Tag / cooking

by amandastiver

More Dollars and Sense Savvy: Meal Planning from Limited Resources and One Cut of Meat

How do you take a single package or cut of meat and make it last for a whole week of meals? How many of us even think about these things anymore?

Photo credit: Amanda Stiver

The coronavirus crisis has made it cross minds again, and the best place to look is back to the 1930’s when salaries were low, if they existed at all, and homemakers (or women who worked from home before it was cool in this moment of history) used strategic planning to eke out the last bit of everything.

One account goes as follows:

“My husband graduated in the late 1930’s…He was finally able to land one [a job] and after we figured out our weekly budget, there wasn’t much left over for food shopping…To get the most for our money, I shopped at the two markets in our neighborhood to get the best price on staples, vegetables and meat. To stretch the meat…I came up with a strict schedule. I’d buy a round-bone pot roast and cut out the largest portion for our Saturday night dinner… I’d serve more of the same on Sunday. Monday’s supper would be hot beef sandwiches and gravy…”

On Tuesdays the author, Lucella Bowman, would make stew from a small portion of the original roast. Then Wednesday was meat pie made from leftover roast and stew with a biscuit crust. Friday was soup from the round bone she’s cut out earlier and leftover vegetables.

This short memory was from page 157 of a recipe book called, Dining During the Depression: The simple-yet-satisfying foods that saw families through those tough years. Edited by Karen Thibodeau, it was published in 1996 by Reminisce Books.

Just as in the above, one of the best places to search for old time common sense and home economics wisdom are in nostalgia magazines. Titles such as Reminisce and Good Old Days both also publish topical books on everything from the Great Depression and the Second World War, to kitchen traditions and entertainment.

If you come across one of these, nab it. They are oral histories in writing, full of practical lessons drawn from personal, historical experience.

Lucella’s account is a prime place to mine some practical tips:

1. Keep a weekly/monthly budget, and budget for food.

2. Shop around for the best deals, and use your consumer skills to make a limited budget last.

3. Buy mostly staples, milk, eggs, cheese, butter, flour, sugar, spices and seasonings, vegetables (fresh, canned and frozen), and meat. You can make an amazing number of variations with the basics. There is a learning curve, but it will be a savings and a newly acquired skill set.

Notice: I didn’t include fruit, which is now much more of a staple than it was then due to out- of-season availability and shipping. During WW2 in England, fruit was often rationed to go first to children and invalids who needed the readily available Vitamin-C the most. The rest of the population was admonished to get their vitamins and minerals from vegetables instead, and there were a surprising array of “substitutes” for fruit such as carrots for oranges, and so on.

4. Stretch your meat by planning a week’s worth of meals off of one large roast. The author does a great job of outlining how this is possible. Use up leftovers, don’t throw them out. Extend them into a new dish with added vegetables and crusts. Don’t throw bones away…the current fad of bone broth should teach us this. Cook them into a stock and make soup! You get not only protein, but collagen.

5. This is an unspoken lesson, but have a set of simple go-to recipes that allow you to make these variations in a flash. Save the more gourmet or finicky recipes for when there is more availability, or in our case, mobility and variety! Challenge yourself to make things last!

So there we go, one small oral history provides all of these useful lessons. You can do this from a variety of historical accounts and on various topics. Find the lessons and carry them with you into your daily life!

Keep thinking history!

– Amanda Stiver

by amandastiver

Dollars and Sense Savvy: Cut Up Your Own Meat

We live in an unprecedented time, a pandemic from a novel coronavirus and resulting disease, COVID-19, has nations advising their citizens to work from and stay at home until further notice. This is history in the making, and not far removed, just over a century from the last world-impacting pandemic, the Influenza epidemic of 1918 that followed close on the heels of WW1.

The author, apron on, read to get down to practicalities!

But I don’t really want to focus strictly on big history for the moment, but rather domestic history and frankly, the practical lessons thereof. What do you do when store shelves are running out from the depredations of panic shoppers, and you can’t get the pre-packaged foods you’re used to?

Home economics/Depression-era savvy to the rescue! The home economics movement taught, mostly women, how to take advantage of common sense when shopping to be a good consumer, and get the best deals and therefore most mileage from your income.

Likewise, the Great Depression taught people that wastefulness was a dirty word. When you can’t easily go out and buy a replacement the next day, you make do with what you have. In the same vein, wasted food thrown out is wasted money thrown away.

After visiting the local warehouse club store today for provisions, my mom noticed that though most of the frozen meat was sold-out (the Sunday rush, we presumed) there were plenty of larger-size packages of fresh beef and chicken, still there, looking for a hungry home.

As we reviewed the collective wisdom of both my grandmothers, we realized that the only thing standing between a fresh package of meat and a deep-freezer was a sharp knife, a little slicing know-how, and a freezer bag or two.

From one big package of beef round roast we got two good-sized steaks, one medium roast, and a package of stew meat. Then we sharpened the knife because there is nothing more creepy-crawly than trying to cut up fresh meat with a dull edged blade.

From a package of giant chicken breasts (4 to a pack) we got a gallon bag of chicken cutlets. Again, with the sharp knife.

Divvied up into freezer bags and marked with the date and store we originally bought them at, into the freezer they went. And the cost was substantially lower then buying the pre-frozen variety.

My grandparents and many of their generation who dealt with a pandemic (1918-1921), a massive economic depression (1929-1940), and a second World War (1941-1945) had a “can-do” outlook, rather than a “do-for-me” attitude. We’ve been used to a culture of “do-for-me”, but it’s actually extremely empowering to take back some of that being done-for and turn it into, “I can do this!”

Even something as simple as cutting up some of your own meat or getting back into the swing of pantry cooking. These are little steps, training wheel into a different mentality, but they can make a dollars and cents difference!

[If you care to comment: What kind of dollars and sense savvy and practical considerations have you drawn on to make the best of difficult circumstances?]

Even during this crisis the past is full of practical lessons that can teach us how to react to emergencies in the present.

Keep thinking history!

-Amanda Stiver

by amandastiver

Cooking Up History: ‘Kitchen Klatter’ and Other Resources of Home Economy

During the course of reading a fabulous book called The Lost Art of Dress by Linda Przybyszewski (to learn more please read my post here), the author references and used as source material the databases available to us through the digitizing of many publications from the early 20th century. One such database is called HEARTH – Home Economics Archive: Research, Tradition, and History – maintained by Cornell University (see link here).

The HEARTH collection encompasses a stunning array of books, journals, and articles on the art of home economy, domestic science, and home making. A treasure trove…if you know how to value it.

Image: Amanda Stiver

Image: Amanda Stiver

Shooting from the hip: I’m a traditionalist and a sentimentalist, so I find the underappreciated quantity of research and practical information produced by the early 20th century home economists a tragedy. When did we stop valuing the efficient, sanitary, effective, imaginative, joyful making of the home? Have we stopped living in homes? Do we somehow not need to have economic savvy anymore? Is sanitation a thing of the past?

The modern feminist movement has achieved many of its purposes, but unfortunately in many cases it has done so at the expense of and through degrading the contribution and acumen of home makers, “home women” as Przybyszewski puts it, and home economists. This is short sighted, and rather sad. We have suffered for underappreciating the value of women who choose to focus their lives on making a home and raising children.

So what to do? Legislation? Protests? Long social media rants? Um, as if there is any shortage of those things these days.

How about simple appreciation?

Start with a little knowledge. Look into some of the published works of the generation that valued home economics. Find out what savvy they accrued and put it to work!

The HEARTH collection is one place to start, but another is the folksy magazine produced by Leanna Field Driftmier (1886-1976) an Iowa farm wife and educator. She produced a highly popular and long running early radio show on home making topics, and later translated that knowledge to a newsletter-style magazine, Kitchen Klatter.

The Iowa Heritage database preserves many issues of this publication. Take a moment to explore them. Try some of the recipes, and maybe you will find a practical tip or two to make your life a little more efficient and economic! Don’t undervalue these kind of resources in your quest to understand the past. They aren’t flashy, but they help us understand the daily lives of our predecessors in the past.

Keep thinking history!

– Amanda Stiver

by amandastiver

One Egg A Week: WW2 Rations and Irrational Over-consumption

Have you ever walked through the supermarket, or the out-of-doors market (if you are lucky enough to have one nearby) and stopped to appreciate just how much food we have access to on a daily basis?

Intellectually we know that there are many places around the globe where food is not so plentiful nor available. Venezuela at the moment is struggling through famine triggered by political unrest and a decade of instability. In other places it is simply the norm to be without. However, to quantify scarcity is sometimes difficult as we stroll the aisles of the supermarket and decide if we want the artisan, “hand-made” (by machines shaped like hands) cumin basil crackers or the tomato pesto anise flavor? Gasp.

Was there a time when the western world had to face food scarcity? You bet! It was called the Second World War. Almost all of the European nations, and beyond, suffered from going without. For much of continental Europe that was a result of having been overrun by hostile armies and subjected to starvation so that food could be shunted back to the German Army. Russians, German citizenry, Italians, the French, the Dutch, Spaniards (who had been going without all through the 1930’s because of a civil war) all faced famine, and the list goes on and on. The British Isles certainly suffered, but theirs was, from the start, superimposed rationing to feed the populace and its soldiery. The Americans, too, ended up with varying degrees of rationing, but certainly not as strict as the British model.

And it is to British rationing that we’re going to turn to help get a sense of personal scale of scarcity. The Ministry of Food was the organization that implemented rationing for the populace at the behest of the British Government. When you look over the requirements you realize how little each individual was allowed, but you also see the care and thought given to maintaining vitamin intake for children (fruits and fruit preserves were to be given to children first to sustain healthy growth). Bread and Vegetables, especially the homegrown variety, were not rationed and people were encouraged to grow their own. For adults, vegetables were the mainstay of nutrition.

What was rationed, and here is where we can begin to appreciate what and how much we have on a daily basis, was meat. Meat was rationed by price, only so much per person per week and then only of what was available and sometimes that was offal, or organ meats…heart, lungs, intestines, etc. So, no hamburgers or juicy steaks every night for a week!

Recipe books of the era recommend stews and pot pies with minimal meat supplemented by plentiful vegetables. My favorite cookbook from this era, incidentally, is a reprint by the Imperial War Museum called, Victory Cookbook: Nostalgic Food and Facts From 1940-1954 by Marguerite Patten OBE, 2002. I found it at a wonderful booksale held in the Guildhall in the city of York…a story for another time. This volume presents reprints from government material produced during the war, much of which was the work of a young woman named Marguerite Patten, whose creativity helped inspire home cooks throughout the war.

Milk was also rationed, 4-6 cups per person, per week. Think of what that meant, if you are a regular consumer of hot chocolate you could have a cup every other day, but you couldn’t get the chocolate. But what if you wanted pudding…that requires milk and, whoops, you just used up your allowance. Or baking, which often requires milk… there it went again. Milk in your tea (which was also rationed, think of that the next time you order a 28 oz glass of sweetened iced tea!)? What do you choose? And yes, you could combine a family’s portion, but how did you refrigerate it until you could use it? Refrigeration wasn’t universal in the 1940’s. Powdered milk was a big bonus, but it wasn’t the same as fresh.

Something to contemplate the next time you see all those gallons of milk lined up in the dairy section as you absentmindedly grab one.

Then were was cheese and butter, 2 oz (yes, two thumbs-size slices worth) of each per person each week! That would give you roughly one small sandwich or two after-dinner cheese chasers or a quick gobble for an afternoon snack…no cheesy, gooey grilled sandwiches to eat four bites of and throw the rest away. And butter, you have to bake with butter, remember? So, cookies, scones, cake…all required major planning and the pooling of amounts between family members (which, in the days of mothers being the main organizer of home was all planned and implemented by mom, kids didn’t get to take their cheese stash to their room and watch it mold).

A lot to think about. Belts were tighter then, and interestingly, mass produced bread was made with 1/2 regular “white” flour and 1/2 whole wheat or whole meal flour. As statistics were compiled during this time period, it was found that the health of the nation actually improved as a result of this austere, but very healthy diet.

Image: Amanda Stiver

Image: Amanda Stiver

And then we get to eggs, or, I should say, egg. Just one a week, and sometimes just one every two weeks. No high-protein, cheesy, three-egg breakfast omelets, no scrambled eggs, probably few egg dishes at all as these precious few eggs would have gone to work in the weekly baking. Things improved somewhat when powdered eggs were made available from the US, but if you have ever had the misfortune to consume powdered eggs regularly you will realize what a glorious blessing it is to have fresh eggs at all! Let alone the ability to buy 4 dozen at will!

Then there was sugar, and this is killer because I think it is safe to say that we nowadays could be referred to by archaeologists looking back at us from well into the future as the “sugar-eaters”, so much do we consume it in sweets and even in things that should be savory. Sweets were rationed to 12 oz every four weeks. If this was granulated sugar imagine, 12 ounces is just a cup and a half, and the average cookie recipe these days typically calls for 2 cups of sugar, per batch! So for a month you could enjoy the stale remnants of your monthly less-sweet cookie baking binge. But again, even pooled together for a family of four, you would need this sugar mostly for preserving fruits, if you could get them, or making faux-fruit preserves from vegetables…Carrot Marmalade anyone? (quite serious, there was a recipe!).

So, as we step off the nostalgia tour bus, I hope you can use this personal-scale food scarcity overview to get a sense of how blessed you may be. While it is vital to do what we can to help others in need, to not waste what we have, and to share, we also need to take a moment, a deep breath, a bowed head, and thank God for what we have. America has a history of overflowing abundance and it is a very popular mindset right now to try to apologize for that abundance (while gorging on it, it seems), but ungratefulness is not improved by embarrassment or apology. To be grateful is to be grateful. Out of gratefulness flows generosity, while out of embarrassment flows self-consciousness and self-centeredness.

So let’s be grateful for our blessings, look outward and share what we have!

Keep thinking history!

– Amanda Stiver

by amandastiver

Aye, Leeks IS Good!: Cooking Up History

When you go to Ohio, and you go to Ohio in the summer and you drive through Amish country, you will find a plethora of veggie stands dotting the state and county roads. So, it follows, that you stop and peruse, drawn by the sure knowledge that you will find an assortment of ripe and affordable vegetable abundance. And you are not disappointed.

So, in your haste and joy at finding fresh veggies you come upon a bin of leeks, 4 for 1 dollar. You become ecstatic because, for anyone who has ever been to an American grocery store, you will remember that leeks are not a standard veggie and come with a hefty price tag, considerably more than 4 for 1 dollar. So you buy 4 leeks.

Then you realize. What do I do with…4 leeks?

In the ensuing traversing of your memory you recall a book you once read, French Women Don’t Get Fat by Mireille Guiliano, had a recipe involving leeks and soup. That sounds good! But that recipe was a very healthy one and involved nothing but leeks and water. So back to your collection of cookbooks. Leek and chicken soup (no convenient chicken carcass so that is out), leek and barley soup (no barley), and so on. Leek and potato soup rings a bell from the Joy of Cooking and then something about leeks and quiche with bacon from an Alice Waters cookbook. That and the word pistou reverberating in your head from various other French themed cookbooks. Soup au pistou is a hearty bean and veggie soup from the Provence region of France.

What comes from this fertile mix…leek and potato soup au pistou flavored with turkey ham.

LEEK AND POTATO SOUP AU PISTOU WITH TURKEY HAM

(Note: this is a free-form recipe developed during a free-form culinary adventure, so feel free to adapt)

INGREDIENTS: 4 Leeks – 2 T olive oil – 1 T butter – pinch of dried Thyme to taste – water – 3 medium-large Yukon Gold potatoes – black pepper to taste (freshly ground) – 1/2 regular can of northern beans or pinto beans (rinsed and drained) – 1-2 T of turkey ham diced into tiny squares – powdered chicken soup base

DIRECTIONS: Wash leeks, peel outer skin, cut off about 2 inches above the white part and use only the white part and the slightly green part, discard the rest above. Cut the root end off. Slice carefully in half the long way, then again the long way, then in thirds. I call these leek noodles.

Place leeks in a large soup pot with 1-2 tablespoons of olive oil and 1 generous pat of butter. Sprinkle with dried thyme (a little) and a dash of black pepper. Saute gently until transparent and soft.

Cut up potatoes into 1/2 inch cubes (with skins on if using Yukon Gold or Red varieties, otherwise skin them). Place into pot with leeks, cover with enough water to just cover potatoes and let them float (the ingredient should be able to swim around a little). Bring to boil. Add 1/2 can of rinsed beans, diced turkey ham, and the powdered chicken soup base (usually 3-4 teaspoons). When the soup reaches a boil, reduce heat to simmer for 15 to 20 minutes or until the potatoes are soft and just starting to fall apart. Add additional thyme and black pepper to taste just before removing from heat. Also add salt to taste.

Serve!

History…You knew it was coming, right?

And while you are serving, consider the historical connection. Being partly Welsh myself, I find it interesting that the leek is one of the national symbols of Wales. Scotland has the thistle, Ireland the clover, England the rose, and American states usually have a flower as their emblem, so why the leek?

The quote in the title “Aye, leeks is good!” is taken from Act 5, Scene 1 of Shakespeare’s play, Henry V. So clearly, by the late 16th century, leeks and the Welsh lands were deeply connected.

According to Historic-UK.com the leek was referenced even earlier than Shakespeare’s time. It was the emblem of Wales worn on St. David’s Day. In the fourteenth century the colors of the leek, green and white, were adopted by Welsh archers at the battle of Crecy. And before that, historians surmise, that the medicinal qualities of the leek (because, aye, indeed, leeks is good for you!) coupled with the druidic religion of the Britons led to an affinity for the leek. And before that? Who knows, the druids were a religious class that passed on the wisdom of the “ancients” – which ancients? Good question!

Regardless, leeks are a healthy-for-people relative in the onion family. Try leek soup and see if you develop a taste for them and then you, too, will be able to say, “Aye, leeks is good!”

Keep thinking and cooking history!

– Amanda Stiver

 

 

 

 

 

by amandastiver

WWII Rations: Baking a Pudding?

(Image: Morguefile.com)

After reading all about British rationing during World War II I decided to try one of the recipes. This is a side effect of studying culinary history – edible research material!

I thought about trying my hand at green veggies or potato mash, but I deferred to a dessert recipe. I chose ‘Spiced Cottage Pudding with Lemon Sauce’ from Victory Cookbook: Nostalgic  Food and Facts From 1940-1954 by Marguerite Patten OBE.

I only got as far as the ‘Spiced Pudding’ and discovered that ‘pudding’ is one of those English words that has multiple meanings. My impression of pudding is a gooey, chocolaty, semi-liquid that one makes in a pot on the stovetop, but this recipe is more of a bread in the style of ginger-bread. A cake really.

Here is the recipe with my additions and tweaks:

Spiced Cottage Pudding (or in the States – Spice Cake)

-8 oz (1 cup) flour (I used whole wheat) with 4 teaspoons baking powder

-Pinch of salt

-2 tablespoons dried egg (or two fresh eggs)

-3 oz fat (light olive oil)

-3 oz sugar (a measurement also known as a ‘snit!’)

-1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

-1/2 teaspoon grated nutmeg

-1/2 teaspoon mixed spice

-Approximately 1/4 pint (half a cup, or a little less) milk

(I used reconstituted dried milk to get in the spirit of WWII rations, and although being smelly, it incorporated effectively.)

Instructions: Mix the flour and baking powder with the salt and dried egg. Mix the fat in well. Add the sugar with the spices; mix to a stiff consistency with the milk (you may not end up using all the milk). Turn into a greased pan about 8×6 inches (the cake will rise moderately, like gingerbread). Bake in the center of a moderately hot (350° F) oven for 30 minutes. Cut in squares and serve hot.

> The result was a nice firm, if slightly dry cake with a lovely spicy flavor. This tasty cake, along with a dollop of whipped cream, would go well with coffee or tea.

Interestingly, the amount of sugar in this cake is far less than what we normally see in recipes. So much so, that you might mistake it for a snack cake rather than a full-blown dessert. However, remembering back to the 8 oz a week ration of sugar per person, you can see why recipes of that time were spare with the sugar. Sugar was as rare as diamonds!

There you have it – a recipe for history!

– Amanda Stiver