Depression Food

It took me a while to put my finger on it, but there was something about the Christmas holidays that I definitely did not like and I breathed a sigh of relief when they were past. It was not the “I’ve maxed my card from shopping” post holiday blues, because I never did play that game. It was more that when I’m around rich food I have absolutely no self-control, and during Christmastide all of womankind engages in some undeclared cooking and baking competition to see who can produce the most calorie-dense dishes. Every year I rue the ten pounds of blubber I gain in two weeks that will take me until July to lose.

In January I look forward to getting back to what we call “good ole Depression food.” Based largely on potatoes, onions, cabbage and beans, it is both some of the least expensive and most healthy fare, and requires the simplest preparation. It takes me back to my youth when the aroma of a fried potatoes and onions with milk gravy breakfast filled the house and fed our brood. We also consumed a lot of oatmeal, eggs, and hot cocoa for breakfast. Lunches were ham and bean soup with cornbread. As a toddler, I called it camel soup because that’s how my ears heard Campbell’s soup. Milk, a teaspoon of butter, black pepper, diced potatoes or tomatoes formed the ingredients for my mother’s homemade potato and tomato soups. Potatoes, onions and hamburger were the basis of various goulashes and hashes. Kidney beans, cayenne pepper and hamburger gave us hardy chili. Lunch sandwiches were toasted cheese, scrambled egg with mayo, and fried baloney with the bubbled up centers. (Ok, so fried baloney isn’t all that healthy…this is my nostalgia, isn’t it!)

We didn’t eat much lettuce or salads back then, but cabbage seemed to find its way into everything. Cooked cabbage, (boiled in sugar and pepper water), served with a peeled boiled spud and some beef was a supper mainstay. On Sundays women made Cole slaw with a sugar and vinegar mix to go with mashed potatoes, dark gravy and beef or fried chicken, milk gravy and mashed potatoes. Most main meals were three courses: meat, potatoes and gravy, and a side, usually either cooked cabbage or canned corn with butter. Dessert was butter and jelly bread. You were expected to empty your plate and it was considered good Hoosier etiquette to mop your plate with bread and eat the mop.

Today the entire front door of our fridge is filled with condiments and salad dressings. In the 50s, it was mostly ketchup, vinegar-sugar water, butter, salt, pepper, and gravies that flavored meals. In hindsight, there was probably too much red meat, lard and salt in those meals and I’d try to replace or reduce those elements today. Still the weekly shopping list was relatively simple and the food tasty in those meat-and-potato meals. Milk, butter, bread, eggs, sugar, flour, vinegar, ketchup, oatmeal, cocoa, potatoes, onions, cabbage, dried beans, canned corn, hamburger, chicken, baloney, and a large brick of cheese, now that is a pretty simple and inexpensive shopping list by today’s standards.

My mouth still waters at the thought of Mom’s simple cooking!