depression recipes for saving money

Yes, deebomb, I do use lots of recipes from my elders! Their food was absolutley wonderful, even tho' many times they had to compromise or substitute! One of my favourite cakes, is called "War Cake"....it has no eggs, milk or butter...and it is a wonderful, tasty cake. It was called "War Cake"because it contained none of the above, it could be sent overseas to the soldiers at War! Tightly wrapped it last 3 months. Cheers!

I can't say that I did but that would be a most awesome website to explore some of the recipes that people improvised when there literally were not jobs and there literally was no money... it is something I would highly frequent! Thanks Zelo

I have my gramma's cookbook "500 food-extender wartime recipes" book from World War II. I use a lot of the recipes in there, there are so many good ones! I make those boiled drop noodles too, I'm of German heritage, so we call them spaetzels but it's the exact same thing. I often make those when we have company and people just love them. I don't know how many friends I've shown how to make those lol. They have a lot of meatless dishes in there, like baked bean rarebit, farmer's chop suey (which is actually pretty good). I'm lucky, I have all of those cookbooks and cookbooklets from back then. I consider them indispensible and turn to their pages often when I'm hunting for something different to make. There's a lot of good money saving recipes in there! I grew up eating that kind of fare, so to me making it takes me right back to my childhood.

No I don't but the reason for that is because I have never really gotten to know any of my grandparents before they passed away. The one grandmother that I did get to know, my mothers mother was not a good cook. My mother is also not a good cook. I had to learn to cook on my own so I go through a lot of recipes looking for good ones.

I make my Grandma's homemade noodles, and the dried beef gravy on toast that my Mom used to make.

It's amazing that some of the things you at as kids you never dreamed of being "cheap" meals. When I was growing up I never knew that people ate steak in there house. I always thought that was something people ate when they went out to eat - which we didn't do often. My mom and grandma would sometimes make us kids dishes and then the adults would have something else. Most if not all of the time we didn't want what they were eating but looking back it was just eating what we could afford and being creative. A couple of my favorites were pasta noodles cooked and then put in a frying pan with margerine and then scramble an egg over them. Another was buttered noodles with a little bit of ketchup mixed in. My mother also broke up cheese and mixed it in with the hamburger rather then putting it on top - great way to stretch the cheese. We also would have sloppy joes made with cream of mushroom soup instead of the tomato sauce. It was a change from regular sloppy joes. We also ate alot of jello - it was my grandmas favorite dessert to give the grandkids and she always had it in her frig. We never had store bought cookies and cakes and now I find that I am doing the same with my kids. It is much cheaper to make something at home then to buy it at the store.

How lucky you are to have been able to listen to your grandmother and aunts talk about something like this. I wish I'd been able to ask my grandmother what she made during the depression. My grandparents were always dirt poor and I don't remember that they ever ate anything that wasn't prepared from scratch. My grandfather had been a master chef (or something like that) during WWII and he did most of the cooking at their house. He always made everything from scratch, and everything he made was delicious. I don't have any recipes from either of my grandparents, though. I could never get them to talk about themselves or their lives.

I have a cookbook with recipes that are made from things that store well, like wheat, sugar, salt and beans. It is amazing the things that people can come up with. I got it from a church activity. A lot of our stuff is boxed up but I will look for it and see if I can find any.

Hi dee... I have recipes from my grandma but I don't know that they were from the depression time...I have never heard of eggless cake, or nefflies... Those must have been very hard times....