On the pancake thread, there's mention of eating pancakes because that's all there was and it stirred up some fond memories and some not so fond). It brought back some memories for me, and I'm wondering if you that have been/are going through those very lean times would share with us how you got/get by, any wonderful memories of family closeness, and the strength it may have taken, food, entertainment, clothes, etc.

During one of our "together" wandering(homeless) times, we learned how good peanut butter tastes on baked potatoes. We practically lived on them. Strange how a such a hard situation has a fond memory here and there.

-- Cindy (atilrthehony_1@yahoo.com), December 15, 2000

Answers

Cindy, this brings lots of memories flooding back.....as a very small child, my Mom would make chicken necks as the main course. We were very poor! Chicken necks were cheap, so were livers and gizzards, which we also had quite often! At the tender age of 12, my Dad decided to raise our own meat. Along came chicks, piggies and calves, and the speech "Don't get attached", but I did. (That's when I became vegetarian, I was a devestated little girl!) As a young adult, in my first apartment, my folks would bring "care packages" of peanut butter and jelly, and boxes of mac' & cheese, etc. In my twenties, I really started getting into cooking, preserving, etc. and I've had a love affair with food ever since. Lately, I've been feeling some burn-out, as I'm cooking for a living; it's stressful rather than relaxing. I'm seriously considering a career change.

-- Cathy in NY (hrnofplnty@yahoo.com), December 15, 2000.

When Gramma got old,she got senile.She had a hard time remembering what she had just said,but had notrouble remembering the past. In fact,this part of her mind was more vivid for her than the present

She also lost some of her inhibitions and spoke more plainly,her thoughts and feelings.

One Christmas gathering,she was reminicing about her life.She started to talk about the depression years.There was also a bad drought during this time. One year,she said, there was no work to be had, and the crops were drying up in the field, and she had to pull vegetables out of the garden before they were ready,just to have something for her family of 13 to eat.They almost starved.

It struck me so hard. How it must have felt to be the mother and not be able to do anymore than that. I saw things in a new light after that day.How strong these people were, to endure such times. I felt I could never hope to match such courage and fortitude.

-- sharon wt (wildflower@ekyol.com), December 15, 2000.

Well ,goodness knows I've been through plenty of hard times! I value them and what they taught me. My first observation is that hard times tend to foster more spiritual closeness, and then when things get better we would tend to fall away from regular worship, bible reading,prayer, proper behavior,etc. I think thats what's wrong with our country right now- we're too prosperous and we don't appreciate it. The Y2K disaster would have been just what we needed.

Anyway, it started with the time we were low on money and ate a lot of lamb's quarter salads, and got a quarter of a moose that had attacked a train(unsuccessfully). We thought that was hard times, but they were just a beginning. There came next a time when we had very little to eat except 50-60 loaves of bread from the food bank, which we froze so they'd keep, and 100 lbs of lentils, and a lot of orange marmalade that we'd put up. we ate a lot of bread, toast, and lentil soup. For some reason we still had a lot of dogs, and they had to eat lentils, too.

Then we got thrown out of our place, and were homeless for a summer. We moved into a friend's vacation home, and might have starved if it hadn't been for the food bank. We searched frantically for a place to llive all summer, and the only place we could find was a little log cabin without any water, toilet, or electricity. The place was falling apart, but I fell in love with it when I saw that the whole backyard was full of rose hips! We found some apples and plums that were free for the picking, and lived mainly on roadkill venison, apples, oatmeal, and lentil soup( plus food bank stuff). For firewood we went to the lumbermills and picked up mill ends. Afterwards my stepdad would buy us each a cheap fried burrito, and they were such a treat! A cold snap hit that winter, -35 plus high winds. The windchill made the temp go right off the the chart we had! We spent the days huddled right next to the wood stove. Then we ran out of wood and had to go out into the wind to cut up a tree that was blown down. We didn't have enough clothes to wear, so we prayed for clothes. We found some at the landfill, which we would pick over, but not enough. One day a friend called to say that a relative of hers had sent some clothes for us, turned out it was a heaping truckload of brand new clothes!!! We had to keep pinching ourselves, we were in shock! Yes, the Almighty will provide for us, that is the biggest thing I learned.

-- Rebekah (daniel1@itss.net), December 15, 2000.

After reading Rebekah's post I don't think I've fallen on hard times now :o). There have been times when we lived on pancakes for more than a week at a time. Cheap, filling and something the kids would actually eat. I tried to make it a treat instead of the only thing we had and I don't think the kids ever knew. I vividly remember not eating for several days so my 2 yr old could eat. You do what you have to...up to and including begging kin folks for help. People will help if you ask.

-- Amanda in Mo (aseley@townsqr.com), December 15, 2000.

I still like mustard on cheese sandwiches. My hold over from hard times.

-- Jay Blair in N. AL (jayblair678@yahoo.com), December 15, 2000.

Nothing like what Rebekah went through, but I spent about 1/2 a year one time eating a LOT of broccoli and mayonnaise, with salt and pepper. A big treat was cheese sandwiches with mustard, too! and really exciting was egg sandwiches with mustard! Lots of pepper, and sometimes lettuce on those egg sandwiches. Not too many lentils, but I got real tired of rice at one point.

Glad those days are hopefully behind me, although I could do it again, but I am happy I can be on the donating side of the food bank at this point. I hope folks with extra food are able to give something. Electric bills in our area are going up 33% on Jan. 1, and natural gas is similar. There's going to be a lot of hungry folk out there (even more than now.) I'm sure it's happening in a lot of places...good folk that you know may need a little help.

-- sheepish (rborgo@gte.net), December 15, 2000.

Hubby was shocked one time to see me making pancakes with eggs and milk and oil. His Dad wwould make 'em for their family (7 kids) with just flour, baking soda, salt and water. He sometimes complains that mine are are too "fluffy;" the pancakes of his childhood were flat! His uncle worked at a factory what made pancake syrup; uncle said that the job was recession-proof, since everyone ate pancakes when times were tough! Looks like he was right.

-- Leann Banta (thelionandlamb@hotmail.com), December 15, 2000.

Growing up in a family with 9 other brothers and sisters, my mom had to make food really stretch. Use to eat mayonaise sandwiches and use to have pinto beans alot. My mom use to cut up potatoes and boil them, like you would if you were going to mash them, but intead she would fry them. I loved them, but with so many kids, all I ever got were just a few. I would always say that when I got older and had my own house, I could make them any time and eat as many as I wanted. Funny, how they don't taste as good now. One time I had to wear my mom's shoes to school, I was in jr. high and mortified. After flip flopping around all day, i was glad when the day was over and nobody seemed to notice. So I thought. I was standing on the curb waiting for my mom to pick me up and the shoes hung over the edge of the curb. Some kid ran past me and was laughing and pointing at the same time and said "look at that kids shoes". We laugh at all these and many more stories now. I think that has what kept our family so close.

-- Annie (mistletoe@earthlink.net), December 15, 2000.

I have been very fortunate in that I have never been homeless...i have had some couch rotation times, but never completely with no place to go.

my largest character building period was when I lived on popcorn with stolen salt from a Macky D's with my dog Canardly for just over a week. Nothing but popcorn. For a time I didn't care for it, but I rather enjoy it again....and I still don't butter it!

-- Doreen (animalwaitress@excite.com), December 15, 2000.

When we were young, times were very hard alot of the time. My dad got paid once a month(on the 1st)& He like the "party' life and by the end of the month we had no money. We weren't aloud to eat anything with out asking first. Around the 20th of every month we ate lots of dried beans, rice and potates. For breakfast we had fried "hoecakes" (just water and flour mixed together). We drank water. I only remember being hungry(really hungry) once. It filled us up and we knew that next month would be the same.

-- Debbie T in N.C. (rdtyner@mindspring.com), December 16, 2000.

We went through a lot of hard times when I was younger, although I am only now as an adult beginning to realize just how hard they were. My mother was the queen of playing "adventure". Instead of "oh we're poor and have to eat lentils" it was "these are what Jesus and his friends ate" and it was always "Little House on the Prairie" this and that, which made us feel special and fun, not poor. I remember finding out early on that if I read long enough, dinner would come without me having sat around feeling hungry. Did a LOT of reading back then as I recall. Only thing that kept me sane at time, I think. Good thing, as it is the only real education I got, give or take the odd good teacher.

-- Soni (thomkilroy@hotmail.com), December 16, 2000.

Oh my gosh!! After reading those post I must have been rich..I thought we were very poor..four kids, parents, grandparents, and unlce all lived in an old farmhouse..We ate ketchup sandwiches and us kids thought everybody else ate them too. EVERY Friday it was hotdogs and soup..Can't handle those doggies too well to this day..

-- Lynn (mscratch1@semo.net), December 16, 2000.

You guys make it seem like I was Richie Rich, even though there wasn't much money, my mother kept a meal everyday, I don't think I knew that things were tough because at our house(Mother, Grand-mother and me) there was always agreat healping of LOVE. Thanks for sharing the hard times you all had, it makes everythng else small stuff.

Wayne Roach

-- Wayne & Lyn Roach (R-WAY@msn.com), December 16, 2000.

Anyone who is interested in surviving Hard Times, would enjoy Rita Van Ambers "Stories And Recipes of the Great Depression of the 1930's" She has written three cookbooks filled with recipes and true stories of what people went thru and how they managed to survive their hard times. The books can be ordered at(715) 235-7702 Martha Matthews

-- Martha Matthews (marthafromwa@webtv.com), December 17, 2000.

Gee, we didn't have much when I was little either (but of course, I didn't really KNOW that), but nothing like some of you! I do know that one reason we ate pretty well was that my Dad and Grandpa (who lived next door) were good hunters and fishermen, and we did have a freezer to keep the food. We had lots of hot dogs too -- Dad called them "tube steaks".

Our whole time was in sort of a time warp. I was growing up in the 1950's and early '60's, but it was, in many ways a lot like life a couple of decades earlier. I can remember visits to my other grandparents in the city, and being totally awed by escalators.

-- Joy Froelich (dragnfly@chorus.net), December 17, 2000.

Ok poor, when i was in grade school i had to carry water from the spring. we had no bathroom it was a iron pot on the back porch. I remember taking a bath in a cast iron tub on the back porch while looking at the snow on the ground. We didn't get a tv until 1976. Ever tried to explain to school friends that "GoldAr" sounds like a candy bar not a super hero. (LOL) Anyway Getting by is good experience for anyone. Mine has come in handy and serves as a reminder that should our current 14x76 fail. we can still survive.

As a stopgap measure a few years back we bought 3 of the FlipUp tents. In a pinch we can have 2 rooms and a storage area in 15 minutes. Hey peanut butter and jelly sandwichs are "health food". Hmmmm Seems to me we eat a lot of baked potatoes and banana sandwichs.

Ok I'll hush sometimes i think i should write a book. :o)

-- Kenneth in N.C. (wizardsplace13@hotmail.com), December 19, 2000.

My grandfather used to say that his most vivid childhood memory was of his mother standing in the kitchen and crying because there was no food for the children. A common meal for them back then was parched wheat with a splash of milk. Grandpa used to joke that he invented Wheaties

Grandpa's been gone for a couple of years now. I wish that I would have asked him more about his life when I had the chance. Sherri in IN

-- Sherri C (CeltiaSkye@aol.com), December 19, 2000.

I remember when I was single and living in a small two room app. With a so called boyfriend at the time. We were both working but still couldn't afford food. We bought the Ramen noodles at 6 for a dollar. I would cook two pkgs. but use only one flavoring pkg. The other one I would save. When we ran out of noodles I would boil water and mix in the extra pkg of flavoring and drink as a tea. After things started looking up I got real sick of Ramen noodles!! Now several years later I can again eat these things but only sparingly. We eat pancakes every week. Store bought cereals are way too expensive to buy a whole weeks worth and they are not all that healthy anyway. One other thing we do now is to make dumplings every time we have stews. Makes them stretch farther. And when making stews I throw inwhatever I have for leftover veggies. Sometimes that includes beets. Once I used pickled beets, yuck!! I'll try to remember that next time!!

-- michelle (tsjheath@ainop.com), December 20, 2000.

Just a recent note to add to my last one. As I was reading some other questions out 10 year old was helping by cooking supper. He used our cast iron frying pan to heat up a jar of canned meat. He picked up on the handle (which is an older one from ringerhut that has the wooden handle. This one will spin in your hand if the pan is heavy.) Well anyway it spun on him when he picked it up. Luckly he didn't get burnt, but now what to do with supper? We had cooked potatoes and canned corn so I stirred up corn chowder. Tasted just fine. You really have to be ready to think on your feet sometimes.

-- michelle (tsjheath@ainop.com), December 20, 2000.