[Nada.Leona]

I saw this on another forum board I frequent and thought it'd be an interesting topic here. Poverty cooking -- think Great Depression, concentration camps, old farm wives, the 1800s, the Civil Wars, pioneer times, or just "dad lost his job and the cupboards are bare". Tips, tricks, recipes, etc. that are still applicable or adaptable today. Would love to hear some thoughts and ideas.

 

[nuisance26]

~Well, I don't know exactly how well this suits but I absolutely love beans and bread meals. You can do it Southern(black eyed peas and biscuits) or Western(pintos and cornbread) or Northern(baked beans and brown bread)or Far Eastern(lentils and flatbread) or Country(limas and whole wheat bread)and on and on.
Last night as I was making our dinner of chili and cornbread, I realized that we were out of canned tomatoes. So I just made chili without tomatoes or meat. So it was basically just chili spiced beans with onions and peppers. It was awesome! I liked it even better than chili. It was even easier to prepare and more filling too. A generous bowl with a sprinkle of cheese and dab of sour cream along with a sizable chunk of cornbread came to about $.40 a serving and I was stuffed.
So basically, running out of an ingredient is an inspiration to me. I think of a substitute or do without and I'm usually very pleased with the results(except that time I was running short on butter so substituted some milk for some of it in my cookies. Tasted good but texture was spongy. bleh.) ~

 

[Sue Anne]

Used to make fried potatoes (with onions), green beans and butter bread. A lot of carbs but very tasty and filling.

 

[shp1055]

biscuits & gravy;
cornbread & milk;
any kind of beans & cornbread;
rice & gravy (no bread);
buttered noodles (no bread);
mustard greens, black-eyed peas & cornbread.

 

[stinkbug]

My mom talks about eating leftover popcorn for breakfast with milk. Fried bologna. Saltines and butter.

A friend introduced me to twice baked potatoes with tuna. She was in college in the 60's and tuna and potatoes were cheap. Very filling, good protein.

I grew up on pheasant and fried potatoes.

 

[larabelle]

Soup made with mushrooms + onions+ potatoes (dont peel them) + corn. Seasoned with soy sauce, oregano, parsley, garlic power. Yum Yum!!

 

[Spirit Deer]

Wiener gravy. Slice wieners and fry, then make gravy in the pan. Serve over biscuits. It's not bad, especially with an onion chopped and browned with the wieners.

My dad talked about carrying lard sandwiches to school for lunch when he was a kid during the Depression.

 

[Giro]

I grew up very very poor. One of our neighbors grew potatoes so my brothers and I would go dig up a shirt full and mom would boil those in salt water and we would eat on those for a week.

We also ate a ton of homemade noodles and pasta. I would roll out the noodles and let them dry out and we would boil those and eat them with a little salt and pepper. On super special occasions, we would even have chicken to put in the pot with the noodles. That was rare. We seldom ate meat. I would not recommend this diet to anyone unless it was truly all you could afford to eat. The problem is that you have energy but you never gain muscle. So, if you have to go a day or two without eating (like in the summer when school was out) you had no energy because you have no muscle on your body. I was 5'8" tall in the 9th grade and weighed between 80-90 pounds most of the year. I left home when I was a junior in high school and lived with friends until I graduated. I had never seen what a balanced meal looked like until I left home.

I guess carbs are cheap and stolen potatoes are free. It's ironic that my husband and I eat no carbs at all now. It's so strange to type that out. It is perfectly normal to me but it sounds like something that happens in a third world country. ha.

 

[shp1055]

basic potato soup;

chicken & rice soup: 1 chicken thigh boiled to pieces in 2 qts water, and chopped small, salt & pepper; 2 cups rice cooked in a separate pot of salted water, drained well; combine the chicken, broth & rice & it'll feed several. You can add a couple of bouillon cubes to the broth if you have them.

we saved the leftover pieces of cornbread, biscuits, bread heels in a bread bag in the freezer, which mama used to make cornbread dressing using the cornbread & bread heels, and she made bread pudding out of the saved up biscuits with a little sugar, cinnamon, soured milk & vanilla. She always saved any leftover rice (which usually wasn't much) until she had enough to make rice pudding using just a little sugar, cinnamon, soured milk if we had any & vanilla (imitation).

fried biscuits for breakfast: using leftover biscuits, cut them in half, spread a little butter, margarine or bacon grease on the cut surface of each side and fry until crunchy in a hot iron skillet. I still make this.

 

[Brat]

Plain old milk gravy with bread, biscuits, what ever makes a good filler..Also pasta with what ever you have can be good..Tuna, a piece of chicken (cooked)..cook pasta in the broth of the chicken..If you have any left over veg you can throw it in..anything goes..Rabbit can be used just like chicken..Dandlelions makes a lot of things..The whole plant is good..I have even dryed the root in the winter and used as flour...You will eat a lot of things if your hungery..

 

[pammy]

I grew up on fried potatoes and pinto beans, all mom could afford to feed us little 4 girls. To this day, even though she can't cook much else (bless her heart!) her pinto beans and are the best I ever had. I kick her butt at fried potatoes though

 

[rosebudget]

I am not even sure what this is called. I make it by starting with a rue.

1 can cream of mushroom soup & equal amount of milk (my mother used powder milk)
1 can peas
2 or 3 eggs
1 can of tuna fish.

Served over mashed potatoes. We all loved in! The potatoes were from our garden

 

[oheoh's momma]

we had beans, fried taters, cornbread tonite for supper..it was so yummy
my favorite meal is fried taters and an onion almost friend done, drain the grease off and add 2 -4 eggs on top and let sit until soft fried...serve with pork and beans and fried corn bread it was so yummy

baked sweet taters are another favorite here yum

this is going to be a fun thread

oh I forgot about weiner gravy with tomato sauce yummm lol

 

[stinkbug]

Tonight (by choice) I had:
Leftover home made chili over a leftover baked potato. Super yummy! And filling

 

[larabelle]

Lentil seasoned with taco seasoning and baked potato

 

[jettsmom]

I remember eating lots of fried bologna, navy beans and fried potatoes, and my all time favorite...macaroni, tomato and hamburger. It's still my fav. When I think back to those days I think we must have been really poor or my mom didn't know how to cook.

My mom used to take navy bean sandwiches to school and trade for tuna.

 

[mommy4ever]

we had hard time growing up. Both parents unemployed and undr-employed at other times. However, dad hunted, every winter we had moose, elk, deer - he hunted with friends, so there was always a variety and it was shared among all. I remember being there to wrap meat, so I don't imagine we paid much for butchering. We also fished year round. Mom gardened and canned, we foraged for wild berries and mushrooms. Baba showed us how to make things from items you didn't realize were edibles. My brothers had a trapline for squirrels, muskrats and beavers, they earned money that way. I didn't have much growing up, but we always ate decent. There are times I wish dh would hunt, but not likely to happen..lol. I grew up in a community with lots of affluent families. We were known to have little, but ultimately, we were fed and healthy, everything else didn't matter.

 

[cab54]

My Mom made Macaroni, cheese and tomatoes. She'd get cheap cheese (and stretch it), and use her home-canned tomatoes from our garden. She'd crush up soda crackers for a topping. Yum. I still love it.

 

[cab54]

Fried egg sandwiches. Fried bologna sandwiches.

I remember my grandma telling me how they got through a really hard winter when she was a kid---on the farm, with 12 kids---they ate bisquits and sorghum a lot. And of course, what they had canned from the farm garden.

 

[nuisance26]

Fried egg sandwiches.

~Interesting, I don't think I've ever heard this referenced in a poverty cooking conversation. I suppose it makes sense if you keep your own chickens though. We never did and we had these a lot growing up. I still love 'em now, especially if I have a dab of bacon grease to fry them in. Served with ketchup of course.
The price of eggs keeps going up and up. $2 a dozen on regular sale now. :thud: I was lucky to get a special sale coupon for $1.07 a dozen last week and took advantage of that! Cheapest I've seen in a year. But it's still a good bargain for protein, even at $.17 each. A two egg sandwich will give you lots of fuel for less than $.50, even more so and cheaper too with homemade bread. Throw in some fresh veggies from the garden and you have a complete, wholesome meal. ~