Depression Era Eating — Not All That Depressing!
Who is the next upcoming food TV Star? Don’t go looking to the Food Channel or Bravo’s Top Chef. This culinary diva comes to us from YouTube. There you will find 93 year old cook and grandmother, Clara Cannucciari. She has a series of 10 episodes, made over the past two years, that cover recipes from Poor Man’s Meal, Pasta and Peas, Sicilian Fig Cookies and Egg Drop Soup (not the kind you find in your local Chinese restaurant).
Having started her culinary training at Hostess filling Twinkies in 1935, Clara is quickly becoming a popular food star. Her Poor Man’s Meal video clip already has over 89,000 hits. This should rise rapidly after she gets national TV coverage over the next few weeks. She will be on Good Morning America this morning. (Sorry for not getting this post out early enough to notify you to watch her.) She will also be on CBS early next week but her Facebook page does not yet say what show. Yes, this 93 year old phenom also has a Facebook page and I am glad to say she is one of my friends!
Lines At The Soup Kitchens
The attraction with Clara’s series is certainly that we can begin to see parallels with what our ancestors went through during the Great Depression as we face our own economic crisis. During this period, unemployment reached 25 percent, and food as well as most everything else was scarce. Soup kitchens and Penny Restaurants helped to provide them food. We get a little feeling of comfort knowing that they were resourceful and able to adjust budgets and recipes in order to survive. So can we.
Another part of the attraction is that Clara shares stories from this period while preparing her simple dishes. Hearing her tell us that having an orange was a huge indulgence and having a cookie was a treat that they could only have on Sundays makes us appreciate how much easier we have it today.
But having it easier also comes with its own set of dangers. Our low cost meals mean we may start to turn to inexpensive processed foods, such as mac & cheese or ramen noodle packets. Or we will settle for trips to the dollar menu at the local fast food joint to get our sustenance. We have learned so much since the 1930’s about eating healthy and my fear is that we will forgo what we’ve learned with the pressures of rising prices and apprehensions of losing our jobs. The Great Depression Cooking clips show us that we can make tasty and nutritious meals for very little money.
Food historians tell us that the Great Depression was not a time of famine. In famine, times of war or great hardship, people were known to resort to eating things they might not consider during “normal” times. (I’ll let your imagination finish that thought.) During the Depression there was still an ample supply of inexpensive food. The trick was how to make creative and non-repetitive meals from the limited products that were available. One of those was products was potatoes and we see this ingredient featured in many of Clara’s dishes. (For more information on food from the 1930’s, click here.)
Liquid Gold
Clara’s Egg Drop Soup recipe consists only of water, potatoes, eggs, onion, Parmesan cheese, olive oil, bay leaf, salt and pepper. By applying some simple cooking techniques we can enhance this great recipe with not much more cost.
For example, you can really enhance the broth by making a vegetable stock instead of using just plain water. It only takes a couple of carrots, celery heart, an onion, garlic and peppercorns. Roughly chop all the vegetables and put them in a 350 degree oven for 15 – 20 minutes until they are slightly caramelized on the outside. Put them in a pot with twice the amount of water that Clara calls for. Add the garlic and peppercorn. (Hint: Include the skin of the onion as it adds a nice tint to the broth.) Bring the water to a boil, then reduce the heat and simmer until the liquid is reduced in half. Now you have an inexpensive vegetable stock which will enhance the flavor of this soup. (Check out my earlier article called Stock Up!)
Clara
Clara has lived on these recipes all her life and the fact that she is still energetic and articulate shows that her diet works. There’s a lesson in there somewhere! Clara continues to share her energy to teach us with great stories and recipes from a trying time in this countries past. An era from which we can learn a lot of valuable lessons and apply them to today. I know I’m saving the recipe for her 3-course Poor Man’s feast to prepare for my 93rd birthday!
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I use a glass Pyrex 9X13 pan, and I don’t use any oil at all. I layer a thin layer of sauce over the bottom of the pan, and then I start building with the noodles, etc. I really don’t think you need any oil at all, and it cuts down on calories. That may be why it burned, too. Try using a glass pan. If you don’t have one, then maybe a little olive oil spray on the bottom. Hope this helps.