Dec292011
Could you stomach these Great Depression meals?
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With all the talk about food storage and growing our own food, I did a little digging around to find out what some people ate during America’s Great Depression of the 1930′s. Surprisingly, a few of these were made by my mother and grandmother, traditions, I’m sure, from a more frugal era. I still have a soft spot for Chipped Beef on Toast! How many of these are familiar to you, and do you have any others to add to the list?
Milk toast
Chipped beef on toast
Cucumber and mustard sandwiches
Mayonnaise sandwiches
Ketchup sandwiches
Hot milk and rice
Turtle/tortoise
Gopher
Potato soup – water base, not milk
Dandelion salad
Lard sandwiches
Bacon grease sandwiches
Sugar sandwiches
image by Tony the Misfit
Hot dogs and baked beans
Road kill
One eyed Sam – piece of bread with an easy over egg in the center
Oatmeal mixed with lard
Fried potatoes and hot dogs
Onion sandwich – slices of onion between bread
Tomato gravy and biscuits
Deep fried chicken skin
Cornbread in milk
Gravy and bread – as a main dish
Toast with mashed potatoes on top with gravy
Creamed corn on toast
Corn mush with milk for breakfast, fried corn mush for dinner
Squirrel
Rice in milk with some sugar
Beans
Fried potato peel sandwiches
Banana slices with powdered sugar and milk
Boiled cabbage
image by Blue Mountains Library
Hamburger mixed with oatmeal
American cheese sandwich, ‘American’ cheese was invented because it was cheap to make, and didn’t require refrigeration that may or may not exist back then.
Tomato gravy on rice
Toast with milk gravy
Water fried pancakes
Chicken feet in broth
Fried bologna
Warm canned tomatoes with bread
Butter and sugar sandwiches
Fried potato and bread cubes
Bean soup
Runny eggs with grits
Butter and grits with sugar and milk
Baked apples
Sliced boiled pork liver on buttered toast (slice liver with potato peeler)
Corn meal mush
Spaghetti with tomato juice and navy beans
Whatever fish or game you could catch/hunt
Tomato sandwiches
Hard boiled eggs in white sauce over rice
Spam and noodles with cream of mushroom soup
Rag soup: spinach, broth and lots of macaroni
Garbanzo beans fried in chicken fat or lard, salted, and eaten cold
Popcorn with milk and sugar – ate it like cereal
Lessons learned from this list? Stock up on ingredients for bread, including buckets of wheat. Bread, in some form, is one of the main ingredients for many of these meals. Second, know how to make different types of bread. Next, have chickens around as a source for meat and eggs, and if possible, have a cow or goat for milk. Another lesson is to have a garden that will provide at least some fresh produce, and plant fruit trees and bushes. Finally, don’t waste anything, even chicken feet!
© 2011, thesurvivalmom. All rights reserved.
(207) Readers Comments
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Linda
My Dad remembered a time when he and his cousins were sick of fish and wanted gravy. The next morning they had fish gravy with toast. I never had that, but Dad would boil potatoes or noodles and add a can of cream of chicken soup. Mom taught me to make hamburger soup where you boiled the hamburger and added potatoes and carrots. I loved that with jelly bread. I never knew sugar bread was a depression food. I just thought it was something Mom picked up somewhere and really loved. As long as our home was warm and there was food, Mom was happy. As long as Mom was happy, I was happy.
Denise
My dad used to make fried bologna and for our traditional Polish Christmas meal, we eat rice and milk. I too didn’t realize that came from the depression.
Julie
Fried bologna is about the only thing my dad can cook! Still love fried bologna sandwiches and rice with milk sugar and if we had it cinnamon!
SueW
My mom was a kid during WW11 in England the big deal was a slice of white bread, whatever butter they could get their hands on and topped with sugar. Sugar Sandwich viola!
Howard
In Liverpool that would have been known as ; A SUGAR BUTTY.There were also, CHIP BUTTYS, and JAM BUTTYS…
Oh and German bombers.
Best regards.
Howard.
Karen
Goodness, we had tons of these foods growing up (I’m in my mid 20s). I never thought of them as poor man food. In our family I suppose it had just become tradition from my great-grandparents and grandparents.
We made fried bologna all the time growing up. The middle rises off the pan when it’s cooking so we always called them bologna hats.
Milk toast was like french toast without the crispy outer edge that eggs give you. We used it in place of biscuits or rolls at dinner often.
Hot milk and rice was a super filling breakfast, akin to oatmeal or cream of wheat. (I believe rice and milk with sugar is the exact same thing, so I don’t know why it’s posted twice)
Dandelion salad (also dandelion greens, wine, and jam)
Hot dogs and beans. That was childhood at its best!
“One Eyed Sam” or as we simply called it, eggs and toast.
Grits or eggs and grits
spaghetti
“Rag soup” ie: noodle soup
Hunting. That is certainly not depression era, that is meals since the dawn of time.
Kate
I’m also in my mid-twenties, and grew up on the exact same foods! Mmmm…rice with milk…that was a staple at my grandma’s house. I never knew it was out of the ordinary until I visted my fiance’s family and put milk on my rice, they thought I was so strange! It’s sooooo good with a little sugar.
Fried bologna…”eggs in a frame” (one eyed sam)…bean soup…venison…I wouldn’t trade those for the world
I’ve only had gravy and bread as a main dish once, because my dad mentioned eating it as a kid and I wanted to see what it was like. He said they’d eat it when they ran out of grocery money. Slice up a loaf of white bread, douse it with gravy, and serve. They called it “gravy bites.”
Steve Coombes
Have to agree on the milk on rice. I used to love putting milk along with a little sugar and cinnamon on cold leftover white rice when I was a kid. Still enjoy it today.
sharon the cook
What a treat to see so many things listed that I ate growing up and are still my comfort foods. being born in 1940 it was still a staple part our diet. I kow that my father didnt have a job and made bread eveyday for his family easy to see why
Patsy Shoffner
Crackers fried in melted butter until brown was one of my favorites during the depression time.
Karen
Many of the dishes listed my mother fixed while I was growing up, so they are not the least bit foreign to me. Many I still fix today for my family. Plain simple eating I say.
Missy
Yes we had a lot of these things too. I grew up in the 60s and 70s. We ate:
Bread with butter and sugar was one of my favorites. We ate “Hole in One Eggs” which was buttered bread with a hole cut out of the middle and fried with an egg in the hole. The hole was fried separately and we dipped it in the egg yolk.
My husband loves crackers and milk. I eat leftover rice with milk and sugar for breakfast.
Mom used to brown bread crumbs in butter and add tomatoes…called it “stewed tomatoes” I loved simple buttered noodles too. Our butter, of course, was margarine..
Terry
Had most on the list. I was born during WWII and my folks were poor for a long time after. One not on your list is mock apple pie, made with soda crackers. Or a flour and water paste, cooked, and sprinkled with sugar. My favorite cookbook was a depression era book called “You have nothing in the house but…”
Sylvia
I was born in 1958 to a father born shortly after the Great Depression. Seeing your list helps me understand some of the things we kids ate in the 1960s and 70s. Dad shared some stories with me about rations and bartering and more. Thanks for your enlightening article!
Phinecia
My grandfather grew up in the depression and STILL eats cornbread in milk. Another main stay they had was pinto beans…at every single meal my grandmother ever cooked there was always a pot of beans!
Leanne
I remember creamed just about anything on toast/biscuits. I remember when my mom started her asparagus – it takes about 3 years before much is produced but that first couple of years we had a few stalks. Guess what – creamed asparagus on toast. Any vegetable or meat that needed to be stretched for a large family was creamed or in a gravy and always on bread of some sort. I also remember many of the “meals” on the list from my own childhood – perhaps they were introduced by my parents who lived thru the Great Depression.
Susie
Im 55 and I remember eating sugar and milk with our rice, sugar bread, boiled cabbage, ketchup sandwiches and a healthy slice of tomato on our peanut butter sandwiches. My husband grew up eating peanut butter & bologna sandwiches. Sometimes mom would make “turkey tracks” which was basically rolled out homemade pie crust dusted with sugar and cinnamon and cut into strips before baking. Delicious! We ate what my dad caught fishing and what my brothers shot in the woods. I hate to think of all the buckshot I probably swallowed back then. Once I came home to find a headless snapping turtle hanging from a branch on a tree in our back yard. Yep, supper!!
P J
Depression Foods I also remember -
fried green tomato sandwiches
creamed tuna on toast, w/or w/o leftover bits of veggies or meat
rice w/margerine & pepper
ketchup soup
Cheryl
Macaroni and milk! We ate it as kids, and I still love it.
Cook the macaroni, melt butter on top of it, then add milk to barely cover macaroni. Heat until just warm, then lots of salt & pepper. YUM!
Susan
My mother–born in 1932–remembers pouring vinegar on bread to eat.
Bruce
I’ve ate and still do eat alot of these dishes.
Jack Taylor
Both of my Parents were raised during the depression. My Father born in 1921, Mom in 1924. They wed after the war in 1948 and started their family in 1952 with the birth of my brother.I came along a few years later, Dad was in the Army Air Corps, and was recalled for Korea, and decided to make a career of it. While growing up, we were subject to the Military once-per-month pay schedule. Dad was TDY (overseas) quite a bit when my brother and I were quite young, mainly because of the pay bonuses for the duty. Dad was trying very hared to provide the best for his family. We ate sandwiches made from miracle whip dusted with sugar, tomato soup, potato soup, many, many pinto beans and cornbread meals. For a treat, we sometimes got a strawberry preserves sandwich as dessert. One assignment my Father took moved the while family to Alaska for a four year stint. That was probably the best move he made for us. A group that worker went hunting the first winter we were there. Dad got a moose, and we had to buy a freezer to store all the meat. For the next three and a half years, our family of four ate fairly well because of that, It eased the financial burden for groceries to the point where we actually ate very well. I’ll never forget or resent the simple, hearty meals my Mother made. Food storage and hoarding were pretty much ingrained into me my whole life. My ex-wife never did “get it” (she was much younger than I), and is just now (two years after the divorce) beginning to get a grip that things are not all hunky-dory, and is scrambling to keep her head above water. Good, simple meals can be made wholesome with a little imagination and creativity. Her biggest problem is her kids are picky eaters and if they don’t like it, she would prepare something else, wasting the first item. Drove me nuts. Hopefully, they will wise up before it all goes south.
Sharon
These were common in my house growing up. My mom was born in 1931, my dad in 1926. My dad grew up in the Wisconsin northwoods, my mom in dust-bowl Oklahoma. I was the last of 8 kids born, and I grew up in the 70s. My dad and brothers were great hunters, and my grandfather was an excellent trapper and forager. I wish I’d grilled my dad more before he passed away, and my mom was gone of cancer right after I graduated highschool, but I still learned a lot of lessons growing up, the biggest one is having a great big garden! My family of 5 always eats well in the summer.
And I NEVER let my pantry or fridge go bare…a bit of a security blanket after you’ve grown up with not much.
Something missing off the list is hamburger gravy either over bread or mashed potatoes, and there was always a side of green beans my mom had canned over the summer (not that I liked them. LOL!). My mom made HB gravy at least twice a week for dinner…she could make a pound of HB stretch to fill all of our hungry bellies. Mom’s homemade bread and rolls were amazing, and when I was really little I remember my parents having a few hogs. I know at some point we had a dairy cow and some chickens, and rabbits, but I don’t remember them. My brothers would bring home squirrels, pheasant and quail, and we all knew how to fish from a very young age. Let’s not forget venison, if we were lucky we’d have two or more in the freezer after Thanksgiving hunting season.
Kerrie
Haha…I love it because they had less heart disease and cancer back then even eating that food, it says a lot about the rubbish that is eaten now days!
Mary
My parents were very resourceful or else we would of probably starved. We were lucky, my Dad shot an elk every season for venison and during the summer my mom would go fishing. They also had a very large vegetable garden and my mom canned a lot of what we ate.It was so much better than anything in a can from the grocery store. I remember my Dad eating cold pinto bean sandwiches. We also had rice with cream, butter and cinnamon for breakfast sometimes and also fried bologna and eggs.. I still love biscuits and cream gravy.
We never felt poor or deprived in any way.
Kris
Chicken feet are actually very good to put in your bone broth. Lots of good stuff in chicken feet. Yes, don’t waste a thing. I could probably live on a lot of those things. A few sound truly horrible, though. Good post. Thanks!
Margie Hurt
I’m 66 and grew up on that food. I still like boiled cabbage, fried Spam and mayonnaise sandwiches. I’ve eaten most of the things on that list. I think that’s one of the reasons I’m healthy today. I didn’t eat processed foods as a child.
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Laura
I grew up eating a lot of what is on that list (still eat most of it too). My Dad and Mom were born right at the start of the great depression, so they grew up with their parents (my grandparents) making many of these dishes. What they grew up with, spilled over into their adulthood.
Penny
I was born in the -80s, but I recognize half to two thirds of this food here, and versions thereof. Some, like mustard and cucumber sandwiches bring back memories to everyone who remembers Enid Blyton’s children’s novels. I even cook some versions of the listed items with and for my husband. My maternal grandparents helped raise me while my single mother worked overtime to keep a roof over our heads, and my grandfather hunted, fished and grew a lot of their own food, and my grandmother foraged and processed the rest. I also remember gleaning peas from the local land owner’s fields as a kid after the combine got through, as my grandparents used those, too.
I bring this up, because foraging is rarely mentioned as a survival strategy for low times. Foraging for mushrooms and berries in the woods is still a prolific national pastime for Finns during harvest season, as you can legally pick mushrooms and berries without the land owner’s permission, if you’re outside the immediate vicinity of their yard. Italian chefs pay big bucks for certain types of mushrooms, so some people spend a great deal of time gathering those specifically.
One thing Finns I knew growing up eat a lot, as it is readily available, even if it isn’t a time of fiscal crisis, is nettle soup. Young tender stinging nettles cooked until soft in a bit of water, with some milk, and potato or corn starch to thicken. It was usually served with half a hard-boiled egg and some bread, that was either dipped in the soup, or served with things like homemade pickles of some kind. Seems to have the bread, milk and eggs in common with the above list. Some of my first childhood memories involve me going to the garden to pick nettles (with gloves, a small pair of scissors, and an empty plastic jelly bucket) so my Mummi could make me yet another soup.
A little unrelated, as the conditions in Europe were a bit different, so this was during war years… My paternal great-great-grandmother Anna, who was in charge of a large household during the peak shortages of WWII, served a lot of inventive five course meals at her estate. A sample menu, as reported in the memoirs of a contemporary, younger relative; crows caught from the field disguised as more conventional game birds (probably squab), fish caught ice fishing from her lake, veggies and some kind of fruit preserves from the dwindling supply in the root cellar and soup from mushrooms dug out from under the snow from a patch she remembered seeing earlier in fall. In war-ridden Europe, food was in short supply, but the laws of the land in a lot of countries allowed for expansive foraging of wild food, that was preserved by everyone who had the ability to do so.
H. (eyes wide open)
Penny, Thank you so much for sharing your story. You are right foraging is a valuable way to acquire food. I live in a fairly densely populated area. I am afraid if times got really bad these foods would become sparse.
I just learned that stinging nettles are a wonderful way to combat sinus issues or allergies. We have stinging nettles everywhere. I must try them. Boy do they sting, I would have never guessed that they were edible
Penny
Nettles are one of the most versatile plants I know of! They can be dehydrated and used for teas, hair rinses, added to bread dough… the fibers in older, mature plants are strong, and can be woven into fabric that was considered so luxurious in medieval times, that there were laws in some European countries, banning peasants from making and wearing nettle fabrics.
I can’t find the link right now, but there are blogs out there with “urban foraging” in their keywords, who specialize in densely populated area foraging. If you’re curious, you might even be able to find a group in your area.
My references list uses for leaves and seeds in stews, pancakes (green pancakes sound icky, but are really good), bread and soups, and can be used for making juice, tea, tinctures, hair rinse, nettle syrup, mead and ale. Dried nettle powder can be sprinkled into foods like any other herbs. You can add nettles to water for an oral rinse, mix with shampoo, use in poultices and topical treatments for arthritic joint pain. Nettles are also said to have an allergy relieving effect, as well as a generally strengthening effect on the immune system, just to mention a few uses. It’s been used in a comprehensive list of medicinal uses, too, and historically, stinging nettles (devil’s leaf) have been used to ward off evil and break spells. In some places, witches were burned with a shirt made out of stinging nettles on her, to ward off any last ditch spells she might attempt to rescue herself with.
Okay, I need to stop geeking out about my favorite plant!
Just don’t pick nettles next to compost bins or animal pens/shelters, as the nitrogen rich soil will create nitrates within the plant. And if you have kidney or heart issues, or diabetes, it may be wise to consult with a doctor before trying nettles in excess for medicinal purposes. I’m not a doctor, so I can’t claim I’m an expert.
J'Aime
A one eyed Sam, at our home – aka. a Birds Nest , Yummo!
Sue
How about Velveeta Cheese Rarebit? I loved the melted cheese poured over cubed toast. If we were lucky Mom would chop some hard boiled eggs, and if we were REALLY lucky- crumbled bacon.
brenda
I still have milk toast, milk and rice, fried bologna, etc. It is my comfort food when I feel low because I dont have the money for a refrigerator full of food. I do not however, remember spam being mentioned during the depression days..
Little Miss Prepper
One major problem with stocking up on bread ingredients. What about us that CAN’T eat wheat, barley or rye? I am stocking up on rice, beans, peanut butter and oatmeal though.
Isabeau
My dad was born in 1926. My mom was born in ’31. They lived a lot of this stuff.
One of the things they ate was blood sausage. I helped my parents make it ( you freeze or smoke it) when I was younger and then cook it in a skillet. I don’t remember what was all in it, but there was lots of blood and bits of meat and lard.
It smelled awful when we “put it up” and smelled worse when we cooked it. It was one thing I never could learn to eat. Definitely one way to get your iron though.
Sharon
My parents were the same years!
my mom loved headcheese, I had forgotten about that. YUCK!
CT
My Dad used to eat Farm Sandwiches. Bread, mayo, lettuce, S & P.
Open face apple sandwiches. Bread, smear of applesauce and super thinly sliced apple (so everyone gets one), under the broiler. Updated it for my kids–inside a whole wheat pita & a sprinkle of cheddar-popped in the toaster oven.
Winnie
We use to eat onion, pickle, lettuce and mustard sandwiches – everything but the hamburger. I still eat hot cornbread crumbled into chunks and eaten with sugar and milk, yum!! We also had spam pancakes when we were young – you take a fried slice of spam and pour pancake batter around it for a surprisingly good breakfast. We were a family of 8 so sometimes money was scarce, but I don’t remember ever going hungry. We still have “farm dinners” where everything on the table comes from the garden. It’s like a free meal!
Smogzilla
I grew up on Mac n Velveeta cheese n SPAM.
grayfox114
Looking at these depression era meals, it’s now apparent to me that I lived through a depression in my early years! These meals were standard fare when I was growing up in the 50′s and 60′s! I still enjoy many of these items..
The Girls' Guide to Guns and Butter
Hey, I grew up in the Soviet Union with food shortages, so somewhat similar. Pig fat sandwiches for sure. Russians love them though. Smoked pig fat (belly?).
grandmaliz
I didn’t realize these were depression recipes, I thought it was just us being our weird selves! My favorite was mayonaise and peanutbutter sandwiches! Anyone remember surpluse food? I loved their peanut butter! #10 can of the best peanutbutter, just remember to mix in the oil. It was great mixing in the oil with the drill! LOL
Miranda
We called “one eyed sams” frog eyes. I can’t wait to make them for my son!
becky
we call ours “toad in the hole” and i have my boyfriend addicted to them!
Misti
I grew up eating a lot of these. BTW an onion sandwich is a good way to treat a cold or sinuses. Rice with milk and sugar add a little butter for taste and it is excellent.
Wanda
You find a LOT of Southerns still eat many of these, especially in rural areas. I have a turn of the century cookbook from my husbands grandmother with lots of frugal recipes using turtle, raccoon, rabbit, and lots of wild green, etc. I LOVE it.
becky
my grandpa moved in with my family when i was two and became the automatic babysitter. i remember eating many of these meals and he would always tell the story about why he had to eat certain things during the depression. this list brings back great memories.
Brijette
This list is very familiar to me. I am 41 now, and I remember my grandparents eating a lot of these things. We all laugh about the “Grandpa Schryver Special’. At almost every meal he would eat bread dipped in gravy- no matter what else was being served. I still tell my husband, “potatoes are just an excuse to eat gravy!” And Grandpa always had a plate of sliced onion next to him. I don’t think Grandma would have really needed to fix anything else- these would suffice. My Grandpa refused to eat fish, because he grew up so poor that he would have to fish for dinner or his family wouldn’t eat, and he grew sick of it. He was the first of 12 kids so you can imagine how hard it was to feed a family that big after the depression! My Grandma Mayberry always fed me toast with milk to dip it in. I still do that till this day. And creamed chipped beef over bread- delicious!! I agree with the commenter above who spoke of how healthy that generation was. My Grandparents were all very healthy until they were very old. I think it’s because they never ate pre-packaged foods. I learned to cook from my Grandma Schryver who made everything from scratch and wasted nothing.
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On
We are lots of these in the 50s. Big families and
we only bought what we could pay for with cash.
Sometimes Moms had to get creative toward the
end of the month.
We are a lot of soups from anything left over. If you
could chop it up, you could make a sandwich out
of it. My mom would save even a tablespoon of
leftover veggies and at the end if the week, mix
them all together, melt a bit of cheese on top and
tell us she’d eaten something similar at The Neiman’s
Tearoom. Sardines on saltines too. Cinnamon toast.
larry hellis
My father and mother were both born in 1920, and therefore lived through the Great Depression. My dad told me that these types of recipes grew out of necessity since most folks had little or no money to buy “normal” food they had to make do with what they could grow, trap, shoot, forage, “midnight shop”or handouts from the government (commodities). Mothers had to be creative to feed their families and turned to some old-timey farm recipes that their mothers and grandmothers may have used as well as simply combining whatever ingredients they had on hand.
Squirrel, rabbit, groundhog, and any fish or amphibian (frogs were easy for little ones to catch… everybody pitched in) were often, if dad and grampa were lucky, the main meal. Tomatoes were easy and took little room to grow and most people had a garden where they at least could grow enough to feed the family and neighbors, and can enough to last through the winter. My own favorite when I was growing up in the fifties and sixties was stewed tomatoes and day old bread with a little sugar. I liked it mostly because I helped mom weed the garden daily and can the tomatoes at the end of summer. Simple, but nearly a free meal since when she was young bakeries gave away day old bread, they grew the tomatoes, and the sugar (along with cheese, powdered milk, peanut butter, flour, butter, dried beans, and occasionaly tinned or dried meat) were available free of charge from the government. No one went too hungry when everyone chipped in.
Even when money wasn’t too tight when we came along, mom still cooked these recipes for us. We loved them then, and my kids learned to like them too. My oldest son still talks about grandmas’ bread and tomatoes and has his wife fix them for him today.
Ahh… the good old days…
Janice
A favorite sandwich of mine is a peanut butter and dill pickle sandwich. We also ate sugar sandwiches and I probably have hot rice with milk and sugar once a week. Another favorite is to make Cream of Wheat or Farina, place in a plastic container and let it firm up in the fridge. Take it out, slice and fry in some butter and serve sprinkled with sugar and cinnamon. Yum! Reading this article and the comments was a nice trip down memory lane.
idn
FRIED OATMEAL!
I missed the depression but collect old Woman’s Day magazines from the war ration times. This use for leftover oatmeal is great:
Just put it in a loaf pan, I use a bread pan. Refrigerate it until the next day. Slice it up like bread slices, it will be pretty solid. Fry in butter, both sides. Add maple syrup or some sugar and cinnamon.
I sometimes just make thick oatmeal at night and don’t even eat it. Just let it firm up to fry the next morning. It’s really great! Better than pancakes, kind of chewy.
Tammy
Wow! I was born in 1959 to a middle class family, lived in the suburbs, and never went without central air and heat, or meat at least once a day, and we never had a garden. I never even saw a mason jar and have still never eaten anything home-canned. I am learning now how to grow a garden, shoot a gun, chop firewood, dehydrate, vacuum seal, store food, and am soaking up survival info like a sponge. I’ve bought 3 cases of mason jars and will learn to can this summer. THANK YOU for these great ideas! I hope it’s true that when you’re really hungry, you’ll eat anything as I’ve been hopelessly spoiled.
Heather
I remember 75 % of this….some I still eat today…only 40 too lol…
jenn
My parents both were born in the middle of the depression…but felt the effects of the rations during the second world war. My father said the only time they had icing/frosting on a cake was for their birthdays because of the rationing of sugar. I grew up on a farm in the 70′s and 80′s and my mother, with the help of 4 children, preserved a lot of fruits and vegetables, baked everything including bread…..We had a freezer the size of dining table and a cellar full of jars preserves and pickles and a root cellar for potatoes and onions. Everything tasted so much better then. I am now making as much as I can from scratch and fresh foods.
Deborah
My stepfather was born in 1897 so he was in his 30″s during the Great Depression. He took over most of the cooking when he married my mother in the late 1960′s. We had all of the Depression dishes except for squirrel, gopher and roadkill. I never realized they were from the Depression. I just thought it was good eatin’. My dad also made hamburger mixed with onion soup on toast and creamed anything on toast. As for the health aspect of these foods?!? He lived until the age of 97 with all of his faculties. Great memories!