Could You Stomach These Great Depression Meals?

reply to post by ldyserenity


There's an advantage to being lactose intolerant. If you don't have any laxatives and you need to go and can't? Milk will do the trick. I used to be lactose intolerant before i had my colon taken out and a half glass of milk would send me runnign for the bathroom in 20-30 minutes. Good trick to know if we end up in another depression and can't afford Pillips Milk of Mangesia.

Those meals don't sound so bad.
Have you looked into what's in a Hotdog? What's not to stomach?

Also... don't eat cereal with marshmallows. Just an FYI2U.

reply to post by dreamingawake


You should of grown up in the 50's and 60's on the poor side of town and when you get hungry you will eat whatever is in the fridge or cupboard. Then join the military and go through survival training and go to Vietnam. Be reassigned to the country of Turkey, be chosen to serve with the Turkish paramilitary. U.S. survivial is a drop in the bucket compared to Turkish survival.school. They train you and drop you by helicopter in the desert, your job is to make it back to post. I served 12 years and the training serves me daily.

In ten years come back to this thread.

Go ahead, print this sucker out and on New Year's Day 2012 see what your answer will be then.

My guess is you will drool at the prospect of any of the above things mentioned.

Laugh all you want - but just wait and see.

If you are hungry enough, stuff you never thought you would eat becomes a treat.

Now Good Search (don't Google) The Fall of America and the Western World (videos).

With Good Search every single search gives whatever charity you designate (they have a list of something like 1,000 charities) .1 for every search and if you shop on line by first going through them - and the stores that support them (Amazon does) they give a portion of your money to your charity.

So you're doing something for someone else while surfing the net.

My charity is PRO and they even made the news with my dog's sister.



Times are getting ruff (pun intended) and we all need to start helping each other out more.

reply to post by ofhumandescent

I agree...thanks for sharing the video.

My mom used to make chipped beef on toast all the time when we were kids because we was broke ass. I like it, actually. We used to call it "SOS"...

I grew up eating pot pie...
flour, egg salt, butter, potato
make dough, slice up potato, cut dough in squares and layer dough and potato in a pot of slow boiling water and a half stick of butter.

Aslo potato dumplings
grade potato like grated cheese, add flour, egg and make into balls the size of a baseball, boil 45-1hr. serve with fried chicken, cooked cabbage, have melted butter for the dumplings and enjoy.

These are 2 dishes I grew up eating, they are from the depression era, due to farmers having gardens, chickens, eggs...and a few dairy products available...cheap easy and filling.

Squirrel. Lots of people, especially in rural areas ate it along with rabbit. Probably tastes pretty good after some of the other stuff listed,

My grandparents regularly made dandelion salad.
The used to pick a lot of wild edibles. Especially cardoon. When ever my pops would come across a noticeable patch, he would have to pick it and bring it home. It grows here and there all across the northeast.
Among other things, broccoli rabe', duckgrass, mint, blackberries, oniongrass.
Ahh those broccoli rabe' sammiches.


The most dreaded of all the foods though had to be pasta/milk.
Leftover hot pasta, hot milk, 1 tsp sugar. Awful.

My folks grew up during the Depression and WWII and my brother and I grew up eating what they ate. We just called it country cookin' and never thought about it much... ironically, these are the meals that are helping us eat well during this "economic downturn."

Take a smoked or salt cured ham hock or pig knuckle... boil it in a pot of water until done and the meat starts flaking off the bone. Then mix some ground corn meal, mix with water, salt, pepper... and spoon out and pat out little cornbread patties, Gently drop into the light boiling or simmering broth, and put lid on and simmer for about 5-10 minutes. The salty, smokey flavor cooks into the cornbread dumplings....serve as corn bread dumplings with dried beans... for about 2 bucks you can feed a family.

Fry a few slices of bacon, take up when done... throw in chopped onions, and cook till tender, add diced tomatoes, and simmer... take a glass jar, fill 1/3 flour...fill rest way up with water... shake until mixed, gently pour into grease-tomato-onions and stir on low...LOW heat...you have tomato gravy...serve with bisquits.

Take some left over black eye peas, mash and mix with a little flour and an egg and mix, season with a little sage and red pepper to taste, salt.. and mix until thick paste... spoon out and mash into patties, gently place each patty into a frying pan of hot grease...fry... you have "pea sausage"

Take some fresh fruit and peel, slice, and slowly simmer in butter, cinnamon, sugar until tender and done. You could mix your own dough... self-rising flour, shortening, buttermilk... or take canned bisquits... lighlty flour a counter top, take a canned bisquit and roll out very thin and flat... this will then be a flat wide circle of dough. Take a spoon full of the fruit mixture...apples or peaches work well... place on one side of the dough circle and fold ove into a half moon. Crimp the edges together with a fork, gently drop into a frying pan with very hot grease... not deep... and fry till brown and puffy, turn, finish and take up.. lightly sprinkle with sugar... fried apple or peach pies. Can also fill with a meat or veggie mixture, minus the sugar, and fry and serve as a home made hot pocket. Good with left over beef stew as a filler.

I could also go into real southern delicacies like pig brains and eggs, OR hog hashlet made with the pig's heart, liver, lungs, and sweet breads, onions, red cayenne pepper, sage... cooked into a hash and served with fried corn bread and sweet potatoes, OR chitlins...ie hog intestines...OR a Tom Thumb... a pig's stomach stuffed with sausage and baked till done.... yummy. And yes... I have eaten and do eat this... home grown too.

Also, what southern kitchen would be complete without a washed coffe can holding left over bacon grease for use later to season greens, beans, fry corn bread...or simply replace bought grease altogether.

Also... we enjoy what we call a "country slowdown"... take chicken necks, chicken livers and gizzards... boil until done and tender...season with salt, pepper, red pepper...add a littleflour to the broth to thicken and make gravy... serve with bisquits or on top of rice...a favorite at our family reunion...always gone.

Take pork neckbones... parboil... place in a baking dish, pour BBQ sauce... bought or homemade over the neckbones... place in an oven about 350 and brown... good with mashed potatoes, bisquits, slaw

I could go on, but I am getting hungry...bon apetite...or as we say in NC...Yall, it's time to eat.

reply to post by miniatus


Milk toast is what people now call French toast, just without the cinnamon or vanilla.

reply to post by AlreadyGone


Ahhhj you sound like you're from my neck o the woods. If you come to my house at supper time you'd hear me say...

djeet jet...junt to?

reply to post by dreamingawake


Things have changed.....but in what way? Is there not some irony in the fact that in today's world sometimes the cheapest way to eat is the Mcdonald's 99 cent menu. Things are tastier but less nutritious for you now days.......

PS anyone wanting to point me out as a hypocrite, would do well to find the post I made a few minutes ago to another thread where I lovingly use the McRib as an arguement about how pigs are tasty....

LMAO! Those were Great Depression meals? I've ate that as a kid, well into my teens during the 90's and early 2000's. That's what we call common, everyday poverty here in Trinidad...and those are the good meals.

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

You'd be amazed what you can find palatable when you're hungry enough.

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

From that list:

Chipped beef on toast - Ate it, lots, and still like it. Go figure.

Mayonnaise sandwiches - ate 'em, and can still stand 'em if I have to.

Ketchup sandwiches - Nope. I don't like ketchup. Otherwise, I could probably handle them.

Hot milk and rice - Yup. Helps to throw some sugar into it.

Turtle/tortoise - Yup. Have to cook them thoroughly, though. I hear they carry salmonella, but I've never contracted it from eating one, and I've ate lots of them.

Gopher - Nope. No gophers here, but if woodchuck counts...

Potato soup – water base, not milk - Yup. It's thin. helps to toss in extra spices and maybe some flour to thicken it.

Dandelion salad - Yup. Have to get 'em young - they get bitter as they age. Also field cress, Poke weed, all sorts of greenery that other folks use as decoration I've used for grub.

Sugar sandwiches - Does peanut butter and brown sugar count?

Hot dogs and baked beans - come on now... who HASN'T eaten beanie weenies?

Road kill - yup. Once. A big ol' buck deer that a truck hit and ran in front of my house. State trooper wrote me out a special permission slip to have it in my possession. Cleaned it up, and chucked it into the freezer. I ain't proud. I ain't often hungry, either.

Oatmeal mixed with lard - sounds like a variant of pemmican to me.

Fried potatoes and hot dogs - both, but never at the same time. seems a little counter productive to me.

Onion sandwich – slices of onion between bread - Of course. It helps with the blood pressure, too.

Tomato gravy and biscuits - I've eaten it. Don't like it.

Cornbread in milk - Just about every day when I was a kid.

Gravy and bread – as a main dish - Uh, what's wrong with that?

Corn mush with milk for breakfast, fried corn mush for dinner - Both.

Squirrel - Yup, and lots of them. It helps not to refer to them as "tree-rats" when you cook 'em - unless you want it all for yourself!

Rice in milk with some sugar - wasn't this already listed?

Beans - Yup, usually in the company of corn bread.

Boiled cabbage - Once. I can't stand to be in the same house where it's being boiled now. I can't get it into my mouth to eat it 'cause it has to pass under my nose.

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. - Yup. that's actually what I had for dinner this evening. I'm easy, and low-maintenance, too!

===============================================

What I've eaten from the rest of the list:

Toast with milk gravy - Check. Not too bad, and beats the hell out of a growling belly.

Water fried pancakes - Is there another kind?

Fried bologna - Ate it, hate it. Once you start applying heat to bologna, it smells like arm pit frying to me. No thanks.

Butter and sugar sandwiches - does peanut butter count for the butter?

Fried potato and bread cubes - I can't recall anything like that, but I've eaten lots of fried potato fritters. Do I get extra credit for that?

Bean soup - Of course. All different kinds.

Runny eggs with grits - If you ain't never eat that, well, Y'all just ain't from around here, are ye?

Butter and grits with sugar and milk - I've done it, but have yet to figure out why folks would want to pour milk on grits, or why they would mix butter and sugar BOTH into them, but I reckon it takes all kinds.

Baked apples - Baked, Fried, Dried, Raw, Canned, is there any way you can't eat an apple?

Corn meal mush - Yup. It helps to find other stuff to throw into it to give it some flavor.

Whatever fish or game you could catch/hunt - Oh HELL yeah! that's how I grew up. I've been known to lay out on the river bank for a week or two at a time and eat only what I could catch and cook right there. Besides, where do you think the squirrels and woodchucks (and deer, rabbit, turtles, etc) listed above came from? Folks don't think they just volunteer to get eaten, do they?

Tomato sandwiches - yup. I can hack them pretty well as long as the tomatoes ain't cooked. that puts 'em a little too far to the slimy side of things.

Spam and noodles with cream of mushroom soup - Yup, and I hate it. It's the Spam, really. the rest is just fine if you leave the spam out. I'd feed the spam to my dogs instead, but hell, my dogs won't even eat the stuff.


THE END

reply to post by dreamingawake


Compared to what people eat, thinking it's food, I think these are actually quite palatable.

I think the US has a very differing idea as to what constitutes food, compared to say Europe or Asia. Jamie's attempt to "educate" the American health and food boards when trying to stave off the invasion of processed and dietary suspect meals being fed to US kids in schools was somewhat enlightening. Much the same was happening in the UK also, but to a slightly lesser extent.

Pick up a packet of what you eat, check it's ingredients, that'll tell you if you're eating food or sh!t. 90% of you are going to be eating sh!t.

T

Hamburger mixed with oatmeal is a variation of Goetta, which is pork and oatmeal. It's really popular in Cincinnati.
It's great. It's like crispy sausage patties.
I haven't seen peas and toast as an offering. I ate that as a kid a lot. Still do.
A lot of that stuff listed I still eat. My dad calls any gravied meat on toast SOS.
Souse, I'd have a hard time dealing with. A lot of my older relatives ate it, but I can't get over the fact that sometimes you see the snout of the pig in the jelly.

what about Hawaiian Steak?

I do not mind eating that stuff. My dog eats cat crap and thinks it is a delicacy. The least I can do is not turn my nose up at good food.

reply to post by SolidFaith


squirrel is very good, once it's been skinned, you can cut it into pieces and fry it up with some potatoes and onions, delicious!

Also, since we're talking depression food, how come no one has mentioned tomato (ketchup) soup. basically hot water and ketchup.