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

FAQs

What kind of food was eaten during the Great Depression? ›

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.

During the Great Depression of the 1930s, homemakers stretched their food budgets with soups, rice and pasta–but beans were the commodity no household went without: cheap, high protein, and no refrigeration required until cooked.

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.

The Imperial Valley of California, for example, lost 2.8 million watermelons, 1.4 million crates of cantaloupes, and 22.4 million pounds of tomatoes in 1932 simply because it could not be sold, despite widespread poverty and hunger [1].

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.

Research has shown that certain foods can actually help to boost your mood. These include: Foods that contain the amino acid, tryptophan, including eggs, spinach and salmon. Foods that are rich in folic acid, including avocado and spinach.

Choose healthier sources of fat: Eat veggies with hummus, a handful of walnuts, or an avocado instead of a fatty prepackaged snack. Healthy fats reduce stress hormones and depression. Choose low-glycemic dinner foods: Eat quinoa, farro, buckwheat, or amaranth instead of white rice or white potatoes.

During the Great Depression preceding the passage of the Social Security Act, "soup kitchens" provided the only meals some unemployed Americans had. This particular soup kitchen was sponsored by the Chicago gangster Al Capone.

During the Great Depression, cooking meatloaf was a way for families to stretch the food budget by using an inexpensive type of meat and left-over ingredients. Along with spices, it was popular to add cereal grains, bread or saltine crackers to the meatloaf to add bulk and stretch the meat.

Kibble + canned dog foods were introduced made out of dehydrated meat and grain mill scraps. Great Depression (30's - 40's): Canned pet food became 90% of the pet food market. WWII (1939-45): “Non-essential” pet food was not a priority during wartime and rationing.

What did people drink during the Great Depression? ›

Roosevelt (1882–1945) changed the Volstead Act (the law enforcing the Eighteenth Amendment) to allow the sale of beer. By December 5, 1933, Prohibition ended. The manufacture, sale, and consumption of all alcohol was again legal. The martini, a co*cktail made with gin, became a popular and legal beverage.

But back in the 1930s, inexpensive parcels of meat such as beef necks or pork liver would have been part of the frugal fare for African-Americans, especially in Chicago with its many stockyards. And, oh yes, there was chicken - as in chicken feet, he said. Both beans and greens of various descriptions were popular.

Perhaps one hobo acquired a few carrots from a charitable person, while another stole an onion off a box car, while another had a few potatoes from a farm he worked on briefly… From this concoction, a “hobo stew,” also known as “Mulligan/Mulligatawney stew” was born and became the traditional food of the hobo.

As unemployed workers and their families struggled to get by on scanty savings, dwindling credit, or emergency relief rations, they cut meat, milk, and fresh vegetables from their diets; the food they could not afford piled' up in warehouses or rotted, unharvested, in the fields.

But back in the 1930s, inexpensive parcels of meat such as beef necks or pork liver would have been part of the frugal fare for African-Americans, especially in Chicago with its many stockyards. And, oh yes, there was chicken - as in chicken feet, he said. Both beans and greens of various descriptions were popular.

Including ingredients like lobster, squab, oysters, tongue, crab, fruit punch, prunes, peaches, pineapple, honeydew melon and orange marmalade in the menu helped gentrify the meal and add that touch of elegant refinement that was so important.