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yep my granny was also very frugal and she lived through ww2 as well and she even saved the netting off of a ham and she would wash it and use it to scrub the pots and pans with . My mother would tell me never to do that because I was scrubing with bacteria . I used to laugh at how different they were . My mother used to get on me about how much of the potatoe I waisted they only got a 1/2 of the whole potatoe when granny baked the potatoes . My mother never ate a whole baked potatoe until she had her own home . I never peeled veggies with a peeler around my granny because she said it waisted too many vegetables . LOL ... she would give me a paring knife and she taught me how to peel the veggies with a paring knife . Good times . Oh at thanksgiving my granny would never buy a turkey she always bought a ham because to her a turkey was a waist because you could not use a turkey in as many things as you can a ham . I miss my granny most this time of year and the first christmas and the first thanksgiving are always the hardest after you loose a member of the family .
For Brunch, just feed me creamed chipped beef on toast aka S.O.S., an egg on top with crispy bacon on the side and I'm in heaven! Also fresh brewed coffee and some O.J. and maybe some french toast with maple syrup afterwards! That should hold me over till dinner time around 7pm!
My family was borderline poor. Not starvation or homeless poor, but definitely lower on the economic ladder than many other families. I'm talking late 1940s/early 1950s...
Don't get me wrong. My dad and mom worked hard at the local textile mill. They just lacked formal education (neither made it to junior high school), and were stuck in hard jobs at low pay.
My mom often had to come up with filling meals -- especially toward the end of the month, when money was running low. And she was good at it. Here are some of her "make-do meals" from the hard times I remember...
pancakes with margarine and sugar
ground beef thickened with gravy and poured over stale bread, potatoes, or whatever
bean soup (using navy beans soaked overnight and flavored with bacon scraps)
the leftover roast (beef, pork, or chicken) from Sunday, which became, progressively --
1. Monday -- hot sandwiches
2. Tuesday -- stew
3. Wednesday -- hash
4. Thursday -- thickened gravy over bread or potatoes
5. Friday -- soup (using the bones, etc.)
(Fridays were tough. Saturday was shopping day!!!!)
How about other Forum members? Any poverty menus you'd like to share?
I was lucky I guess. I grew up on a farm and it was able to provide us with almost
everything we needed to eat but very little money. One of the things my Mom fixed
for us a lot for breakfast was pancakes with fresh churned butter and homemade
chokecherry syrup. I loved it but many years later my Mother told me she had to
serve that to us because there wasn't any money to buy anything else. My parents
did a great job in keeping it a secret from us kids that we were poor.
GL2
We ate butter and sugar sandwiches as kids too, and made kool aid until we ran out of sugar. I don't think we were really so poor, my Dad worked all the time and sometimes my mother worked too. I think it was just that my Mom didn't know how to cook. Her mother passed when she was young and there were only a few things she knew how to cook. One of the things she did make was chicken and dumplings. She always bought a couple of packages of chicken backs Can you still buy chicken backs? I haven't seen them for sale by themselves for ages. She boiled them , pulled them from the broth to cool, removed the skin and bones, picked the meat to put back in the pot, then made the dumplings. She made the rolled out ones (later when I grew up a bit and made drop dumplings for her she was amazed you could make the puffy kind.) She could fry chicken too. Usually had it with mashed potatoes and canned green beans. We ate a lot of fish sticks and frozen pot pies too. Mac and cheese from a box. Dessert was often rice with sugar, milk and cinnamon.We ate bananas the same way. She never made a cake or a pie to my knowledge. We never went hungry though. I remember sometimes we'd have lumpy cream of wheat for breakfast. I loved the lumps. I delightedly smashed them with my tongue. I have tried to make the lumps but I think the cream of wheat company has refined it's product until lumps are near impossible. I'd give a lot to have some of my Mom's lumpy cream of wheat today. Yum.
I remember eating a lot of grilled (government) cheese sandwiches.
We also ate:
Miracle whip sandwiches
Rice and sugar
Collard greens or cabbage with cornbread
Hot dogs and beans
Spaghetti with meat sauce
The one expensive thing that we had regularly was the freshwater fish (perch, walleye etc.) that my brother caught. We usually had fried potatoes with it.
This gov' cheese sounds like its a hit. Cheese is expensive and it's one of the luxury items I don't buy anymore unless I'm really craving.
We weren't poor by any means when I was a child but by the time I was a teen, things changed dramatically in my household.
I was living alone when I was 17 with no stove/oven. I went to bed hungry many nights, and when I just couldn't bare it I would go to a nearby convenience store and buy those 25 cent mega processed faux pastries (zebra cakes, twinkies, etc.)
I still can't eat those things.
Now, I'm pretty broke. 23, back in college and living alone. I never go hungry but to not run out of money I eat a lot of pasta, Latin style rice and beans, Italian style bean salad with oil and vinegar, rice dishes, potatoes, and for sweets I buy tubs of store brand apple sauce, corn tortilla with butter and sugar, and I always buy whatever breads on sale. This week was french toast for $1.25 a loaf.
I enjoy being frugal and I hope to save lots of money when I'm finally able to work full-time.
We ate butter and sugar sandwiches as kids too, and made kool aid until we ran out of sugar. I don't think we were really so poor, my Dad worked all the time and sometimes my mother worked too. I think it was just that my Mom didn't know how to cook. Her mother passed when she was young and there were only a few things she knew how to cook. One of the things she did make was chicken and dumplings. She always bought a couple of packages of chicken backs Can you still buy chicken backs? I haven't seen them for sale by themselves for ages. She boiled them , pulled them from the broth to cool, removed the skin and bones, picked the meat to put back in the pot, then made the dumplings. She made the rolled out ones (later when I grew up a bit and made drop dumplings for her she was amazed you could make the puffy kind.) She could fry chicken too. Usually had it with mashed potatoes and canned green beans. We ate a lot of fish sticks and frozen pot pies too. Mac and cheese from a box. Dessert was often rice with sugar, milk and cinnamon.We ate bananas the same way. She never made a cake or a pie to my knowledge. We never went hungry though. I remember sometimes we'd have lumpy cream of wheat for breakfast. I loved the lumps. I delightedly smashed them with my tongue. I have tried to make the lumps but I think the cream of wheat company has refined it's product until lumps are near impossible. I'd give a lot to have some of my Mom's lumpy cream of wheat today. Yum.
you can still buy chicken backs- tho it may be a special order
many have mentioned fried chicken,,,,funny how we all had a tub of crisco - pure cholesterol, and then save and use the grease again....
...grease fires use to cause alot of house fires- I remember throwing frozen french fries in a pot of grease
....those french fries were good!!
Ive worked in the grocery business for almost 30 years.... in meat departments
20-30 yrs ago chicken leg quarters were one of the best sellers because they were the cheapest chicken sold
today , most stores have a tough time selling them, they still are the cheapest chicken on display- but the whole frugal mindset just isnt there as much.
There have been times, thru the years, when Im in front of a single mother..in the checkout line , and she's working two jobs,,not buying alcohol or cigarettes(you can tell she's trying to stretch her grocery dollars)
that I will leave a 20.00 bill to the cashier to take off her bill- I dont do that for foodstampers that buy crap, and have alcohol and cigarettes in the carriage...
As a child in the UK just after the war we didn't have much of anything, bread and lard or pork dripping was a favourite, chicken was a Christmas treat, my Grandmother made a dish called baked potatoes and crust, this contained one small piece of steak ( if you could get it) potatoes, onions a pastry and gravy a one pot dinner, sounds horrible but it was a real treat, by the way i never had meat until i was in my teens. Bananas didn't arrive back into the country until the late 40's along with oranges and lemons. We were able to catch rabbits but to this day i cannot eat it, and we did grow some vegetables . We survived in fact i believe some experts are saying we had a perfect diet, they obviously weren't around at the time.
you can still buy chicken backs- tho it may be a special order
Ive worked in the grocery business for almost 30 years.... in meat departments
20-30 yrs ago chicken leg quarters were one of the best sellers because they were the cheapest chicken sold
today , most stores have a tough time selling them, they still are the cheapest chicken on display- but the whole frugal mindset just isnt there as much.
When I am walking through the local independent markers, occasionally, I can find chicken backs, turkey necks, and the like. They are NOT cheap - often as much as $1.29/ lb. They are hard to find as MOST groceries these days do not break down chickens. The places where I find them make specialty butcher shop items like kabobs, stuffed breasts and the like.
Chicken leg quarters still reign as the cheapest chicken sold. Here is the ad for one of my favorite markets:
Raised on a farm so we always put out a garden and canned up for winter months the excess. Just money poor but had food always.
Potatoes every which way you can think to make them at every meal
Fried mush
Egg gravy (you folks with chipped beef were rich eh?)
Macaroni & diced tomatoes heated together
Butter beans over buttered white bread
Pancakes
Eggs all kinds of ways
My great gma was a WW1 widow she got the gov cheese and a 3# can of pure peanut butter. You had to stir it up every time you used it to get the oil off the top of the can. That cheese did make the best grilled cheese and mac & cheese. Wonder what kind it reeeeeeeeeeeeeally was & where it came from.
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