How Grandma Survived The Great Depression

My Wonderful Grandma 

     My grandmother raised seven children on a ten acre spread of sloping hilltop in western Pennsylvania during the Great Depression. My grandfather, a coalminer, built the house they lived in.     
     My grandmother had a garden and canned everything. There were chickens and a cow, but now and then my mother had to pick the buckshot out of animals killed for food. 
     Recently, I've seen many recipes on the Internet listing foods eaten during the Great Depression. All of these recipes are easy to make, inexpensive, and filling. I was surprised to realize that several of the meals my mother prepared on a regular basis were used during that era. So, I have to assume my mother learned them from her mother out of necessity.
     I considered those dishes "comfort food." My mother would make up a batch of tunafish, and peas in white sauce and I thought it was delicious. At a young age, it was usually my job to make the white sauce. I had to stir it carefully so it didn't burn until it was thickened. I always got the same task for pudding. (I included the mention of that job in Love’s Gift.) In fact, white sauce was useful in extending many meals. My mom used it with green beans and bacon, too, which is considered an Appalachian favorite. Since my grandparents lived close to the West Virginia line, that isn’t a surprise. 
    Another filling, inexpensive meal was Lima beans and breakfast sausage. It may also be a classic Appalachian meal from what I’ve read. I really enjoyed it. My grandma never used written recipes. She memorized them in her head. My mother actually owned a cookbook, The Good Housekeeping Cook Book. At the time of my mother's death, that book had no covers and the index was gone as well. Nevertheless, anyone could see which recipes were my mother's favorites by the stains or dough on the pages. None of the meals in that book were the ones she made by memory, just as her mother did--the ones that fed a family of nine and didn't cost much. 

    I love to try new recipes, but those old ones from the past still have a special place in my heart. Does your family cook any recipes that came from the Great Depression?

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My Grandma

That's my grandmother on the left and my mother on the right in a photo taken somewhere in the 1960s. Today would have been my grandma's 114th birthday, but she died at the age of 90. She was feisty, but sweet. She always had plenty of time to talk with her grandchildren--or anybody else for that matter--and she always cooked enough food for an army. She was a force to be reckoned with.

She was funny. She put ketchup on Oreos just to freak out her grandchildren. All the kids called her Grandma--even if she wasn't their own grandma. She was soft--some people would call her fat--but maybe they didn't know how good it felt to snuggle up to her plumpness.

At sixteen, she fell in love with an immigrant, but her mother told her she was too young to marry. He went away to war and became a US citizen. Three years later, he returned and they were married. They had seven children.

My grandmother had cervical cancer and survived. She had her gall bladder taken out. She worked hard raising children. She grew tons of vegetables and canned them. She didn't complain.

When my grandfather refused to buy her a new stove, she went on strike. After two weeks, he bought her a new stove.

She was the best grandmother ever.