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 ...
Polk Salad Annie
Some of you all never been down South too much...
I’ gonna tell you a little story, so you’ll understand where I’m talking about
Down there we have a plant that grows out in the woods and the fields,
and it looks something like a turnip green.
Everybody calls it Polk salad. Now that’s Polk salad.
Used to know a girl that lived down there and
she’d go out in the evenings to pick a mess of it...
Carry it home and cook it for supper, ‘cause that’s about all they had to eat,
But they did all right.
In January the top of the pile doesn’t settle and you have to knock it off with a stick before you can sit down.
Leastwise, that’s the way my father, born in 1928, explained it.
Regarding the bag of sugar packets — in Sun City (huge retirement community near Phoenix — the restaurants can’t keep those types of things on the tables. The old people steal them all!
I know I must have, but I can't remember eating anything else before I was five years old. Seriously.
There were sixteen of us in the house then, by the way.
We do a ground beef version that we mix with mashed potatos and corn. Kinda like a shepherds pie without baking it.
Mom made the chipped beef verion every once in a while but mostly we had creamed tuna on toast with peas. yum....
My mom and aunt still swear the best pie they had was made by their Grandma. As kids they were down to the country summer cabin and all that was in the pantry was flour, sugar, lard and a can of fruit cocktail. Their dad went to get some food and grandma made a fruit cocktail pie....
My siblings and I ate sugar sandwiches back in the fifties. When years later we told our mother how much we liked them, she professed to not remember making them for us. I don’t know if she was embarrassed or what.
We farmed peanuts and had pecan trees so there was plenty of peanut butter and pecan butter. Do you know how expensive a little bitty jar of “gourmet” pecan butter costs these days?!?
I was making cracklings the other day and forgot about them. There’s still smokey soot in the oven. I’m more upset about not getting the treat than the mess left behind.
I think I was ten years old before I bought new nails in a hardware store, it wasn’t lack of money, it was just it never occurred to me to buy nails. There were plenty laying around and in the wood, we kids used to build things.
I remember my grandfather doing that with cornbread. He sure loved it. He called store bought milk “sweet milk”. I got the heels of the white bread loaf when I ate mine. It was a treat to me. Thanks for bringing back those memories!
Crushed Ritz crackers and butter are delicious as a substitute for breading on baked fish.
As Sipsey in “Fried Green Tomatoes” said, “The secret’s in the sauce.”
I love the pic of Montana on your home page, too. :)
I feel the same way. :)
We still had that here until about 5 years ago when the station was sold. All you had to do was call up the radio station and tell them you had something to sell or was looking for something and they announce it.
Juice doesn’t run down your arms with those nasty cardboard ‘maters from the store.
Crushed Ritz crackers (not too fine) are great in corn pudding.
Could you hold off a Swat Team?
Why do you think that local police and sheriff depts have, systematically for years, been given free military equipment and vehicles - many, even tanks - and extra funds to maintain SWAT Teams? It won't be our 'military' for door to door. It will be SWATS.
And if you know history, and are watching the news, you'll know that there will be plenty of people who would, enthusiastically, don the helmets and grab the big guns and play Nazi against their neighbors.
The prudent thing is to not have storage goods where they can be easily found. Maybe a little stash they can find and think they cleaned you out, but down through the ages, wise people know how to secure survival goods.
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