On Wed, 17 Aug 2016, wrote:

> Saw it today in the window of my local independent bookstore, then I
> flipped open today's New York Times and...
>
> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/17/di...meal-book.html
>
> By STEVEN KURUTZ AUG. 12, 2016
>
>
> First paragraphs:
>
> In March 1933, shortly after ascending to the presidency, Franklin
> Delano Roosevelt sat down to lunch in the Oval Office. A gourmand,
> President Roosevelt had a taste for fancy Fifth Avenue foods like pâté
> de foie gras and Maryland terrapin soup.
>
> His menu that day was more humble: deviled eggs in tomato sauce, mashed
> potatoes and, for dessert, prune pudding.
>
> ?It was an act of culinary solidarity with the people who were
> suffering,? Jane Ziegelman said. Her husband, Andrew Coe, added, ?It was
> also a message to Americans about how to eat.?
>
> The couple, who live in Brooklyn Heights, are food historians. Mr. Coe?s
> last book, ?Chop Suey,? was about Chinese cuisine in America, while Ms.
> Ziegelman told the story of life in a Lower East Side tenement through
> food in her book ?97 Orchard.?
>
> Their new, collaborative work, ?A Square Meal,? which will be published
> Tuesday by Harper, is a history of American food in the Great
> Depression. Showing some culinary solidarity of their own, they met a
> reporter for dinner at Eisenberg?s Sandwich Shop, a tiny, no-frills
> lunch counter in the Flatiron district that has been in business since
> the year of the crash, 1929.
>
> Ms. Ziegelman, 54, ordered a cream cheese and chopped olive sandwich,
> while Mr. Coe, 57, had the turkey, mashed potatoes and vegetable medley.
> When a reporter ordered meatloaf, the couple deemed it fitting for a
> discussion of Depression-era eating.
>
> ?Loaves were very popular,? Ms. Ziegelman said. ?There was peanut loaf,
> liver loaf, bean loaf. They were made from an ingredient and a cheap
> thing that stretches the ingredient out. Imagine eating enough peanuts
> to serve as your dinner.?...
>
>
> More than 100 comments so far.

I heard something about Depression Era cooking on NPR recently, but it
seemed that the recipes were really bland and sad.
They didn't want people "enjoying" their rations too much...