Bubble and Squeak – IOTW Report

Bubble and Squeak

Tuesday, 16 November 2021, 12:05 MJA Uncategorized 43

Here’s What People Ate To Survive During WWII

43 Comments on Bubble and Squeak

  1. I was born in 1952 on the Canadian Prairies. My family was OK, middle class, but did not believe in “going into debt”. I grew up on “bubble and squeak”; meat loaf and when our mother wanted to punish us – liver, onions and mashed turnips.
    I am happy to say, that as an adult, none of these foods have passed my lips. But should really bad times come again, I know I can eat these and survive.

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  2. All through college, I lived on rice, cheese and vegetables at least twice a week. My roommates and I called it ‘Rice Goop’. Only made it one time since then. My friend’s husband was staying with me while she sold their house in Seattle. This was the first time I cooked for someone other than myself, and running out of ideas, I made Rice Goop. He actually liked it … I think. Maybe he was too nice to tell me the truth!

    Don’t plan on cooking it again unless the Democrats remain in office.

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  3. My Grandmothers took to the victory garden in a big way. My most rural Grandma was always raising rabbits and chickens. Hell, she raised two boys through the depression and then her husband (my Grandfather) died in 1942. It was amazing what she could grow on less then 1/2 acre. She continued that until her early 80’s and died peacefully at 97 years of age.

    My second Grandma was more citified and raised a whole bunch of stuff on maybe a 40 X 50 garden plot. She later turned that into a vegetable garden/ proper English herb garden. She was a big fan of Julia Child and became a gourmet chef. I still dream of her Leg of Lamb with a red wine gravy. Cancer got her at the age of 68 in 1977.

    Thanks for this post, it’s made me remember some great memories! This season is for giving thanks and I’m thankful.

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  4. @Big Mama: “liver, onions and mashed turnips.”

    I use to cry every time my mother made liver and onions because just looking at it made me wanna barf and gag. Thankfully our dog liked to sit under my feet when eating. My mother was raised on a farm during the depression – she just passed away at the age of 98. They lived on beans, cornbread and hogs. My grandmother raised chickens and traded eggs for sugar and flour. To this day, when I left the house for good, I never tasted anything with liver in it again.

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  5. Makes me think of my Grandmother. Darning socks, reusing tissues and teabags, spending half the day in the kitchen making a meal that would be gone in half an hour. She never threw anything out until it was totally used up. My Grandfather died from injuries sustained in WWI and she raised 4 kids on her own during the depression and the second World War. I really miss her.

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  7. From my own memories as a lad in New England, “Use it up and wear it out, make it do, or do without”.
    With (p)Resident Xiden in power, we may have to go back to that New England thrift.

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  8. Freshly slaughtered liver from family raised, grass-fed steers, gently pan fried in butter, is nothing like you’ve ever tasted. It’s absolutely divine. Go ahead, add some butter-fried, sweet onions and mashed potatoes. At that point, you’ll either “get it” – or you need to trade in your taste buds with a mouthectomy. 🙂

    12

  10. Boob Tube, don’t watch any u-junk-tube videos. Think most are garbage.
    Cabbage & potatoes, rice & beans, liver as a child, I had didn’t hate it. When times are ruff, this is what happens. How to eat cheaply, doesn’t mean it has to taste bad or be bad for you.

    6

  11. Canned Pork fried on an old skillet still gives me stomach rumbles. It was cold packed with lard on top.

    Fry some taters and pork and go sit by the country stove and listen to the radio.

    7

  12. It cracks me up sometimes when I hear people are clearing the shelves of bread and milk, [MILK AND BREAD!!!111!] and not even go near
    milk in other forms: powder, evaporated, condensed.
    And no one buys flour: AP, almond, bread, etc.
    No one buys sugar: powdered, granulated, even the fake stuff.

    Not even eggs, cheese, yeast, butter, oil, rice, salt, beans.

    The stuff from which all things are created. Especially cake. lol

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  14. ^ You’ve raised the BAR! 😀

    (But I’ll wager almost no one has experienced what I described. The fresh liver hasn’t even reached ambient temperature from its excision from the steer… Is this turning people off? Then, you should hear the proper ways to prepare beef tongue! LOL)

    5

  15. The best liver we ever ate from was a from a freshly killed cow that my dad and uncle had butchered earlier that day. My mom made a terrible zuchinni casserole once a few years ago, seeing that my dad and mom and one of my uncles who probably had no taste buds, they were all in their 80’s, they liked it but we didn’t. My daughter and I passed on it politely as much as we could, my daughter also threatened me if I ever made it that would be it. And my mother in law made a tuna quiche once and only once, it went over like a lead balloon, it was that bad. And I hate creamed tuna on toast which my mom would occasionally make on Fridays. But chicken ala king with peas, I hate green peas was the worst, it looked someone barfed on the plate. Fortunately my mom never made it but my best friends mom did and she wasn’t that great of a cook in the first place, I always managed to pass on that whenever I ate at his house.

    3

  16. We also played (my brothers and I and my cousin) football with the bladder rout of of a freshly killed cow on my uncles farm in N. Idaho. Unfortunately it hadn’t drained completely yet and when one of my brothers caught it it burst all over him and splattered cow pee all over him. My uncle would also dry out the cow bladders and make pinata’s and balloons out of them for his own and our amusement. Nothing was ever wasted, my dad told me when they butchered a pig on the farm that they used everything but the squeal.

    7

  17. Spam and peanut butter is fine with me. My foster Mom used spam in many ways, but I always liked it fried in slices and put on bread plain. Johnny cake and milk was frequently served as a whole meal. It beat the meals my four brothers and a sister and I got in the orphanage.

    7

  18. As a teenager my dad supported his family by hunting small game and fishing for whatever would bite.
    He said he could fill a room with all the squirrels he shot with the Savage .22 bolt action he gave me before he died. It still shoots surprisingly accurate.

    8

  19. My parents grew up during the depression but they always said they were lucky to live on farms and they didn’t notice anything any different–though the people in town had it bad, some of them. Some would walk out to the farms to work for 50 cents a day. We lived on a farm and we always considered ourselves lucky. I am one of the few of any of my families that I know of that still owns some acerage with various berries, fruit and nut trees. I still feel very fortunate. We have a blueberry bushes that should last 40 or 50 years if we continue to weed and mulch them. I froze 55 qt. this summer that I also picked. My Mom was known for her strawberries that one year she sold in town, making $40 of which she was very proud. For a month every year we gorged ourselves on them too. Everybody can grow something delicious.

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  20. btw I like liver and onions once in a great while. You can soak beef liver in milk overnight or something to make it better, I did that last time I fixed it and it was very good. That 40 dollars income on berries was in the 60’s and she could just take them into a supermarket whenever she wanted to. Not sure too many places would allow that now.

    4

  21. You know what I like fried bologna but never eat it anymore because my lefty husband says it’s poor people food. Of course he has called business creators/owners “filthy rich” too. It’s a mixture of envy and hate that drives them I think. He was brought up that way but I was not. MAGA forever!

    6

  26. My grandmother would soak liver overnight in milk and then would egg wash and breading before frying in bacon fat. Absolutely delicious but I’ve tried it prepared other ways and won’t touch it. Grew up on tongue sandwiches also. Delicious with horseradish.

    5

  28. My parents were of that era.
    Dad was born in 1910, graduated from HS in 1928, enlisted in the army in 1943.
    Mom was born in 1917 and had to live through those days when my dad was putting his life on the line for $50 a month minus allotments to his wife and his mom.
    I was raised with their values.

    1

  29. I ate liver w/bacon & onions Monday through Thursday about two weeks ago, then fried heart the following Saturday. That was from my daughter’s deer. I prefer my liver & heart fresh, but froze both from the one that I shot a following week because it is pretty rich to eat again for four more days in a row.

    Slice it thin and roll in salt, pepper, paprika and flour mix then fry it in bacon grease. We have a couple deer at the butcher shop waiting to be picked up right now. Half of the first deer made into bratwurst, the other half in Italian sausage. The other one is half breakfast sausage and 1/2 as burger. I set aside the backstrap and tenderloin, but the rest goes into ground meat products. Our burger is made with a 5lb country bacon ground up and mixed with 20lbs of ground deer.

  31. Anyone ever have stewed chicken out of a can? As a kid I would dig my heels in and refuse to eat it. My old man would make me sit at the table until I finished dinner, but I recall sitting there until bedtime over that damn stewed chicken.

  33. Liver and onions was one of the few foods that I wouldn’t and couldn’t eat as a kid. I tried, but I’d barf it up. It wasn’t until sometime in my mid 20s that someone convinced me to try it in a diner that I regularly went to where people raved about it. It was really good, but for some reason I only get it once every few years or so. I don’t know anyone else that likes it and I have to be in the mood for it and where I get it from has to have a solid reputation for it.

    I have a 1936 Fortune magazine with a lot of cool ads in it, one of which is from Goodrich Rubber company where they explain how they helped packing plants:
    “salvage the hair from a hog and so save everything but the squeal”
    “Giant rubber scrapers churn and scrape the hair from the carcass, but 200 pound hogs soon wear out and break the scapers. Goodrich developed scrapers of different compound and shape that could hold up to the impact and weight of the hog and will resist the chemicals in the scraping bath thus cutting costs substantially.”

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  34. The key to cooking delicious beef liver – don’t over cook it. That’s how it turns into shoe leather.

    Instead –
    Season liver with garlic, salt, pepper, coat with flour and fry five minutes on each side in butter. Add chopped onions last and cover to simmer/steam five minutes. Make gravy with the pan “leavings” if not burned, for an extra treat.

    Unless you just hate the taste of liver, this recipe makes absolutely tender and delicious beef liver.

    2

  35. There’s a very fun food series posted to YT in which a guy and a gal live for two weeks on the diet and lifestyle of whatever era they’re “visiting”. One series was England ca. WWII. There was SO much the British civilian population had to do without for SO long! They had rationing for nearly 10 years after the war! One of the things I found fascinating was their use of non-food materials in their cooking; things like plaster of Paris in place of flour. They had a dense bread (made of stuff I can’t now remember) that was like “economy loaf”, called “national loaf”. The British farmers were carefully audited to make sure they were forking over all their milk, cream, eggs and crops to the gov’t, so farmers weren’t able to live off their own land the way most American farm families could.

    I like liver and onions, but I don’t think we’ve had them but once at home because no one else here likes them.

  37. I fry bacon in my cast iron skillet, add onion, and then drop the liver, chicken, beef or calf, in the skillet. I use salt, pepper, and occasionally add a little garlic just before it’s done. Fry lightly on both side, top with h the cried onions and bacon, pair it up with either corn bread or naan bread and chow down.

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  39. Speaking of liver and onions, my nephew bagged his first doe yesterday (our prairie has LOTS of deer). He doesn’t keep the liver, so we have it. My sister is going to make liver pate. YUM!

    His second deer will go in our freezer.

    3

  40. Claudia,

    How horrible to kill Bambi’s sister.

    If you give me all the meat, everyone involved up there will be absolved of all sorrows regarding this crime against mother earth.

    I’ll be sure to give it the respect it deserves.

    Might take about 8-12 months to fully respect it.

    I swear I’ll even shed a tear when I see it arrive. I’m caring like that. O.o

    3

  41. Dadof4, I think my sisters would throw me in the pond if I did that!

    I’ll compromise. I’ll send you a picture of the first venison steak I cook!

    Oh, sorry. That’s mean. Bwwaaahahahahaha

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