"barbie gee" > wrote in message
hcrg.pbz...
>
>
> On Mon, 9 Mar 2015, wrote:
>
>> The family?
>>
>> The Beardsleys, of California, as featured in the Lucille Ball movie
>> "Yours,
>> Mine, and Ours."
>>
>> Before the movie, their story was written by the mother as "Who Gets the
>> Drumstick?" (Helen was a widow with 8 kids, he was a widower with 10.
>> They
>> had two more.)
>>
>> In that book (chapter 12), a researcher comes to the house a month after
>> the wedding in the fall of 1961, to do the math on how they manage. He
>> concludes that they spend 66 cents a day for food, per person. According
>> to
>> one inflation calculator, that's $5.15 in 2014 - and another says $5.16
>> in
>> 2015. (I assume they were strict about not wasting food!)
>>
>> What's interesting, though, is that I DO waste food, unfortunately, but
>> MY food budget, last December, was $120 a month - or about $4 a day!
>>
>> Also, there was clearly a mistake in the book - the mother said they
>> spent
>> $450 a month on food, so unless she meant $400, that would be just under
>> 74 cents per person per day (using 365.25 days a year, I mean), not 66
>> cents!
>>
>> Thoughts? Granted, I'm sure there are all sorts of reasons food might be
>> cheaper now - someone also once said that in the 19th century, too, food
>> was pricey but servants were cheap, which was why Louisa May Alcott, in
>> "Little Women" could get away with calling her family "poor" even though
>> they had a servant, Hannah.
>
> Did mom stay home and cook for the family? There weren't nearly as many
> "convenience" foods back then as there are now, that cost a "normal"
> family a pretty penny. Eating habits weren't what they are now, portion
> sizes are all out of whack compared to back then...
>
> What do those goofy Duggars spend monthly, and per person, I wonder?
> They'd be probably the closest modern day equivalent to your Beardsley's
> of 1961...
If you've ever watched the show, you'll see what kind of crap they eat. And
off of Styrofoam plates as well! They have a restaurant kitchen complete
with a restaurant soda dispenser. But they also don't seem to buy
restaurant sized cans of things. The canned soup is they get is the
standard size. I don't know if it's still there or not but they had a Tater
Tot casserole recipe on their website. They use ground turkey instead of
beef. They also eat turkey bacon. Anna once posted a recipe for
Chickenetti which contained chicken (I think it was canned), Velveeta and
Rotel. They do seem to eat cheap white bread. And they don't seem to eat a
lot of vegetables unless you count pickles which are their favorite snack
food. I don't think I've ever seen them eat chips on the show but they do
bake a lot of cookies. They also seem to feed a lot more people than just
their immediate family.
I do not think the types of meals that they eat would be the equivalent of
someone in 1961, since people back then were probably still cooking most
things from scratch. The mom doesn't seem to do much in the kitchen or
otherwise and turns all of the tasks over to the kids. They did say on the
last episode that I watched that they do teach all of the kids to cook,
regardless of gender.