During the Great Depression, people lived on extremely frugal budgets. My father was raised during the Great Depression and it shaped the way he brought us up and lives today. Learning from those who have lived through hard times and their lessons is important. I share his tips and how to create a Great Depression-era pantry with frugal tips and recipes.
The number one crop and food my dad had during the Great Depression was beans. They're a prolific crop. With just two 12 foot rows, we have enough Tarheel green beans to can 80 pints of green beans, 2 cups of dries bean for seed for next year and a giveaway on the blog, and 8 quarts of canned shelled white beans.
Beans serve as a vegetable and one of the vegetables my kids will eagerly eat and ask for. The Tarheel green bean is meatier than a store-bought green bean and a buttery flavor. We just add salt, but you can add bacon, ham, or fatback for extra flavor. Because bacon makes everything taste better, right?
During the Depression, my father's family ate green beans every night. Learn how to can green beans here
Shelly beans (a dried bean) can be used as a vegetable and is extremely versatile. A Great Depression style pantry has ingredients that can be turned into multiple meals and dishes. Shelly beans can be added to soups (one of our most viewed recipes is Bean and Ham Soup-Frugal supper series), stews, chili, hummus, and our 10 minute refried beans. Adding beans is a great way to stretch a budget and make a meal larger.
During the Depression you used all parts of meat. Cooking a whole ham, roast, or bird is cheaper per pound and allows you to use the bones to make further meals. Use the ham bone in bean and ham soup, make stock and broth from beef, turkey, and chicken bones.
Soup beans is my father's favorite. You simmer shelled beans with salt, a bit of onion, and garlic (because garlic is bacon's best friend, it makes everything better too). You cannot, cannot have soup beans without cornbread. At least, that's my father's opinion.
I can our shelled beans so I can make a quick meal in a hurry if I haven't planned ahead to soak my dried beans. Here's how to pressure can shelled beans.
A Great Depression style pantry is whole food items, very basic items that can be made into a variety of different things. Flour or wheat berries to grind into your own flour.
Flour can be made to bread and fry meat, baked goods, biscuits, tortillas, bread, and as a thickener for gravies and sauces. Wheat berries are a great food storage item because they store indefinitely. For more on choosing a flour grinder and grinding flour at home click here.
Wheat berries can also be soaked and made into a cooked cereal.
Salt is another basic. It can be used as a seasoning and to cure meat. For more on foods to store at home check out Must-Have Pantry Items For Long-Term Storage.
Sugar was a rationed item during WWII but it was also hard to come by during the Depression, and quite frankly, we could all benefit from eating less of it. But a certain amount of sugar could be found in most kitchens. Honey is another item a Great Depression-era pantry would have used as you could get honey from local hives and not have to use your ration coupons like you would have for sugar. Though sugar was a ration item, my father didn't mention not having enough of it.
Butter is an item my father had, but it wasn't something they got from the store, but from their milk cow. The milk was churned into butter, homemade sour cream, and of course milk. Lard is a Great Depression kitchen staple. Lard is preferable for baking and from pigs. But tallow is from beef fat and great for soaps and candles.
Because my father had chickens, they had eggs. But during the winter months, eggs were harder to come by and were another item not easily gotten from stores. This cake was my great-grandmothers and the cake has no fresh eggs or dairy in it. Many cakes during the Great Depression, often called wacky or crazy cakes, didn't use eggs or dairy. I make this cake often it is very moist, easy, and one of our all time favorites click here for my Grandmother's Heavenly Chocolate Cake recipe.
You can learn how to render your own lard here. Lard is great for tortillas and frying. Lard tends to melt faster when making pie crusts and I had to add a tad more flour. The flavor of lard is great, but we had to
Oatmeal is a Great Depression staple. My father still eats a bowl of oatmeal every day. Oatmeal is inexpensive, easy to cook, and can also be ground into flour. Oats can be used as a binder in meatloaves or cookies.
A Great Depression pantry had the basics and requires learning to make things from scratch.
Spices are an easy and cheap way to flavor your foods. Spices in the store can be expensive for little glass bottles. Here are my favorite homemade spice mixes and free printable labels to go on them!
Learn how to cook without packages. Gravy is simple to make with a melted fat source, some flour or cornstarch as a thickener, and then milk or chicken stock to create a sauce or gravy. I use this in place of condensed cream of soup and here's the recipe and tutorial for making your own cream of soup replacement.
My book Hand Made: the Modern Guide to Made-from-Scratch Living helps you do exactly that with over 100+ from scratch recipes with more Great Depression Era tips and recipes.
Are you ready to get creating your Depression Era Pantry? What recipes do you use from this time period?
More Simple Living Articles:
- Community Sufficiency vs. Self-Sufficiency
- 10 Things Our Grandparents Reused During the Great Depression
- 6 Things Our Great-Grandparents Did Better Than Us
- 17 Self-Sufficiency Tips from the 1940’s & Great Depression Live Interview
- Time & Budget Saving Tips from the Great Depression & this Homesteader’s Kitchen
- Handmade Gift Bags & Tags from the Great Depression Era
- 5 Life Lessons from the Great-Depression
- Great Depression Era Money Saving Tips w/ Potatoes
- 7 Depression Era Tips to Stretch Your Food Budget
- 8 Depression Era Tips to Save Money Now
- Surviving Winter Without Power & Great Depression Christmas Traditions
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Thanks so much for this article. Sadly, we live in days that are not guaranteed. This article not only gives great instructions but, it also get’s you to think. THAT’S the most important thing to take away from this article. We Americans have taken things for granted for so long and most would perish for lack of preparedness and knowledge. Tell your Dad “Thanks” for helping all of us to “think and remember” that the bottom COULD fall out again in America. With 17 trillion in debt and if the dollar collapses…….what then?!
I’m so glad you enjoyed this and I”ll tell my dad your thanks. I agree, we have things very easy and do take it for granted, myself included.
Having grown up with family that went through the Depression,I was taught to garden, and home can, as well. Where I messed up, was not teaching my own children these lessons. Working, didn’t leave me time to continue to garden, and can, plus I moved to CA, and lacked the room to garden. I still don’t have a lot of room, but have discovered vertical, and container gardening. Now I am going to see what I can grow. If I get back into canning, I’ll probably have to get most of it through the farmers market. Maybe not, we’ll see how much I can get from my new gardening techniques.
I love to can but I have found of late that dehydrating is cheaper and increases the shelf life of my vegies. Almost anything can be dehydrated. This week I have done tomatoes, squash, and cabbage. Once hydrated they are very good. The only real trick is that they have to be completely dry. I reserve my canning now for meats and pickles and the like. Dehydrated foods also take up a lot less space in your pantry. Good videos can be found on Youtube. We never know what is going to happen in this world. Stock up canned or dehydrated but don’t get caught unprepared
Rationing was during World War II, not the depression.
Monna, you’re right, thanks for catching that. I got my time periods mixed up there, but purchasing sugar during the Depression was also something many struggled with, and both eras were hard times, especially for those who weren’t prepared at all and times we can all learn some lessons form. Thanks again for catching that.
I checked out the chocolate cake recipe (which sounds delicious). You mentioned that it’s egg and dairy free, but it calls for 3/4 mayo. Isn’t mayo just eggs and oil?
Sherry,
I should have specified fresh eggs free, but you could sub out traditional mayo with a vegan mayo to avoid the eggs and dairy. This recipe was created for when no fresh eggs were available, not so much food allergies. A lot of mayo was homemade back then instead of purchased in the stores. You could try subbing that out with applesauce if you needed to avoid it.
Maybe I missed it, but how do you go about drying beans? I’d like to try this.
Iris,
Here’s my tutorial on how we harvest and dry our beans. I’d love to know how it turns out for you. I’ve got 5 galllons worth of pods dried I need to shell out this week. https://melissaknorris.com/2013/09/11/how-to-save-and-store-your-heirloom-garden-seed/
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Great post! I love that you focused so much on beans, which in my opinion are under used these days. Our kids love beans so much that I’m always saying they’ll never notice if we get really poor. Even though they are still little kids, and fairly picky eaters, I can always count on them to chow down on any bean dish I make. Also, though I’m dealing with Gestational Diabetes right now, I’ve found that beans don’t cause any blood sugar issues for me, which is nice when there aren’t many things I can eat as much as I want! One of my goals for the next week or so is to take an inventory and get busy organizing my food storage pantry. Thanks again for a great post 🙂
[…] beans are one of the things my family used to get through the Great Depression? Here’s my Building a Great Depression Era Pantry-Frugal Tips and Recipes for more […]
I just wanted to point out that mayonnaise is made from eggs. So the chocolate cake is not completely egg free. Especially for those of us who are allergic to eggs.
You can use Salad Dressing to make it but it doesn’t rise as well.
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It seems to be truly prepared for hard times you must live a bit more simply. I remember living with my grandmother my senior year and having vegetables and cornbread for supper. Maybe a bit of fatback or salt pork. Now we want everything fried “with cheese please.” Simpler living would do us better.
[…] also what my grandmother used a lot of during the Great Depression. You’ll want to catch our Building a Great Depression Era Pantry for more frugal […]
[…] is a Depression Era Practice (welcome to all the new listeners from our most popular Podcast ever Building a Depression Era Pantry-Frugal Tips and Recipes) and very important. We do a lot of home food preservation here on our homestead. The only food my […]
My Mom and Dad , 76 and 80 years old respectively, are children of the Depression. I can relate to this article because their sensibilities from that time carry them thru to this day and have taught me too. Folks dont know how to live frugually AND good. You are helping to teach them because your Dad taught you! I can relate to this article , you have a kindred spirit here! Keep passing on our parents wisdom to those who don’t know how to stretch a dollar and have a happy fully belly 🙂
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Both of my Grannies made Mayo cakes, one was chocolate (no coffee) with choc fudge icing the other had no icing and had dates in it. She ran a restaurant and when she called it a “Mayo Cake” she couldn’t sell it but when she called it a “Date Cake” she couldn’t keep it !! They were both great and yes both out of the depression era.
I’m so looking forward to trying this recipe. Question…have you ever made Greek yogurt? My youngest prefers that texture to regular yogurt and I was just wondering if you have a recipe or any info on that? Thanks so much for all the work you do, I find myself hunting through your site for hours, finding amazing ideas on how to make life more simple. =)
Amanda,
Just use some Greek yogurt with live cultures in it (your favorite brand) and follow the rest of the instructions. The Bulgarian yogurt starter I have makes a thick creamy yogurt, but it’s sweeter than Greek.
I realize this is an older episode, but I just was listening to it today and I *so* appreciated the explanation of depression-era cakes without eggs. We have a favorite family recipe for chocolate “No No Cake” (I shared it here: http://www.bakespace.com/recipes/detail/Chocolate%20No-no%20Cake/7205/) and I never understood the reason behind the no eggs / no milk / no butter. I can’t wait to share this podcast with my mom. It explains so much! 🙂
Amanda,
So glad it helped! And thanks so much for sharing. Isn’t it fascinating to learn the history behind things? I love it when I learn something new like that, too.
[…] are a great source of wisdom! Here’s a wonderful post on Creating a Great Depression Era Pantry – all those staples that Grandma grew up making! My friend Rebecca has found inspiration […]
All these things are awesome and doable I can save a lot of money and maybe even foster grateful children
Love your focus, and the recipes! My family’s motto has always been ‘Simplify if you can”. But in the interest of historical accuracy, there was no rationing during the depression. The depression was an economic event. Food and goods were plentiful, but nobody had much cash money to spend on necessities, let alone the occasional luxury. “Bread was a nickel a loaf, but nobody had a nickel”. Rationing limited what one could purchase within a specified time frame (usually a month). Rationing (ration stamps) came in with WWII, when animal proteins, butter, gasoline, sugar, and a host of other things that enhance our lives were re-directed from civilian consumption toward supplying the war effort. People were a bit better off economically, but the goods weren’t available (hence rationed). Times of privation have always brought out the greatest creativity in cooks, hence, the best comfort foods. Keep up the good work!
Thanks, Diane! Yes, I got my time period a tad mixed together. I love your family motto.
How do you recommend storing bulk spices?
I store mine in quart size Mason jars personally.
Thank you for sharing your father’s memories of what creative foods he ate.
My mother, a youngster during the depression, cooked a lot with cornmeal and beans. She was creative with pasta and rice as we were growing up in the 60’s as we were poor but as children didn’t know just how poor we were until we were in our late teens.
I have learned to can and I wish I had access to making a garden and raising farm animals for food but my budget doesn’t allow me and I live in a small apt. With no yard. Your article has encouraged me to start a patio garden. I look forward to more of your canning tips and family stories. I will always be a country bumpkin. Lol
Hi do you know about the homesteading conference coming up in May? It’s in Crossville TN
On youtube you can find out all the class details
Hi Robin, I don’t know about that particular homesteading conference, I’m in Washington state, so it’s a bit far for me.
“wheat berries to grind in to your own family”?!?! You mean flour, right??? Lol!!!
lol, oh goodness, yes, flour!! Whew, fixing that.