"phaeton" > wrote in message
...
> Gregory Morrow wrote:
>> http://www.suntimes.com/lifestyles/f...ress21.article
>>
>
>
> I remember reading an article some time ago that much of the
> Depression-era recipes were very nutritionally poor. it went on to say
> that, given the ingredients that were available at the time, much of this
> was avoidable too, it's just that at the time nutrition wasn't as well
> researched as it is today, and people were chosing ingredients that tasted
> best and made them feel the 'most full now' over balanced or nutritionally
> complete meals.
>
> Also, i'd guess that due to transportation and (especially) refrigeration
> just getting started, that foods would be very 'regional' in the 1930s.
> We have little trouble collecting inexpensive but nutritionally-dense
> staple foods from around the country today, but in those days you were
> probably less lucky in some regards.
>
> My devalued $0.02
>
> -Jared


Depends on what you call "less lucky". I suppose people who lived in big
cities had a much more difficult time of it. If you lived in the country
and had a small plot of land you had vegetable gardens and you raised
livestock. The cost of feed was probably an issue. But if you feed the the
livestock it, in turn, fed you. And you had gardens. And root cellers for
storing potatoes and other root vegetables. My grandmother's recipe for
potato soup is great Rivels (small flour and salt dumplings) were added
to the soup to stretch the meal.

They raised chickens and hogs. So they had fresh eggs, and of course the
occasional Sunday chicken dinner. They had to be frugal, of course, and
nothing went to waste. But they'd kill a hog and have enough meat to last
nearly a year. Refrigeration (or lack thereof) wasn't a problem; they did a
lot of smoking and curing of meat. And you're forgetting "ice boxes". I
suspect you're too young to know about ice boxes.

Where I live now there are ruins of an indigo plantation from the 1700's.
One of the buildings was a "dairy". It was dug into the ground. They made
cheese and butter and stored it (along with milk) there. Blocks of ice were
hauled in, coated in sawdust (which for some odd reason doesn't allow ice to
melt!) to keep things cold during the hot summer months.

Even though my grandmother had a garden, she often sent my dad and his
brothers out to pick dandylion greens. Maybe she just wanted them out of
the house! It's funny, I recently heard dandylion greens being mentioned on
some cooking show, as if it was some new exotic thing.

Jill