Could You Stomach These Great Depression Meals?

My grandmother would have sold her body for some of that good food. All she ate for years durring the depression were potatoes and water.

Originally posted by candcantiques
reply to post by dreamingawake

 

When you are litterally DYING of hunger you would be suprised what you will eat. Faced with death people have gone so far as to eat their own feces and drink their own urine.

Bear Grylls....Your argument is invalid. LOL
You are right of course. I saw an episode where this fool squeezed water out of fresh elephant dung to drink. Instead of being faced with death he was faced with low ratings. To an actor there is not much difference.
I also remember a news clip of a woman scraping something off the inside of a garbage can and eating it. I think it was filmed during WWII. It looked like she was eating grease.

reply to post by StealthyKat


Her last video was a week ago tomorrow. She revealed her tomato sauce recipe so I guess that was her grand finale.


She looks pretty good but I think she wants to retire- she has been doing these videos for three years plus she is 97 let her stop working before she hits the big three digits.

Originally posted by macman Try pickles in mustard. Very good.

Lacking salt in your diet? Look up the sodium content in those two foods.

reply to post by dreamingawake


other than the onion sandwich..i hate onions unless sauteed...i can handle any of that..being raised by angry rednecks in the country i can also add armadillo..opossum and squirrel...and having been over seas...dog cat and horse....honestly i can eat anything except liver....cause liver is just nasty

reply to post by dreamingawake


Most of them are ok. I even buy Stouffers chipped beef every once in a while.

I detest mayonnaise(I would only eat it if starving to death and I couldn't find anything else), the rest is fine though.

ill try pretty much anything (food wise) once. used to make condament sandwiches all the time when i was younger.

the reason they were forced to eat that crap is because they lacked an imagination to go off and do it themselves.

the day the SHTF close to me, i'm getting off my ass to meet 10 people near here to start a farming community somewhere else so that we're eating right and not scraps because we weren't inventive enough, screw that.

I don't know if this has been mentioned or not, but I was introduced to it at my BFF's baby shower. Her mom made these "pregnancy sandwiches." They've always been the frugal type, and while this indeed sounds very frugal... it also sounds weird.

After trying it though, I found it to be absolutely delicious and occationally make one for myself.

Spread some peanut butter on a slice of bread.. top with sliced dill pickles, top with more peanut buttered bread.

It's absolutely fantastic. It probably isn't too bad for you, either.

I knew an older black lady that would talk to me about the depression. She was a grand old lady, now long dead.

This is what she told me. "Back then you couldn't always get any flour so we's hads a lots o cornbread, but on Sunday we could get bisquits. I sure did love them bisquits. Sometimes daddy would kill a rabbit or a squirrel, but sometimes he couldn't get nothin' but a 'possum."

I asked her how possum tasted and she said "It's awful greasy- we wouldn't eat it unless we has to."

She talked a lot about rationing that went on and how they hated it.

Originally posted by muzzleflash
I am happy to eat plain rice by itself. Nothing else is needed.

I do cook it though.

I consider myself lucky because around this world a lot of people struggle to land a bowl of rice for the day...

Good to know I'm not the only one who likes plain food separate.

Drives me crazy when I feel like a little snack (plain potato chips - my junk food) - stop at convenience store and all they have is flavored.

When i saw the op, i thought it was going to say really dodgy things like "worms on toast, i was pleasantly suprised by what was given. Cucumber sandwichs are lovely especially when the vicar comes around, lol. I can remember some of the things i used to eat as a child (im in my 40s now), this was before we were taken over by McKentuckyKing,
apple sandwichs,
dripping on bread (yes and its lovely)
stuffing sandwichs
lambs feet
chittlings (pigs intenstines)
I think id rather try my luck on some of the above than the transfat containing mechanically recovered crap thats around today.
and not forgetting the ultimate poor mans food
MARMITE
what a sad world it would be without the brown delight.

I'm not sure if it was my grandfathers tall tales but I remember him saying something about stale bread being burnt and mulched up into grounds and then they would brew it somehow into a coffe substitute ? Anyone else ever hear of this ? My mom grew up drinking "postum" which is a cereal based hot drink instead of coffee

reply to post by hadriana


Yes...possum is the greasiest meat I've ever eaten. And if you ever get a craving for a crisp snack...fried grasshoppers taste a lot like freetos.

I can cook anything to taste pretty good. Having as a child, been passed around from extended family to extended family, I've had many old time cooks teach me a lot. It's almost intuitive with me now.

I'm a Southern Gal...and have had my share of unusual fare in other countries.

Cupboards that some might see as almost bare...I see as a challenge. I even remember one of my favorite childhood stories was the one about Stone Soup. That should give you an inkling of how old I am

I have heard in some countries people go around and gather any uneaten bites of food off of people's plates after they have bought some street food or something. They take all this uneaten bites of food and refry it and sell it. It is called Pag Pag. Sometimes the food comes fresh off of someone's plate but other times it comes out of the trash even.

So what they do is they feed tourists some stir fry or something. They will have a lot of meat and vegetables in it. Then the tourists are already fat and don't finish all their food. So they leave it and other people eat what is left. They just refry the bits of meat and vegetables that everyone else leaves. The people that eat this know they are eating what someone else has left over but they don't care.


Also, in some countries you don't just eat an egg. You let the egg develop a bit of a chicken embryo into it and then you eat it because then it will have a bit of meat in it too. It would be wasteful just to eat an egg when you can let it develop a bit of embryo. It would be wasteful to throw those calories away.

It sounds so gross and yet in a way I think I understand why they do that. I'd probably eat it too, but I wouldn't want to examine it too closely. I love chicken and eggs so maybe it isn't too gross, if you don't really look at it but just eat it.

I remember reading about a family once who lived near a chicken slaughter house and made a house out of discarded wooden pallets and tar paper and stuff. Then they'd take all the discarded chickens that didn't make it through the inspection process. Then they'd sometimes find a chicken with an egg still in it that was fresh enough and they could somehow hatch this egg. Or they'd cut open a chicken and find an egg and they'd be able to eat that. So they lived off of this and any dandelions or wild game they could find.

reply to post by kawika


Totally...Most of that stuff I have for a snack on a daily basis! That's redneck eattn' at its finest!

Love best foods mayo with wonder bread!

I have seen a recipe for sawdust mixed with the flour in bread recipes..to further the flour. I have several war cookbooks from WWI and WWII..they have plenty of recipes that one could survive on.

About the bacon grease sandwich..we still do that sometimes..instead of using paper towels to drain the bacon we use bread...then at the end you "slop" up the grease and eat it. It is actually very good..taste wise but probably a very bad idea health wise.

I am not even sure that the same foods that would have been plentiful and cheap in those days would be the same today. We will eat whatever is the most plentiful and cheap. Probably today it would be something like ramien noodles and stuff like that.

We throw a lot of food away because it is past it's sale by date as well. I don't know what happens to it but if we were really in a depression and hungry people would probably ask to buy any expired food at a discount. There would probably be an isle at the grocery store that you could buy this. Maybe you'd have to sign a wavier or something though. I don't know, we have so many rules. But if you are truly starving you would eat it.

Also I notice at Mcdonalds and Subway and in many restarants there is this sort of trap that a lot of crumbs of stuff go into and then it is all thrown away.

Like at Subway there is this sort of trench thing that they just scrape everything into, bits of veggies, bread, meat, everything.

I wonder what they'd do if someone said they wanted that. I mean if someone was really hungry and asked for the crumbs out of that?

Originally posted by dreamingawake
Could You Stomach These Great Depression Meals?

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. ...
cont...here

# Milk toast
# Chipped beef on toast
# Cucumber and mustard sandwiches
# Mayonnaise sandwiches
# Ketchup sandwiches
...

Source

Article lists, some posted above, meals ate during the great Depression.

Tried any of these(the more uncommon for today foods)? Likes, dislikes?

I've seen my dad eat miraclewhip sandwiches when i was a kid (im 32). When i was 6-7 years old i used to eat sugar sandwiches until i got so hyper once my mom found out what i was doing and put a stop to it.

Truth be told if i was hungry enough there's alot i would consider eating, right down to your pet dogs and cats although i'd prefer using dog's to tree raccoons or duckhunt with. When TSHTF having properly trained hunting dogs could mean the difference between eating and starving to death. Dogs weren't domesticated for nothing, theres a reason they were dubbed "man's best friend", that reason was because they can help feed us.

Originally posted by dreamingawake
Could You Stomach These Great Depression Meals?

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. ...
cont...here

# Milk toast
# Chipped beef on toast
# Cucumber and mustard sandwiches
# Mayonnaise sandwiches
# Ketchup sandwiches
...

Source

Article lists, some posted above, meals ate during the great Depression.

Tried any of these(the more uncommon for today foods)? Likes, dislikes?

I love chipped beef on toast and cucumber sandwiches are good with mayo though instead oof mustard. Milk I can't do, I am lactose intolerant and probably would opt for just taost or beans on toast (UK style, yummy). Mayo sandwiches are fine too...it's the wall paper where I draw the line.