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.

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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

Kris Winter wrote: (schmalz, the fat of chickens. Not much else to do with the stuff but hide it in soup.)

When I was a child I hated margarine (still do) so I insisted that my mother put schmalz on my sandwiches instead. Yum.

Not specifically a depression-era trick, but if fuel is expensive it is possible to save some by letting for example stews, porridge, rice and similar finish cooking by taking the pot off the heat source and insulating it well - wrapping in blankets for instance. It may take a little longer to finish, but works well as a replacement in recipes where you would finish cooking on a low heat for a while. Here in Norway, and probably other places too, it was apparently not uncommon to have a wooden crate insulated with straw for this type of "cooking". I don't know when they went out of use, but I think I have seen them referred to in cookbooks from as late as after the war.

I use my "cooking box" very often. My cooking box is my oven, in which I place the pot, wrapped in blankets. Here's an example

Pearl Sutton wrote: Meatloaf was made up to stretch meat. Meatloaf burgers work well too. I just made us, for brunch, french toast out of home baked bread, and not many eggs.
What are your favorite recipes or ideas for stretching food when times get tough?

Well, this thread is making me remember that my dad's family grew up poor as heck, so all my childhood faves were just 'stretched out' versions of what other people would call the standard.  You've heard of 'Old Money', get ready for 'Old Poor'!
I grew up on 'meatloaf' burgers, but they were just called hamburgers. I found out other people DIDN'T add breadcrumbs, egg, and a bunch of spices to their burger patties in highschool, and was (and still am) disappointed at how dry and flavorless most '100% meat' burgers are in comparison.  
Passing clothes to younger siblings, or taking them apart to mend into something new is just sensible. When the fabric's too worn out to be clothes, it can be cut up and used as a washing or drying rag.

Here's some tips;

1.  Add Noodles or Rice to every dish. Even if you only have a tiny portion of meat and a little bit of veggies, if it's mixed into rice or noodles with a sauce it'll kick ass.
1a. Make more noodles/rice than you need, and store the extra for tomorrow, to use a different sauce/seasoning. It's a different dish entirely, now!
2. For cheap, easy veggies: Frozen peas, Dried Beans, and Canned Tomatoes are your friend. They last forever, so you can stock up when you have a bit of money (or make your own from the garden).
3. Learn how to LONG-FERMENT veggies. A lot of online recipes are for short fermentation, and require putting in the fridge & eating within 2 weeks. Properly long-fermented and unopened containers of saurkraut, kimchi, pickles, etc. will last about a year, they'll just get soft as they get older - great for turning into flavorful soups and sauces packed with nutrients.
4. If you have a tiny bit of yogurt left (or can afford buying a single-serving cup), and a gallon of milk that hasn't gone bad, you can make MORE yogurt by mixing the two together in a pot, covering that pot, and putting it in the oven overnight (No heat! Ambient house temp only) - As long as the yogurt wasn't pasteurized, you'll get SO MUCH plain yogurt!
5. Buying oil, flour, rice, and noodles in BULK is worth the cost savings and extra effort storing it when you get home. Noodles/flour/Rice store just fine in old pickle and spaghetti sauce jars, or just wrapped up in layers of saran wrap if that's all you got. If it's watertight it's good to go.
6. Sourdough starter is worth keeping around for small batches of bread. It's got no preservatives so it should be eaten in 1-2 days, but with the sourdough starter you can always make another loaf. (or pretzels, or biscuits, or pizza crust, or focaccia, or bao, etc.)
7. When you're feeling down about money, go out of your way to use different seasoning combos than normal & make your food LOOK GOOD. Like, plate it prettily, put a garnish on it, a little drizzle of garlic oil (boil garlic into oil, strain the chunks out to eat, ta daaa garlic oil), and present it with a flourish. Even if you're just having a variant of hamburger helper for the fourth time this week, it's a morale boost to feel like you're eating something new & special.
8. STOCKPILE sauce & dips RECIPES and SPICES. Many excellent sauce recipes are simple, and can be made with super-cheap ingredients. Yogurt-lemon juice-basil/dill is excellent


My childhood favorite was just called 'Noodle Stuff'. Served hearty helpings to a family of four, with leftovers for tomorrow.
- 2 boxes cheap Mac 'n Cheese (with cheese powder packets)
- 1 bag frozen peas
- 1 yellow onion (chopped roughly)
- 1 can concentrated cream of mushroom soup
- 1 soup-can full of water
- 1 tbs miced garlic (or 2 tsp garlic powder)
- Whatever meat you can spare. Dad used half a pound of ground beef or ground sausage as default, or a whole pound if he was feeling confident about money haha.
- Salt and black pepper to taste. (we liked it peppery)

Cook the Meat in a very big pot, on medium heat.
When the meat's about halfway done, add the onion in to cook in the meat juices.
Boil the Noodles.  
Dump EVERYTHING into the big pot, except the salt and pepper.
Mix thoroughly while on medium heat, until the frozen peas turn BRIGHT GREEN (cooked through, but not overdone)
Take off the heat, and add salt & pepper to taste.

It's quite cheap to make an enormous amount of filling, tasty food.
You can also adjust the recipe to add mixed vegetables if you want, or use a different type of creamy soup. It's versatile.

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Protip for all you homesteaders:
In the USA, Feral Pigeons are NOT a protected species. You can bait-trap as many as you want and take them home. Many businesses will allow you to trap their birds for free, thinking them a nuisance pest. I don't recommend eating feral pigeons directly, because long-term malnutrition and poor living conditions is an easy way to spread disease.
HOWEVER:
You can build a roosting & nesting structure (dovecote) and keep the pigeons trapped in there for about 2-3 months. (they will need to be fed and watered during this time).
That 2 months will make MOST of them set this nesting structure as their HOME.
You now have a dovecote full of adult pigeons which you can allow to free-roam to forage, and they'll come back to the dovecote at night to roost. Each adult dove will pair up with a mate for life, and if you've been feeding them good food during their first 2 months, keep their water fresh, and occasionally give your flock a handful of cheap birdseed once they're set loose, they'll actually tell other pigeons what a sweet home they have, and invite more pigeons to come roost with them in your dovecote.  

Pigeons are SUUUUPER easy to gut & pluck (way easier than a chicken!), they're not bothered by losing their nest of eggs, and if you let them hatch out the chicks, the young ones are ready to harvest for meat JUST before they're fledged out fully. You can grab 'em right from the nest once they look like an adult pigeon, but before they leave the nest. (The meat is sweet and tender at that stage. If you harvest adult, flying pigeons, the meat will be tougher and have a gamey flavor... just different, not inedible)

As long as you can save up enough seed to feed them through the winter, in the warm months they become a nearly-free source of meat & eggs because they'll fly around to forage from surrounding areas. Unlike chickens, you don't have to worry as much about ground predators or neighbor's dogs getting them while free-roaming. It's generally hawks/owls/eagles that get them, but they produce enough young each year that a lil population of pigeons in your dovecote should be able to easily replace any numbers lost to predation.
Their poo is also INCREDIBLE for gardening.

All 'City Pigeons' are decedents from Rock Pigeons. They were thoroughly domesticated for meat and eggs, and to carry messages... and then at some point in history, humans lost interest in cultivating them, and released them into the wild. In America, Rock Pigeons are considered 'Feral' animals - not 'Wild'. They're like feral dogs or feral cats who were born wild and never interacted with people.
Their domestication is still written in their genes - they can tame down to be wonderfully friendly animals.

My mom grew up during the great depression. Her dad was a pig farmer. Every Saturday her mom would bake 7 loaves of bread. Each school day she would spread lard on 2pieces of bread and sprinkle it with sugar. This would be her lunch for school, where she often shared it with students who had nothing. She had 7 brothers and sisters and they all took the same lunch.

Hi Anita,

Welcome to Permies.  Great post!

My parents lived through the depression.  We grew up poor.  I remember getting real excited when I learned that we would be having meat for supper.  To clarify, meat referred to fish, chicken, pork, beef. I also remember my father teaching me how to make a bean sandwich.

This thread jogged lots of memories of my childhood.  My mother was feeding 6 mouths on very little, so there were lots of "meat stretching" tricks - casseroles and soups and meat flavored gravies over a starch.  We always mixed jug milk from the store with reconstituted powdered milk, 50/50.   Unless we just had powdered milk.  And I also remember adding an extra can of water to orange juice concentrate.  There was lots of beans and rice, or potatoes.  Also, pasta with a red gravy meat sauce (made with hamburger, usually).  And what we kids always called "hamburger water soup" - it was a little thin, but could stretch a pound of ground meat over two or even three meals.  We ate quite a lot of fish, too, since that was something which could be caught, so cost nearly nothing.

Cleaning out my dad's house, we found a few of my mom's cookbooks.  Among them were "How to Eat Cheap but Good" (yes, bad grammar, but oh well) and "Recipes for a Small Planet".  This latter imagined than we were all destined, immediately or nearly so, for some sort of Paul Erlich inspired Malthusian population explosion and great resource shortage, so we'd all be compelled, of necessity, to become obligate vegetarians.  Even though the fundamental motivation for the book didn't pan out (well, not yet, anyway), this book has lots of great stuff on what combinations and amounts will provide whole protein.  It also has a recipe for one of the few things I refused to eat, as a child - a casserole of bulghur wheat and cottage cheese, seasoned with rosemary.  Despite liking strongly flavored things as a kid, I think it was the rosemary that put me off - tasted too much like pine needles, I guess; whatever the case, I could not gag it down.

I remember my maternal grandfather, who grew up on a farm during the Great Depression, telling us about having stale bread in milk for supper, pretty well as a staple.  Since they had cows and grew wheat, this was economy at its finest.  Also popcorn in milk, on similar rationale.

Even though my father grew up in the "boom years" after WWII (he was born in '41), they pretty well lived on homegrown potatoes.  I don't think my paternal grandmother ever cooked a meal without some sort of potatoes, just by force of habit, even after they were sufficiently well off to eat something exotic like pasta or rice.

On edit: a few more things that surfaced from my childhood (it's amazing what bubbles up in my subconscious while I sleep!)

Heart spread - boiled beef heart, ground with the meat grinder and mixed with mayonnaise and pickle relish
Tongue - usually slow simmered, then thinly sliced with the electric carving knife after cooling, and put on sandwiches
Lentil loaf - a meatless "meat" loaf, also usually sliced cold and put on sandwiches
Beef liver - most often fried with onions in some reserved bacon fat, and usually served with fried potatoes
Chicken a la king - finely minced or shredded chicken in a cream sauce, with some veg (peas, carrots, sweet corn, maybe some Lima beans), and served on "from scratch" waffles
Fish roe - whenever we caught a female fish during spawning season, the eggs were saved, usually fried up along with the fish (trout, mostly, as I recall)

One my wife's family grew up on was hotdog stew.  Cut up some frankfurters into "coins", brown them in butter with onions (one large or two small) in a deep skillet or stock pot, add a tin of crushed tomatoes with the juice, a can of condensed tomato soup with water to reconstitute, a can or two of corn, a couple of cups of pasta (with extra liquid, as needed, depending on how many mouths are being fed).  Served with biscuits, homemade or otherwise.  I don't remember the exact recipe, now - I think there's some minced garlic in there also, and salt to taste.  We used to make this for our kids when they were young, and it's still our son's requested favorite whenever he comes home, even though he's now well into his 30s.