Great Depression Cooking

nice topic.

it might come in handy in the near future unfortunately

shes gr8 she makes me LOL

those tips could be useful

I was just thinking of her recently, wondering if she's still doing video! Yay!!!

Remember hot pan, cool oil, food won't stick. She didn't cover that. Oil will be real important as it significantly boosts the calories, and that was part of making do with less. I don't get cooking with frozen hotdogs though? Maybe that's just how she stores them. Bringing them out of the refrigerator and up to room temp for that dish will cut on cooking time.

If you turn potatoes too much, it makes them crumbly. Now since we have microwave ovens, you can precook the potatoes and let them cool in the refrigerator. Then later you chop them up to make really great hash browns or to reduce the cooking time for fried potatoes.

One of the worst jobs on farms was harvesting the small intestines of pigs to make casings for sausages. Everyone hated that job from what I've read. They use artificial casings for many sausages now, but they don't make as crispy a casing.

Did she add hot sauce?

Thanks, I think I will actually try this tomorrow.

Of course I will add lots of ketchup after it's done.

I hate hotdogs, but definitely cute.

we may very soon need this info as most of us - well our grandparents from that time era are deceased

I've made that recipe several times. It's surprisingly GOOD.

My husbands grandmother is 93 (maybe 94 we aren't 100% sure) she served in the royal navy, met her husband at war married and moved here to America.

The stories she tells are amazing. Though she forgets a lot of things she remembers the depression and war like it was yesterday.

She (when she could cook) still cooked many dishes that were from that era (as did her sister). Simple stuff and it is amazingly good.

Why would you peel the potato? When I live alone I have eaten a potato like that over the course of several days. Squirrel + potato + salt, is a real depression meal. Also ketchup and hot water is a good one too, IE depression soup. You would be surprised at what you can do. If you live anywhere even semi-rural, get your self a pellet gun and try eating some small/game or vermin, some aren't that bad at all.

My parents lived during the depression. My mom talked about eating samp, my dad talks about blood pudding, and his favorite was when they could afford meat, his mom would save the bloody juices from cooking the meat and set it on the table. Grandma and grandpa would have the meat, the kids got bread and could dip it in the juice.

There are some cookbooks on Amazon that are both recipes and stories about how people go by. I go one; going ot get the other two. Really good--and sobering--info in them.

You can get by a lot better than you'd ever think on beans and potatoes. Sounds like that was the staple of these families with 11 kids back in those days. Can you imagine having 11 kids to feed and NO MONEY? It is awesome how creative and hard-working they all were.

Good info to have just in case, and a good reminder of how good we have it today.

Hope the collapse happens before all these older people are dead. They'll be good teachers for us all.

You just reminded me I have a box of old cookbooks upstairs from my great aunt and a bunch of journals from the 1800s with recipes Ive been meaning to go through.

It's amazing to read those things and see how they did so much with so little!

I didn't live during the Great Depression, however, I did live thru some hard times with my family as a kid.

My mom was a single mother of 4 kids. She worked full time and earned anywhere from 1 dollar per day to 2.65 per hour, the most she ever earned.

We ate a lot of fried potatos, fried bread and a lot of beans. Our food supply always ran out around Wednesdays of each week, so we always spent a couple of days hungry.

On special occasions we had some type of meat with our meals. One meal I love to this day is rice with tomato 'gravy', fried bacon and fresh biscuits. I could eat that over a steak dinner any day.

We always sat at our kitchen table together in our 800 sq foot home and shared our meals. We were and still are a very close family. We didn't have a lot, but mom kept our home and clothes neat and clean and she always made everything cozy for us.

Now, looking back on my life, I wouldn't change a thing about how I grew up. We didn't have alot, but it made me appreciate everything in my life. Today I am thankful for not only the big things, but the little things as well. Like when I put gas in my car and I can fill the tank up each time instead of getting a dollar or two at a time.

And even though I can have a steak dinner now every night of the week if I wanted to, I still sometimes prefer the fried potatos or some nice rice and tomato gravy with a little bacon on the side.

:-)

i LOL when i think about all the wasteful fukks that will starve to death surrounded by food.


ew roadkill?!

ew dandilions?! its a weed!

this food is at its expiration date ew!

die pigs die.

My Gama went through the depression and she was a money saver and a prepper.

When she died she had stores of food under the house. What she stored the most was coffee.

She lived in a tent by the railroad tracks while my grandfather built the rail road tracks. Eventually my grandfather was driving those early trains.

:) When Italians make spaghetti, they often refer to the tomato based sauce as "gravy".

Yes in reality, she's making her version of sausage,onion, and fried potato stew. It's nothing novel, and common to many cultures in Western Europe. It is made cheap cheaply, has many of the building blocks for good nutrition, and with some commonly gathered greens from the yard like young dandelion, plantain(not the tuber), wild garlic, as a salad could sustain you cheaply and well.

God bless her, I hope my mind is that clear when in my nineties.

If you add squirrel, then you might want to soak it overnight in brine, make certain the animal was healthy (most are) by checking the liver, and using a meat hammer to soften up the stringy meat. Else you can slow cook the meat and it will be far more tender. Squirrels can be taken by snare trapping or slingshots easily. Even children can do this.

Potatoes can be saved if you made a root cellar and put them in a little sand. This will help maintain the temperature and lengthen the storage of them. We'll have to do lots of different things if we have a Depression again, as it took ten years and a major war to get us out of that economic mess.

Doing more with less is always being a good steward.

You think that'll be enough for the coming times? Try "Siege of Stalingrad Cooking, Recipes for 900 Days, From Your Neighbor's Cat to That Dead Guy in the Gutter".

Opps. I meant Leningrad, silly me.

whatta way to encourage fasting

My Grandparents went through the great depression as young teenagers. I am blessed to have learned so much from them and I LOVE a big pot of squirrel & dumplings!

An earlier poster is right. Many people will starve simply because they will not eat the food that surrounds them. Save more for the wiser among us, I suppose.

my question is, if storing food (more than 7 days worth) is criminal now - and with food prices soaring - wtf's everyone to do?

Wow, that takes me back. My mom used to make something like this, and we all loved it. Fried potatoes, with the hot dogs, and then some canned corn added was good, too.

Notice that granny used the yummy dogs with the cheese in them?

I think that is ludacris a lot of people shop for 2 weeks or 1 month at a time. Even people that aren't "preparing" buy meat or something on sale and freeze it.

It makes my blood boil. Whotf are they to tell me what I can and cannot have in my cupboards!

/end rant

That, according to the report the other where almost half of Americans are considered poor, will be main recipe for millions next year.

im gonna pin this - perhaps it will help some ppl out during the holidays who cant afford much