FoodBanter.com - View Single Post - New book! "A Square Meal: A Culinary History of the Great Depression"

jmcquown[_2_]

On 8/18/2016 8:27 PM, wrote:
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>> Do you know about Cooking with Clara?
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> No, but I do own "Stories and Recipes of the Great Depression of the 1930's" by Janet Van Amber Paske & Rita Van Amber. Plus the "More with Less Cookbook" by Doris Janzen Longacre, 1979 (Mennonite cookbook). I like the latter one, especially.
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> Lenona.
>
I don't know about any of these cookbooks. I know some of the recipes
my grandmothers handed down are very basic. Pretty much "how to make
the best with what you have" type recipes. They were feeding a family
and sometimes extended family during the Depression.

My paternal grandpa's brother (Uncle Bill) lived with them. And my
maternal great grandparents, the Douglas'. They had a bedroom in the
attic that Grandpa had finished off into two bedrooms. There was
storage under a window seat by the dormer windows at the front of the house.

So, stretching things with became the norm. They managed. Hopefully
we'll never have to go through that again.

Not long after the stock market crash came the dust bowl. I'm thinking
that was probably worse than where my grandparents and parents were
during the Depression. They could at least grow small gardens and had rain.

I'm told Grandma Mac raised a few chickens. Seems odd in the middle of
a small town with no land to speak of. But hey, it was the Depression.
No one really cared about town ordinances about farm animals. Gotta eat.

Jill