Learn To Make Depression Era Recipes With 93-Year-Old Clara
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I thought the only place for the elderly on YouTube was covering The Who's "My Generation"?
where's the "bathtub gin" episode???
Today's poor man's meal is a cup of ramen. It is also the lazy man's meal.
@mac-phisto: no need to resort to that.....Skol vodka is only like 9 dollars a bottle and tastes just like rubbing alcohol, lol.
Clara, you're a treasure. Thanks for sharing!
Throw an egg in there and you've got a breakfast scramble. BAM all three meals of the day in one pan.
What she made reminds me of what I call "Hash". Nothing more than ground beef and potatoes cut the way she did. Fried in oil and very tasty. Not healthy, but good and fairly cheap.
Agreed on Raman or Mac and Cheese. :)
Bring back Horn & Hardart
eat cardboard
"I had to quit high school because we couldn't afford socks...we couldn't afford anything to wear."
History books don't really make you think about individual people's stories like this. My family is adjusting our habits to work with the current economy, but we are nowhere near not being able to send my daughters to school because they have no clothes that fit.
I like hot dogs and potatoes. I might make that poorman's meal tonight for supper. :)
Ugh! Her kitchen looks like it's 91 years old, too!
She should take out an interest only, adjustable rate home equity loan and update that kitchen with cherry cabinets and stainless steel appliances.
eat cardboard with MSG added it's delicious!
@YardanCabaret: Hell, you could order something like that at Denny's (maybe with ham instead of wieners, though) and they'd charge you 7-8 bucks a plate for it.
Now you can make it at home instead! :)
When I was a boy, I used to go down to the rail yard and make obscene gestures at the engineer till he would throw pieces of coal at me, so we would have stuff to burn in the stove. But kids today. Bah!
Oh p.s., editors...she says she's 91, but your headline says 93.
I'm still waiting for the 50 pound sack of potatoes to return to the grocery stores around here. Growing up I always remember us having a sack in the garage near the back kitchen door. They were cheap, and with four kids you could count on potatoes in every meal. Nowadays I'm lucky to find anything bigger than a 10lb bag, and even those are sort of rare. I wouldn't be surprised to see their return by the end of the spring crop as more and more people are shopping on a budget.
@medfordite: Grew up on hash, made by my grandma, who herself survived the depression on just such food. I LOVED it as a kid, but it's a little too salty for me now.
This makes me sick. Do your civic duty and buy frozen Jimmy Dean breakfast sandwiches for the morning, eat Subway for lunch and go to Outback Steakhouse for dinner. If you buy food that's not advertised, you're just killing the economy.
This kind of thinking builds a work ethic and that's worth jack if there are no jobs.
@gqcarrick: In Oregon, we have HRD - buy rotgut locally!
Seriously, we should check the recipes out, and I should ask my dad about my grandma's stuffed cabbage recipe...
@Mooshie: Oh, lame. I fail at paying attention.
Carry on, editors. I seem to have taken my stupid pills instead of my multi-vitamin this morning.
This obviously isn't absolutely dirt cheap, but really, really good gumbo can be made for about $30 (or less depending on what deals you catch, what ingredients you exempt and how much you make) and can feed anywhere from one person to 10 people, and can last for weeks and weeks if you're freezing it. Rotisserie chickens that are baked fresh are awesome, especially if you get them on sale (one of my local grocery stores puts them on sale on Sundays), and a pound of andouille, some bell peppers, spices, chicken broth...amazing.
The cost seems big at first, but $30 to feed two people for weeks? I made it several weeks ago, and there's still a little left over in the freezer.
She shoulda killed that lady that was going into her garden, and then made hot dogs out of her corpse. That woulda learned her.
That's a real poor man's meal. Kill anyone who crosses ya, and then ya eat em.
as much as we complain about imports from China and other countries, they have made buy clothing very cheap, to the point that it's unusual for someone to do without clothing.
Several friends of mine have approached me for cooking lessons since their take-home pay is not longer covering as much take-away food as it once did. It saddened me when one of them was astonished by the idea that macaroni and cheese didn't have to come out of a box marked 'Kraft'.
Looks like those are cheesy hot dogs - not the cheap kind. LIARS!
My dad used to make potatoes and onions all the time. Now I have an idea where he got it from. my dad was born in 1948. His parents were always broke, I kept wondering where dad got some of his cooking ideas from. Now watching this lady I know where.
Although I have to admit she is a good cook for her age and knows about depression cooking. She is right potatoes are cheap and can be grown just about anywhere. My dad planted many rows of potatoes and frankly a potato was never a wasted product. Even if it rotted it grew sprouts you planted and used for next year's harvest if necessary.
Look, fine, good video great. But this 'depression' scare we are making is a bit out of control, and worse, only hurts the economy.
The fact that we compare today to the great depression is an insult to anyone who lived through that period. Are we all homeless, living in a tent? Where are all the hoover villes?
I think a lot of people want a depression. They want people to pay. They want an excuse for why their life isn't going as dreamed.
Careful what you wish for.
I hope Clara remembered to turn the stove off when she was done cooking.
@pecan 3.14159265: Yes but how many meals of gumbo can a person take before they're sick of it. Not many. Bulk cooking is good but only if you have the money to outlay up front and the freezer space (and appropriate containers) to handle the whole process.
Oh cool! I can't wait to get home and watch this. (No speakers and evil bosses at work.)
I love to go to the flea market and look for those really old pamphlet-style cookbooks. I have one from the 1920s and a couple from the 1940s. It's interesting to see the recipes from that time, when people ate lard and stuff like that. I have a Gold Medal Flour cookbook from 1910 too, but they wrote recipes (called "receipts") differently then, so they are hard to figure out sometimes.
Like this:
Huckleberry Tea Cake - Two cups of sour milk, half a cup of white sugar, one egg, teaspoonful of soda, teaspoonful of salt, flour enough to make it a stiff dough. Beat it well and fill with berries. To be eaten hot with butter. If made with sweet milk, use baking powder instead of soda. ([www.victorianpride.com])
They cooked on wood and coal stoves so there are no temperature measurements or anything. The older the receipt, the luckier you are if there are measurements at all. I swear, I had to read the cookbook four times before I figured out what "forcemeat" was.
If you have half a head of garlic, four cups of onions, four cups of potatoes, a package of frozen spinach, a pinch of salt, six cups of water, a stock pot and a blender, you'll have almost three litres of insanely nutritious soup in an hour that'll last you until the cows come home (and they'll come home because you didn't threaten to eat them).
I'm all for economizing but, after my dad worked in a hot dog factory, I'd touch them with a ten-foot pole only if I wer absolutely starving.
@Mooshie: If you go to your local Asian grocery and spend $0.60 per packet instead of $0.30, you can get ramen that comes with little flavor sachets and is really quite tasty. If you poach an egg in the microwave and lay it on top you can have a pretty good meal.
@Bladefist: There won't be any Hoovervilles this time. We can all just squat in foreclosed McMansions. ;)
Clara is awesome!
I grew up in a farming family and the 80's were some tough times. I will never forget the one pot meal that my mom fixed 5 days out of 7 consisting of rice, hamburger, canned mushrooms and gravy made from the fried hamburger that held it all together. The taste and texture of that dish still haunts me.
@lockdog: Oh, man, we had those too. By the time you got to the last few potatoes in the sack, they had eyes like 12 miles long growing out of 'em. Good times.
I was born in Ukraine and I must say, the poor mans meal during the depression was the meal of kings during my childhood.
But still seriously awesome video.