Hard Times Food

It turns out that there are a number of articles and blogs discussing, and giving recipes for, historical dishes that can be cheaply made with stock pantry staples.  Given the number of people who spent the COVID lockdowns trying to distract/entertain themselves by cooking, and the larger number of people who are out of work and trying to make do on an increasingly limited budget, I shouldn't have been surprised.  What surprised me more was finding several lists of the "X dishes from tough times that you can make at home!" variety.  Some of these look interesting, at least from an intellectual perspective.  An awful lot of them focus on 1930s/Depression era cooking, and I'm cutting the number of references I make to those foods to a minimum to avoid retreading too much old ground.

So here's a list my readers can amuse themselves with.  I may look for additional sites to add to this post as time goes on.

From Atlas Obscura: 

7 Dishes Born From Tough Times That You Can Make At Home.  Most of these recipes aren't that old, or even that unusual, but they do qualify as foods one wouldn't try without a financial or boredom-related need to do so.  The simplest of these is the Peanut Butter and Mayo Sandwich which is exactly what it sounds like; a peanut butter and jelly sandwich with mayonnaise taking the place of the jelly.  An item with potential if you like mayo; an abomination to be avoided if you don't.

Even More Historic Dishes Born From Tough Times to Make at Home  Most of these dishes are North American and date from about the Great Depression of the 1930s, such as Mock Apple Pie and Vinegar Cake.  

From msn.com and Food and Drink: 

These Recipes Were Invented in Tough Times.  This one is set up as a slideshow.  It includes foods I think of as modern classics that I don't associate with hard times, such as carrot cake and meatloaf.  

From 12 Tomatoes.com:

9 Foods We Grew Up With That Were Actually Poverty Meals. I grew up in the 1960s, and most of these foods I think of as working class meals, for example:  boxed mac-and-cheese, fried egg sandwiches, beans and rice.

From Prepper's Will:

Great Depression Foods That Helped Americans Survive Famine.  The blog's title indicates that this site comes from the "prepper" culture (people who spend a lot of time making sure their household can survive famine, natural disasters, or other events that could disrupt modern living).  This blog post purports to list the top 10 foods of the Great Depression.   Two items I had not previously encountered were Milkorno and peanut butter stuffed onions.