothers would get a big ball of rice in the morning and I think at dinner. Then they would go find work in the fields. Her mom and her would get medium sized balls of rice and would spend the days begging. Her little sister would get food if their begging went well. Her little sister died of starvation. She said they had been a fairly wealthy family before the North took over.
Hard to imagine that at the same time I would come home from school and eat a bowl of Captain Crunch watching Hogan’s Heros after school.
Their frugal ways sure stuck with them. I had an aunt that could slice a 9” pie into 16 slices with no trouble at all doing it. My best friend’s mother would get 10 burgers from one pound of ground chuck and not add fillers- serve on a biscuit, but you only got one, her father got two. The same lady would slice a tomato paper thin. I never said anything but when I would see people doing that I would always know those folks had seen hard times for sure.
Even knowing what you mentioned, the MSM still condones the privileged idiots at OWS!
God Bless and stay safe.
Your right, if your hungry enough everything taste like steak...
Clara ate higher on the hog during the Depression than we don today.
Rest assured, the kids likely call it by the right name behind your back.
***I guess if you know how to fix it, suppose to be really good and tender***
Beef tongue is excellent meat! No fat, sliced thin. You would be surprised how much “corned Beef” is really beef tongue.
Good!!
Good night!
Pray for America...
My brother worked at the poultry shop. (he was 10 years older than me) the shop had all manner of fowl and rabbits live in cages..you picked out the one you wanted and came back 2 hours later and it was cleaned and ready for cooking. My brother did the gutting and such on everything bought at the shop. Thats all they sold, live animals. You knew what you picked was not a sick animal and cleaned well...he was never crazy about eating chicken..
An old Army favorite, when I was in the Army we had that at least once a week for breakfast. One of my Aunts had a recipe from the depression days, it was spaghetti, but instead of a regular pasta sauce she would put in a 2 lb block of chili(they used to sell chili in blocks, very similar in looks to a 2 pound block of orange grease)and hamburger. She called it goulash, I have no idea what the real name of it was, but it was tasty and filling and you wouldn't get skinny on it, that's for sure.
I don't know whether to laugh or cry. All these posts about poor folk food from way back when but that's what we eat now days. Society has grown so accustomed to prepacked foods and take out that many don't know how to cook anymore.
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