[Slyfox]

When I was a kid, my dad worked in the shop for Fisher Body in Flint MI. My parents had ten children which meant resources were stretched real tight. So tight in fact that we qualified for surplus foods. I remember standing in line waiting for the oatmeal, butter, cheese, and dried milk. My mother, bless her heart made the best of a trying situation and would buy "whole" milk and add the dried milk to it, that way we'd get 2 gallons of milk out of the deal. But I will tell you she had a hard time whipping the dried milk to get rid of the lumps. When we drank it we had to sift it through our teeth. Fortunately, it did not taste bad.

On a house hunt we entered this one house that had probably nine bedrooms. Priced right. The realtor told us that the people living there at that time were a single mom and three daughters who were on food stamps. I couldn't help looking in the open cupboards in which held at least six packages of Pepperidge Farm cookies.

As a nine-year-old I understood the injustice of knowing that my parents were doing the difficult thing by not getting food stamps and that we were paying for that lady and her daughters to eat those expensive cookies.

Yeah, we got help from getting surplus foods but we also had to pay for someone else to get to splurge on cookies. It still chaffs my hide.

[NEMDF]

We also had powdered/dry milk as children. I always envied the kids who had bologna sandwiches, because ours were either PBJ or one slice of cheese with a little mustard on it. But it wasn’t until I was much older that I realized how hard she worked at it, and what a great job my mother had done, in feeding us on the little money she had.

[bgill]

I remember that surplus cheese and peanut butter. We were just this side of not being eligible but when all the eligible folks got theirs then they’d hand out the leftovers to anyone. Our school used all that government surplus and it was wonderful. Peanut butter on lunch trays everyday. Homemade yeast rolls with real butter!

We couldn’t afford regular milk so it was powdered milk. Gawd awful nasty stuff. I still won’t have it in the house unless it’s a small box used just for homemade yogurt. In high school, a neighbor gave us milk fresh from her milk cow. Ahhhh, the skies opened and the angels sang! OMG, there is nothing better than real cow milk. OK, sneaking the cream off the top was up there, too. I’d take a pint jar and shake it to make butter while watching tv at night. Sure, those were little things but it was little things that helped stretch the budget. People these days don’t understand that or can’t be bothered.