Depression Era Cooking Tricks

This thread is really making me miss my oma, and her cooking :(  My mom never took the time to learn much from her, or teach anything to me, when it came to cooking.  I wonder how common it is among first generation children of immigrants to want to distance themselves as much as possible from their immigrant parents' ways, for fear of not fitting in?  I wish I would have been mature enough before my oma got Alzheimers to spend time cooking with her.  When I did try it was hard to follow because very little of what she cooked was written down anywhere, so she would hold it in her hand and say "this much", and what was written down was in old European measurements that I didn't understand.  It took me a while to find a recipe for djuvec on the internet because I didn't know how to spell it, just how to say it (sounds like "joo-vetch").  I do remember watching her make hamburgers, putting the pork and beef through the grinder, and mixing it all with her hands, making patties with a lot of bread crumbs and onions, and egg and milk.  Her carrots and peas in a white roux was one of my favourite foods of all time.  And sarma (cabbage rolls).  Her pickles.  And her baking, don't even get me started T_T What I wouldn't give to spend a week cooking everything with her now and writing it all down, if that's all the time I could spend with her I would want her to teach me everything.

Erik van Lennep wrote:

Morgwino Stur wrote:
It's a struggle. I'm living with them in their place and they make it quite clear I don't need to cook for them. They usually eat out every night for dinner but I don't like to eat out so eating together is nice. If I didn't cook they order out or have frozen meals, so it isn't like they'd starve, I just wish they would meet me in the middle a bit. My grandma remembers what they did growing up and absolutely hated everything about it. I was looking to move out before this whole Corona thing, and might still, but she makes all sorts of passive-aggressive comments about wanting me to stay, but it's honestly stressful not being able to do what I want to, but she sees it as trying to 'save me'.

That's a tough dynamic, and I wish I could say "power through it" with confidence, but to be honest you're probably better off moving out as soon as that's feasible. Trying to make family functional is a thankless and endless loop of frustration and stress.

Re: jelling the beef stock vs the chicken, the skin and cartilage normally left on chicken bones is the source of the gelatine. Unless you have equivalent on your beef bones the stock won't jell (gel?). You could always add a packet of dried gelatine, or maybe just do a batch with chicken and beef mixed.

I'm curious about the BBQ wood you used. Any idea what kind of tree /shrub it was from?

I'm quite bad at identifying trees, but I think it might have been some sort of maple. My 'wood pile' right now is mostly deadfall from several trees in the neighborhood, which has the traditional ornamental like fruitless pear. I can say I avoided any resinous or strong-smelling wood because I know just enough about smoking that it would be a bad idea, especially since I wasn't going for any sort of smoky flavour. I used small diameter, so I had to feed the fire a few times; none were thicker than two fingers put together. I also didn't damper the grill at all, letting the fire go all-out, but pushed to one side. as an improvement for next time, I'm thinking of adding a brick or two to act as thermal mass. Might be able to cook something at a reasonable temperature then, by letting the fire heat the brick then go out. I just got a meat thermometer that might be handy for helping me finesse the temperature a bit. It's worth noting that I've failed every time I tried to grill something, though I'm trying to get better at it.

The bones I used, If I remember correctly, had lots of marrow but not much connective tissue. I had thought the marrow would make it thick, though I don't know why. The taste is enough that I wasn't too hung up on it other than wondering if it wasn't concentrated enough. Next time, I'll know not to expect it to be thick or I'll do as you suggest.

On the other note, my grandparents ate leftovers for the first time yesterday, and will for the second time today! I am looking to move out but they've made several comments whenever I've mentioned it, and even though I *know* it's emotional manipulation, they're good at making me feel guilty about it and they are at the age where I could just...wait them out. I am getting land without a building, so even after I buy I'll be stuck here another ~6 months or however long it takes to finish a small house. there is also the fact that the longer I stay, the more money I save and the more land I might be able to get.

Chicken Biscuit (a kind of cracker made from schmalz, the fat of chickens. Not much else to do with the stuff but hide it in soup.)

Schmalz--what you have.
Flour--heirloom wheat fresh ground is best but what you have.
Salt--go easy, the flavor is right there waiting to pounce, and doesn't need much encouragement.
Baking powder or baking soda--you will know when you've added too much. Sorry, it depends on your flour.
Slightly off raw cream--or what you have that approximates it.

Bake on high heat, as high as you dare--thinner roll will cook faster. Cut into cutesy shapes before cooking. You are going for something approximating a pie dough, but tackier, as it will bake up harder. A hard crisp is desired. I don't know how long they last in the pantry. You had better eat them all with tomato soup and a little parmesan right away.

Re the original question..WWII or depression food. There's a veggie turnover recipe at the 40s experiment blog that we love. It is huge tho'...

Link:
https://the1940sexperiment.com/2009/08/17/wartime-vegetable-turnovers/

I make home stuffing or I use store-bought stuffing if it's on sale and make up ahead of time to put in the freezer. Making it home is just using old bread that's not moldy and I put it in a lot of things to make things go further.
One thing my mother used to make a lot was she by one can of mackerel or one or two depending on how many people are there and add eggs salt and pepper to it and then make little patties and bread it with flour salt and pepper to fry. But I found out myself with when I had leftover stuffing to add to the mackerel before you make patties and it makes the fish patties go a lot further and it makes more of them. You can also use this with salmon. I really like the flavor and it's great. The texture is real good too. Just fry it in your vegetable oil or I always use canola oil on both sides to Brown and it's so easy to make. We'd always serve it with mac and cheese and you know how cheap mac and cheese can be. And Mom would splurge sometimes instead of making a regular vegetable like corn or or green beans to go with it she would make asparagus. And asparagus goes perfect with the fish patties mac and cheese.

That was so funny to read how you mentioned about the orange juice being watered down. My mother always watered down the orange juice and I asked her one day when I got older why did she always make it taste like that and she said she was making it go further. Instead of using the three cans of water she'd always use four. She was raised on a farm during the depression time and everybody pick cotton even the children when they can start walking and picking up a cotton sack they would be out picking cotton. After breakfast which is mostly biscuits probably gravy and a little bit meat like bacon to go with it. They would put the wood burning stove down and throw in sweet potatoes to slow cook in the stove until they came back from the fields and the potatoes will be good and done and that's what everybody would eat on until dinner was ready.
We grew up pretty poor and mama was new how to cook for the five of us Mom Dad my two brothers and I and we would have a lot of beans and then rice. She would cook everything by hand. She always made us desserts by hand pies things like that. Our cinnamon rolls wasn't made with yeast because that would have to be saved for other things she would take leftover biscuit dough roll it out and add cinnamon sugar to it, roll them up and throw them in the pan LOL. And if she had any extra sugar or cream she would make a little sugar topping. She would only cook one chicken for all five of us and everybody would have their own piece all the time there was never trading around. Mom and dad always got the chicken breast my brother's always got a thigh and leg and I was stuck with the wings and sometimes mom would cut the wishbone out of the thighs and I would get that. To this day I don't care much for white meat, I wish phone was white and the chicken wings were to me white and now I love thighs and legs all the time.

A lot of leftovers were used in many ways in my mom's family during the depression. I saw you had that tomato soup cake never heard of that one before. But they have buttermilk cake, vinegar cake, LOL. A cake made of everything. But what's leftovers my mother's family would take like leftover oatmeal and make something fried up a little bit or add something to it to make it thickening and then eat it with syrup. Take leftover mashed potatoes and make potato patties out of them and fry them up and serve them with ketchup or by themselves. So this way nothing went to waste. It is unbelievable the amount of food that is wasted.
I'll look at the chicken that have been destroyed or recalled and you think of all those poor animals that died for nothing. It just breaks my heart. Back nowadays everybody mostly raised their own meals and didn't kill them until they're ready to use them.

Cabbage extends any meal and is so budget friendly.  I recently made all the cabbage based meals on  this video which was fun.

.

If I have meat eaters coming home from college I make a huge pot of chicken cacciatore which can be served over rice or pasta.  It is the never ending meal that gets tastier as it sits in fridge.  Can also be frozen in smaller batches.

Lynne Cim wrote:Cabbage extends any meal and is so budget friendly.  I recently made all the cabbage based meals on  this video which was fun.

Ah, this video made me hungry! I love Aaron and Claire and often get inspiration from their videos.

Something I learned from my grandparents is to have hamburger (ground meat) for breakfast instead of sausage, cooked with scrambled eggs.

Hamburger gravy, they never fixed this one though I had it at a friend's home.

As above, I have always made my own stuffing as I was taught to do.

Another one was freezing bits of vegetables and vegetable peels to make vegetable broth.

We talk a lot of the forum about bone broth.

Reading the cooking forum is such a great experience.

Asian stores are a great resource for things like chicken bones and feet that make delicious bone broths.

I simmer all day and then make vegetable soup with the broth. It's so gelatinous you know it's super healthy!

Add beans or dried peas, onion, celery, carrots, leftover veg like bits of corn, peans, green beans. I also like to add daikon radish and/or zucchini very near the end of cook time. I enjoy the texture contrast. I also throw in greens right at the end. Mixed greens are especially nice and it's a great way to use up little bits.

Serve with home made bread and perhaps a bit of nice cheese. Yum!

Egg salad is another favorite.

Maybe nothing terribly original here, but a reminder can be helpful.

I find it helps to think "how little can I spend on this meal" to open the creative floodgates

I grew up in the prosperous 50's, not the depression, but we still used an extra can of water in the orange juice. I still prefer it that way if it's frozen, but nowadays I juice fresh citrus in season as a treat, and forget it the rest of the time. The first thing some of the younger grands do when they get to my house it look for oranges to make juice. They love playing with the long handled citrus press.
My mom always used a meat loaf recipe (mix the meat with bread and eggs and seasoning) for her hamburgers, and baked them in the oven. The difference was the seasoning, I think, tomato paste for the burgers and onion soup for the meat loaf. I have replace the onion soup with dried onion in my meatloaf, it soaks up more liquid than the bread or rolled oats alone, so I can throw in some wine dregs. I used to replace part of the meat with TVP, but I no longer see it at the store. Grated carrots are good. Make sure you get nice fatty ground beef so the non-meat ingredients get a meaty flavor.
Peanut butter on oatmeal is tasty and improves the protein content and makes it more filling. I thought I invented that, but have met others who like it that way too.
Fried rice is a great user of leftovers. So are scrambled eggs.
My dad used to make scrambled eggs with canned beans added (heat some beans in the frying pan first, then add the eggs). I hadn't thought of that in a long time! He had a repertoire of about a dozen recipes, total, mostly involving canned food (corn soup was equal parts canned corn and milk). I think my favorite of his dishes was eggs with sardines. He would sauté an onion and when it was slightly scorched he would add sardines. When they fell apart a little he added beaten eggs and cooked until firm. Yum! He was old enough to have been cooking during the depression.
Bread pudding, either sweet or savory, if you have stale bread ends.
In terms of quick meals, I always keep a pot of cooked brown rice on hand. You cook some veg or put sauerkraut on top, add a protein (most often for me it's cheese, melted on the rice when I heat it) and there's a meal. Even though it's the same rice, everything else can be totally different easily, and with fresh veg it doesn't seem like leftovers.

Scrapple!
You make a mush of pork scraps, trimmings, and offal cooked with corn meal & buckwheat flour.
You pour it into a loaf pan & let it cool, and it sets so that you can slice it.
Then you fry the slices until brown.

My parents were in France during the Occupation in WWII and they were always hungry. They had a dirt cellar. Mom said she would make thicker peelings off the potatoes and they would bury it in the dirt of the basement. those potatoes never grew green leaves since there was no sunshine in the basement. After a couple of months, mom would bring up "The crop". Most were the size of little marbles but as "new potatoes", they were delicious
One vegetable that grew with abandon were the Jerusalem artichokes. The Germans called them "topinambours" and that is still what we call them in French. A big advantage when you cannot make fire, is that these topis can be used like radishes. they can stay planted in the winter and will not die, so again, big advantage: You don't need to replant! So if you are trying to hide your food, it is squared away in the winter!
If you make the effort to lift every last tuber of topinambour, the tubers will not be so contorted for the most part. It is when the tubers are left in the ground that the second year, they swell at every eye and become very hard to clean.
Another staple that we can't do without in French is French bread AKA the baguette. Bread was touted as a "complete food" to the point that the French government forbids the inflation on bread so that even the poorest can eat this wholesome bread. Incidentally, the French "baguette" has only simple ingredients: flour, water, salt, and yeast. That's it! prisoners are still afforded all the bread they can eat and the baguette is often a substitute for lack of meat or vegetable. It is used at every meal to sop up the last delicious drop of gravy.
The French also apply their thriftiness  to stale bread: When there was no plastic, there were breadboxes, but those were not very airtight, and in a few days, you had stale bread. such was the humble beginning of the "French toast" before Perkins smothered it in heavy whipped cream strawberries and sugar. Essentially, it was a slice of stale bread dunked in a mixture of milk and an egg, a bit of oil and it was fried on both sides.
Before the French Revolution, famines were frequent, and even though the French Revolution was a bloodfest like never before, still more people died of famine than by beheadings by the Guillotine.
Before that time, only rich families could afford meat once a day. For most, meat was reserved for Sundays, and it was good King Henri IV [1553-1610] who went all out for his subjects and stated they were to have "a chicken in the pot" every Sunday. The rest of the time, it was vegetables and fruit. any meat was systematically "extended" with slices of bread.
But we will have hard times again. At the end of WWII, I remember mother making us some sandwiches of "saindoux" AKA lard to fatten us up. Even with a little sugar to make it more special could not disguise the soft lard. I can still gag at the thought!
but there were harder times than that: Times when the French Parisians invaded the zoos to get some meat. any kind of meat. They also trapped rats in abundance!
When the going gets tough, the tough keep eating!

but Argentina has suffered a monetary collapse in early 2000s; Perhaps your husband departed before that time.  I wonder if Argentinians have become more frugal since?  

my mother was also of German raising, and I learned so much culinary skill from her - all absorbed over time, innocently.

Norma Guy wrote:

Is it good or bad that we don't make clothing out of the packaging when it's empty these days?

I would wear that dress in a heartbeat. People probably wouldn't bat an eye at it in Tacoma. Or they'd think it was a protest against fast fashion and I'd let them think that.

Ellen Lewis wrote:Scrapple!
You make a mush of pork scraps, trimmings, and offal cooked with corn meal & buckwheat flour.
You pour it into a loaf pan & let it cool, and it sets so that you can slice it.
Then you fry the slices until brown.

Hash works with pork too ;)

Cécile Stelzer Johnson wrote:
Another staple that we can't do without in French is French bread AKA the baguette. Bread was touted as a "complete food" to the point that the French government forbids the inflation on bread so that even the poorest can eat this wholesome bread. Incidentally, the French "baguette" has only simple ingredients: flour, water, salt, and yeast. That's it! prisoners are still afforded all the bread they can eat and the baguette is often a substitute for lack of meat or vegetable. It is used at every meal to sop up the last delicious drop of gravy.

My Italian American Grandmother started every meal with salad- typically just greens with oil and vinegar and always served bread with everything to mop sauce and the oil and vinegar. A special treat on Sunday was to be the one or two who got to make a scarpat ...which is where you got to soak up the juices from the carving plate with a slice of bread and eat that. She had a big family and someone was always hungry

What an adorable little dress. In those days folks put their pride in "making do with what you have". Nowadays, it seems to be: please, please, waste all you want it helps the economy to run. The easy money [for some] and the survival meal by meal for others has multiplied the non-lasting low quality junk we accept in our lives.
Somehow, when I was young, it felt like everybody was "the same", economically. Few were the "big fortunes" and the middleclass was the biggest class. We did see poverty, but there didn't seem to be so many indigents. Now, a lot of large towns have folks going to the "popular pantry" and even the small town where I live has some folks who truly  are so poor they wonder where their next meal is coming from. Less than 50% of Americans have $400.00 to take care of an emergency.
Some folks have gathered a fortune so huge that nobody's child could possibly compete against their children to get to the top. The middle class seems to have shrunk in numbers while the very rich and the very poor have gotten more numerous. There is no middle.

I forced myself to do some sewing for my 2 boys [I really do not have a talent for it]. I made some one piece jammies when they were still in diapers. I used some old terry towels and they were nice and warm, but past the diaper age, they didn't want clothes that I would sew.

This youtube channel has a bunch of recipes from the depression era. And the host, Clara, is adorable!Great Depression Cooking