Find Out About the Depression Era Menus

Find Out About the Depression Era Menus

With the high costs of everything lately, it may be worthwhile to talk to any elderly relatives or friends or even strangers about what they did during the depression to stretch food dollars.

Ask not only about the menus, but how they purchased and prepared items, too.

My Dad liked to mention that he shared oats with the rabbits they raised. He enjoyed oatmeal and cookies from the huge sacks of oats and the rabbits enjoyed the oats too. His family had a garden and also raised pigeons and chickens. I never ate squab, but pigeon was a prized meal at least in some of the movies of the 1920's and 1930's. They sold the extra eggs to neighbors for cash. My grandfather made port wine and my grandmother canned and bottled. They bottled sasparilla and root beer soda. I saw the remains of hundreds of mason jars and wire top bottles in my grandparents basement when I was younger. My Dad was able to sip port made 30 years earlier by his Dad.

Even when I was a child, my grandmother would bake at least a hundred banana breads, date and nut cakes, fruit cakes, and pound cakes that she gave away to friends and relatives mostly starting in the fall through the winter. Dessert was sometimes canned fruit at her house.

I know they had friends and relatives that had farms and they probable traded things for bushels of fruits and vegetables. A lot of the other things they purchased in bulk probably at wholesale prices. I know the oats and the grapes were bought from wholesalers.

There are things I ate as a child that we do not eat anymore for no particular reason. Boiled lamb with green beans and potatoes all cooked in the same pot is something I have not eaten in 30 years, but the more I think about it, I will try it again soon. Lamb bones were important for the marrow. Lamb is greasy and after taking the skimming top layer of fat off, the water that was leftover from cooking was highly reguarded by my great grandmother who would pour some into a drinking glass and drink it.

While in college, I watched the preparation of at least two types of pickles from scratch. It was a lot of work to prepare a couple of bushel baskets of cucumbers and other vegetables and seal them in mason jars.

I never saw my parents can anything but they enjoyed blanching green beans and putting them in freezer bags. They froze corn, brussel sprouts, and cauliflower too.

I'll have to find out what other things were popular in the family at that time. I will try to dig up old family recipes before they are lost forever.


This year I think I will try to grow a few vegetables in the backyard and even try freezing some of it. I think I will even try some of the recipes that were used back then including the lamb and string beans. I think fruit once in a while for dessert would be a good idea. I think the family meals will be more appealing and and save some money in the food budget.