28 Surprisingly Delicious Great Depression Recipes You Should Try - Page 2 of 2 (2024)

FAQs

What is depression cooking? ›

Depression Cooking is a zine of easy recipes designed to make mealtime a little easier, in the no-nonsense sense of the word, for depressed humans like me. It demonstrates one of the many lessons that I've learned during COVID: that we can care for one another without being physically present.

They were referred to as 'makeshift sandwiches'. There were butter and sugar sandwiches, onion sandwiches, ketchup sandwiches and raw carrots and salted peanuts sandwiches. Another using nuts were walnuts, mayo and some lettuce on bread.

Many families sought to cope by planting gardens, canning food, buying used bread, and using cardboard and cotton for shoe soles. Despite a steep decline in food prices, many families did without milk or meat. In New York City, milk consumption declined a million gallons a day.

Many cheap foods still common among the poor today made their debut during the Depression: Wonder Bread (1930), Bisquick (1931), Miracle Whip (1933), and Campbell's Cream of Mushroom soup (1934). Ragu spaghetti sauce, Kraft mac-n-cheese, and Hormel Spam all appeared during the Roosevelt Recession in 1937.

What did people eat for breakfast in the Great Depression? Corn meal mush & eggs. As they raised there own corn & had chickens on the farm.

Celery soup mixed with tuna fish and mashed potatoes. A salad of corned beef, gelatin and canned peas. Baked onion stuffed with peanut butter. Those are just some of the recipes Americans turned to during the Great Depression, when many families struggled to eat enough nutritious food.

Some people chose to hunt for their food. Some people harvested their own bees to make honey. Other people went to soup kitchens, which are places where people can go and get a free meal. Since many people needed a free meal during the Depression, they often had to wait for hours in long 'soup lines' to be served.

Potatoes were also inexpensive and used extensively. Some meals even used both. One of these meals was called the Poor Man's Meal. It combined potatoes, onions, and hot dogs into one hearty, inexpensive dish, which was perfect for the hard times people had fallen on.

Grilled Thin Sliced Turkey and Pepperoni topped with Marinara Sauce and Melted Mozzarella Cheese on a grilled Ciabatta Bun.

The first sandwich was finally featured in an American cookbook in 1815. It wasn't the type of sandwich we typically eat today, but was actually a tongue sandwich. Americans really started to step up their sandwich game during the Great Depression, when sandwiches like the iconic Po'Boy were created in New Orleans.

What was grilled cheese called during the Great Depression? ›

The cheese dream, an open-faced grilled cheese sandwich, became popular in the U.S. during the Great Depression.

Children of the 1930s were at least protected under child labor reform measures of the 1920s, which limited their workday to eight hours and provided guidelines for employment of minors. Many children were self-employed, collecting junk to sell or doing odd jobs for neighbors.

Not everyone, however, lost money during the worst economic downturn in American history. Business titans such as William Boeing and Walter Chrysler actually grew their fortunes during the Great Depression.

Many children didn't have enough food to eat, a car to ride in, a big enough house, or enough clothes. Many had to quit school to work in a factory or on a farm. Today, in the United States, children are required to attend school starting with elementary school, then middle school, then high school.

By the time of the Great Depression, people of all classes were routinely eating outside the home. Like other retail businesses, restaurants reduced their prices at the depth of the crisis.

Big families could be fed with soups from leftover meats, beans, and home-grown vegetables. Homemakers made many varieties of soup from available foods. The results included split pea, chicken-rice, potato-onion, bean, hamburger, and all vegetable. Dumplings were a filling addition to complement the soup.

They included: Kool-Aid powder drink, Kraft Macaroni and Cheese, Bisquick, Spam (precooked canned pork), Twinkies, Ritz Crackers, Lay's Potato Chips, cereals of Cheerios and Chex and Three Musketeers Bar. Maybe the most favorite item coming from the 1930s was the new Toll House Chocolate Chip Cookies developed in 1938.

Town families could not produce their own food. Many city dwellers often went hungry. Sometimes there were soup kitchens in larger cities that provided free meals to the poor. Winters were an especially hard time since many families had no money to buy coal to heat their houses.