I found this article and the link on another forum. It's from Dec. 10 and the link no longer works for the article. Sorry! It's worth reading and discussing though.
Food lessons from the Great Depression
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SOURCE: http://www.latimes.com/features/food...0.story?page=1
Today, learning how to cook on a budget is becoming important to more families. In the 1930s, making do was a kitchen art, honed by necessity. Sour grass soup, anyone?
By Mary MacVean
December 10, 2008
When she was a kid, for a treat Pat Box and her seven siblings got "water cocoa," which is pretty much what it sounds like and nothing special today. But that was in the 1930s, when her father's business was reselling bakers' barrels to coopers, and the family would get first crack at them, scraping the wood for any traces of sugar or cocoa left behind.
With luck, they'd also have rye bread and fresh butter they'd buy on Brooklyn Avenue.
"It was wonderful," said Box, 87, one afternoon while she gathered with friends at the Claude Pepper Senior Center on La Cienega Boulevard, just north of the 10 Freeway.
At a time when Americans face frightening and disorienting economic uncertainty, the Great Depression provides valuable lessons. For many people, putting a meal on the table without turning to processed or takeout foods is no longer something just for a weekend dinner party but a skill they must learn. People who remember what it was like to eat during the Depression talk about thrift, growing their own, sharing with neighbors and learning to cope with what they had.
Box grew up in Boyle Heights in a time of desperate need, but no one went hungry at her family's house, though it took work and ingenuity.
Her mother baked bread and made kreplach. Her father turned flour sacks into towels to sell, and her aunt sold chickens. "You'd stick your hand in, feel for fat around the stomach" and make your choice. Her mother made pillows with the feathers.
It was a time when leftovers were planned. A roast chicken -- for Jewish Shabbat or Sunday dinner -- lasted for days, as chicken with rice, chicken and dumplings, pot pie, stew or soup or salad. Women used the wrappers on margarine to butter baking pans. People ate what they could grow or kill or find.
Be honest, now: Can anybody in your house skin a rabbit?
Know what to do with milkweed pods? (Boil them and top with grated cheese.) Get your kids to eat sour grass soup? Those recipes, from "Dining During the Depression," a collection of recipes edited by Karen Thibodeau, are unlikely to find their way into kitchens today, despite the state of the economy.
But in the 1930s, making do was a kitchen art, honed by necessity.
"In the times when the economy is really bad, it becomes an even more important question of how you're going to put food on the table for your family," says Kelly Alexander, co-author of "Hometown Appetites," a biography of the pioneering newspaper food columnist Clementine Paddleford.
"If you want to save money, you're going to have to learn to cook," Alexander says.
She says she recently saw a pot pie recipe that called for precooked pieces of chicken, a premade crust and vegetables from a salad bar -- essentially directions for assembling, not cooking. So by appealing to people who are too busy to cook or unwilling to learn, a modern version of a dish invented to make leftovers appealing becomes a collection of expensive ingredients.
Many Americans never learned to cook as they grew up, and they rely on takeout or packaged food, but dinner was a very different experience during the Depression.
Mix 'n' match soup
"We ate a lot of mashed potatoes, and I'm still hung up on mashed potatoes," says Rosalyn Weinstein, 79, pointing to an uneaten scoop on her plate. Though she does not cook much these days, she says she still makes "mix 'n' match" soup from whatever is on hand.
"Cooking is becoming a lost art," she says. "I've never been a takeout person. And I've never been a fast food person.
Joe Bagley, 81, who moved to Los Angeles during World War II, was born in Texas and raised for a time on a farm. "We were never wanting for food, but you had to raise your own," he says, adding that his family saw plenty of hungry people wandering in search of work. They'd stop at the farm, and Bagley recalls that he'd be sent inside to get whatever was there to feed them.
Though the country is not in a depression today, signs of tough times are all around.
The market is in shreds, food is pricier. A spokesman for Ralphs and Food 4 Less says more people are turning to house brands, and Albertsons has seen more sales of "stretcher" products such as Hamburger Helper, a spokeswoman says...........................
Food lessons from the Great Depression
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
SOURCE: http://www.latimes.com/features/food...0.story?page=1
Today, learning how to cook on a budget is becoming important to more families. In the 1930s, making do was a kitchen art, honed by necessity. Sour grass soup, anyone?
By Mary MacVean
December 10, 2008
When she was a kid, for a treat Pat Box and her seven siblings got "water cocoa," which is pretty much what it sounds like and nothing special today. But that was in the 1930s, when her father's business was reselling bakers' barrels to coopers, and the family would get first crack at them, scraping the wood for any traces of sugar or cocoa left behind.
With luck, they'd also have rye bread and fresh butter they'd buy on Brooklyn Avenue.
"It was wonderful," said Box, 87, one afternoon while she gathered with friends at the Claude Pepper Senior Center on La Cienega Boulevard, just north of the 10 Freeway.
At a time when Americans face frightening and disorienting economic uncertainty, the Great Depression provides valuable lessons. For many people, putting a meal on the table without turning to processed or takeout foods is no longer something just for a weekend dinner party but a skill they must learn. People who remember what it was like to eat during the Depression talk about thrift, growing their own, sharing with neighbors and learning to cope with what they had.
Box grew up in Boyle Heights in a time of desperate need, but no one went hungry at her family's house, though it took work and ingenuity.
Her mother baked bread and made kreplach. Her father turned flour sacks into towels to sell, and her aunt sold chickens. "You'd stick your hand in, feel for fat around the stomach" and make your choice. Her mother made pillows with the feathers.
It was a time when leftovers were planned. A roast chicken -- for Jewish Shabbat or Sunday dinner -- lasted for days, as chicken with rice, chicken and dumplings, pot pie, stew or soup or salad. Women used the wrappers on margarine to butter baking pans. People ate what they could grow or kill or find.
Be honest, now: Can anybody in your house skin a rabbit?
Know what to do with milkweed pods? (Boil them and top with grated cheese.) Get your kids to eat sour grass soup? Those recipes, from "Dining During the Depression," a collection of recipes edited by Karen Thibodeau, are unlikely to find their way into kitchens today, despite the state of the economy.
But in the 1930s, making do was a kitchen art, honed by necessity.
"In the times when the economy is really bad, it becomes an even more important question of how you're going to put food on the table for your family," says Kelly Alexander, co-author of "Hometown Appetites," a biography of the pioneering newspaper food columnist Clementine Paddleford.
"If you want to save money, you're going to have to learn to cook," Alexander says.
She says she recently saw a pot pie recipe that called for precooked pieces of chicken, a premade crust and vegetables from a salad bar -- essentially directions for assembling, not cooking. So by appealing to people who are too busy to cook or unwilling to learn, a modern version of a dish invented to make leftovers appealing becomes a collection of expensive ingredients.
Many Americans never learned to cook as they grew up, and they rely on takeout or packaged food, but dinner was a very different experience during the Depression.
Mix 'n' match soup
"We ate a lot of mashed potatoes, and I'm still hung up on mashed potatoes," says Rosalyn Weinstein, 79, pointing to an uneaten scoop on her plate. Though she does not cook much these days, she says she still makes "mix 'n' match" soup from whatever is on hand.
"Cooking is becoming a lost art," she says. "I've never been a takeout person. And I've never been a fast food person.
Joe Bagley, 81, who moved to Los Angeles during World War II, was born in Texas and raised for a time on a farm. "We were never wanting for food, but you had to raise your own," he says, adding that his family saw plenty of hungry people wandering in search of work. They'd stop at the farm, and Bagley recalls that he'd be sent inside to get whatever was there to feed them.
Though the country is not in a depression today, signs of tough times are all around.
The market is in shreds, food is pricier. A spokesman for Ralphs and Food 4 Less says more people are turning to house brands, and Albertsons has seen more sales of "stretcher" products such as Hamburger Helper, a spokeswoman says...........................
. All that stuff would have been thrown away! And it boiled for over 1/2 hour - all germs were killed. Waste not, want not.
Even sadder, they probably think they are saving money, since they are 'cooking' that night.
Of course she and her husband both thought a 'home cooked meal' was her making instant mashed potatoes, stove top stuffing and putting store bought, precooked friend chicken in the oven ....... And that was for a holiday meal .......
