The Great Depression Radically Changed the Way Americans Ate

Oh my, Herbert Hoover obviously didn't have his crystal ball-bet those words came back to haunt him.

I have not a doubt the depression changed the way people ate.

My parents were kids during the depression. Dad's father was always in work so he didn't know poverty as such but he used to go rabbiting & often gave rabbits to an aunt who was doing it hard.

With mum, I think her father had work most of the time but not always & looking back, it showed, right down to the things mum served us sometimes.

She used to make a really nice hot apple sponge dessert & she & I would have it with milk poured into the bowl.
I still prefer it that way. I just assumed that was the way everyone had it but it came from her childhood.
Back in the depression, people didn't always have cream or icecream.

She said that as a child, she also enjoyed bread fried in dripping.

Mum always saved dripping from roast meats-put it in an enamel bowl with water, in the fridge, so the impurities would sink & the clear fat rise to the top.
She never bought fat or cooking oil.

There was no waste-not with food, not with electricity etc.
People of their generation were thrifty.