Egads...
Spanish Jell-O Salad
1 package lemon Jell-O
1 pint warm water
1 tablespoon vinegar
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 or 3 pimientos, finely chopped
1/2 cup white cabbage, finely shredded
1 cup celery, finely chopped
1/2 cup pickles, finely chopped
Dissolve Jell-O in warm water. Add vinegar and salt. Chill.
Combine pimientos, cabbage, celery, and pickles. Wehn Jell-O is slighly thickened, add vegetables. Turn into individual molds. Chill until firm. Unmold on creisp lettuce. Garnish with mayonnaise. Serves 8.
My mother in law did this kind of thing - I could swear she once added mustard - but my mother didn't.
I'll admit this is a super commercial book for 1932. A lot of the recipes are rather nice cakes... I see it as "something to aim for" in the way of recipes in the New York Times today... and an early prelude to frozen peas in the fifties. Some kind of weird transition between real home cooking from scratch and convenience cooking now.
But, also, if you had the book, and you had a potato, and a carrot...
Not really depression cooking in the tough sense. Though I haven't scoured the book entirely yet.
I didnt see the depression in Australia but rabbit meat was a mainstay. they were cheap and in plague proportions.
My Auntie used to say you needed bacon in the rabbit stew so you couldnt taste the rabbit.
My grandmother (1895-1976) told me many stories of her childhood, when the family was wealthy, and her young adulthood during WWI, but very few of the Depression years. I do remember her saying that they didn't have it so bad -- the house in the city of London Ontario was paid for and they had enough land for a "kitchen garden" and a large hen coop. Eggs and root vegetables were the base of any meal. She once made an onion pie to show me what they ate. I wouldn't eat it.
My grandfather went door-to-door on his bicycle, selling tea. They didn't have butter very often, so they got used to eating bread with lard instead. They traded eggs and feathers (for pillows, I guess) with the travelling tinkers for thread and cloth, pots and other household needs.
She didn't often cook eggs when she was raising me -- seems she had developped a distaste for them.
For beef stock - 3 pounds shin of beef, 3 quarts cold water. (Skipping the verbiage.)
Okay, their potato soup -
2 tablespoons Minute Tapioca
1 tsp salt
dash of cayenne
dash of pepper
2 cups hot mashed potatoes
1/2 small onion
3 1/2 cups milk
1 tablesppon parsley, chopped
4 tablespoons butter.
Combine dry ingredients, potatoes, onion, and milk. Place over rapidly boiling water, bring to a scalding point (allow 5 - 7 minutes), and cook 5 minutes, stirring frequently. Add parsley and butter, remove onion. Serves 4 - 6.
(Gee, Grigson would have added some sorrel at the end..)
when ever guests would arrive on sunday my grandfather would just tell gandma to make more long gravy.
Johnboy, my dad was born in '06, mother in '01. I was a bit of a late development.
My folks fell for the lure of California, but, by the time they arrived there, the authorities were turning poor people away. I have heard a figure of 14,000 per day arriving there, but could possibly stand to be corrected. They returned to Texas, but, several years later, went to California anyway. My Mom and her three sons were the only ones that stayed. The places we lived were filled up by Okies and the like. Schools were inadequate to educate so many. I recall hearing Hal Peary (The Great Gildersleve) on radio, begging the public to pass new legislation, or whatever it was, to build more schools. My first school, we had morning students and afternoon students, about thirty per class, meaning that without the division, there would have had to be sixty per class.
