-
If you enjoy the forum please consider supporting it by signing up for a NES Membership The benefits pay for the membership many times over.
-
Be sure to enter the NES/MFS May Giveaway ***Canik METE SFX***
Great Depression Cooking with Clara...
- Thread starter enbloc
- Start date
Jason Flare
NES Member
I like how she says potadas.
That’s how I say it.
That’s how I say it.
Jason Flare
NES Member
I watched it with Mrs. Flare. I’ll bet I get home fries tomorrow for breakfast.
$1 per sack of potatoes - potatoes are relatively so much cheaper now, that's crazy.
edit to add: $1 of silver in the depression is $12 now. Other indices of inflation may be better but still interesting.
edit to add: $1 of silver in the depression is $12 now. Other indices of inflation may be better but still interesting.
fencer
NES Member
My Dad used to make a meatloaf by adding Quaker Oats. The oats would expand and with a pound of ground beef you could feed 47 people. We ate potatoes almost everyday except Prince Spaghetti Day (Wednesday) and Franks and beans night ( Saturday).
We had chores everyday, and we always had to peel potatoes. Everyday, before homework, we had to clean and dust one room in the house and peel potatoes.
Some Fridays were a special culinary treat when Mom would take the left over spaghetti and put it in a cast iron frying pan with margarine (she called it oleo ) and fry that shit. It came out crunchy and neon orange. Nasty.
Brings to mind a joke. How many potatoes does it take to kill an Irishman? None. Dad told that once a week.
We had chores everyday, and we always had to peel potatoes. Everyday, before homework, we had to clean and dust one room in the house and peel potatoes.
Some Fridays were a special culinary treat when Mom would take the left over spaghetti and put it in a cast iron frying pan with margarine (she called it oleo ) and fry that shit. It came out crunchy and neon orange. Nasty.
Brings to mind a joke. How many potatoes does it take to kill an Irishman? None. Dad told that once a week.
Jason Flare
NES Member
It worked. Mrs. Flare has homefries on the stove.
- Joined
- Sep 10, 2009
- Messages
- 41,857
- Likes
- 79,509
Ooh, with homemade brown bread with still-cold butter! Home-baked navy beans. Boiled weenies too, not grilled.
Man, we went through some molasses when I was a kid.
fencer
NES Member
B&M baked beans are still my favorite. Dad always used Guildan's mustard, relish and piccalilli on his Fenway Franks. No homemade Brown Bread, B&M that you put in a pan of boiling water to heat it up.
Gidge
NES Member
As traditional Catholics, we still do meatless Fridays year round and occasionally do fish sticks for a quick Friday meal -- the taste always bring me back to childhood, though our tastes are a bit more "sophisticated" these days -- it's amazing what you can cook without meat, and it's probably good to give your body a break from being a carnivore the other 6 days of the week.
My Dad grew up during the depression. My Grandfather lost his job and was away, living at a work camp run by the WPA. Once a month my Grandmother would make my Dad walk with her, pulling his wagon. They would go to the Town Hall to pick up a sack of flour and a block of Government cheese. He use to tell me how incredibly embarrassed he would be if he ran into some of his friends on the way home.
Last edited:
FrankNA
NES Member
My Father (old Sicilian) would add some scrambled eggs on top of that after it was done cooking and call it a frittata - kind of like a jumbo Italian omelet. Of course any leftovers in the fridge could also be thrown into the mix to increase the volume of the frittata to accommodate more guests at that table. Good eating and good for you as well! Peasant food is what many high end restaurants serve to high end customers for big money. Pasta e fagiloi is a good example. My brothers and sisters grew up on that and people pay big bucks for it in restaurants these days. Pasta, a thin tomato sauce and some beans - bonus if you had some leftover meat to throw into the mix.
I am 35 and my step father would make that with eggs added at the end but no tomato sauce. He wasn’t depression aged but his parents were. My siblings and I loved it and I still like it. There were 7 of us kids and grew up pretty “poor” for modern standards so the fact it was cheap probably also played a part in it.
I'll give him a call later today and find out. He lives in St. Louis and some of the grocery stores there carry some of the more "oddball" cuts of meat.
Gidge
NES Member
On the Fridays outside of Lent the U.S. bishops conference obtained the permission of the Holy See for Catholics in the US to substitute a penitential, or even a charitable, practice of their own choosing. They must do some penitential/charitable practice on these Fridays. For most people the easiest practice to consistently fulfill will be the traditional one, to abstain from meat on all Fridays of the year. During Lent abstinence from meat on Fridays is obligatory in the United States as elsewhere.
