A Square Meal Quotes

“Unknown to them, spring fever was in fact a vitamin deficiency, mostly likely scurvy, brought on by the winter diet. IN”
― Jane Ziegelman, A Square Meal: A Culinary History of the Great Depression

“Lessons in “eating American,” it was thought, would not only breed good citizens but also improve the morale, scholarship, and health of the students.”
― Jane Ziegelman, A Square Meal: A Culinary History of the Great Depression

“FDR recoiled from the plebeian food foisted on him as president; perhaps no dish was more off-putting to him than what home economists referred to as “salads,” assemblages made from canned fruit, cream cheese, gelatin, and mayonnaise.”
― Jane Ziegelman, A Square Meal: A Culinary History of the Great Depression

“The following is her recipe for pea roast: 1 egg well beaten 1 tablespoon sugar ¼ cup melted butter ½ cup pea pulp (canned or dried) ¼ cup finely chopped peanuts ¾ cup whole milk ¾ cup stale bread crumbs salt and pepper to taste Blend the melted butter with the sugar and eggs. Mix together the pea pulp, peanuts, seasonings, bread crumbs, and milk and combine with the first mixture. Turn into a greased pan and bake in a moderate oven (350 degrees F.) 25 minutes. Serve with tomato sauce or chopped pickle. This interesting entrée comes to you for the pleasant sum of approximately 17 cents and serves four generously.9”
― Jane Ziegelman, A Square Meal: A Culinary History of the Great Depression

“Unfortunately, Hoover’s calculation rested on an oversight: The distribution of America’s new wealth was severely lopsided, the overwhelming share flowing directly into the bank accounts of the very rich, leaving the poor with few or no gains at all.”
― Jane Ziegelman, A Square Meal: A Culinary History of the Great Depression

“However, not even science could account for all the variables that people introduced to the equation.”
― Jane Ziegelman, A Square Meal: A Culinary History of the Great Depression

“Manistee was known as a wide-open town, a lucrative stopover for glassware salesmen because lumbermen, when properly drunk, liked to smash their drinking vessels.”
― Jane Ziegelman, A Square Meal: A Culinary History of the Great Depression

“AMONG THE BEVY of attractions that New York offered early twentieth-century tourists was the spectacle of the city’s breadlines.”
― Jane Ziegelman, A Square Meal: A Culinary History of the Great Depression

“LlVER LOAF 2 pounds liver 4 slices bacon ¼ cup chopped parsley 1 onion 1 cup milk 2 flaked wheat cereal biscuits, crumbed 3 beaten eggs salt and pepper ½ cup tomato ketchup Method—Let liver slices stand in hot water 10 minutes; drain. Grind with onion, parsley and bacon. Add beaten eggs, crumbs and seasonings and pack firmly into loaf pan. Spread tomato ketchup over top of loaf. Bake one hour at 350 degrees. Garnish with broiled bacon slices.”
― Jane Ziegelman, A Square Meal: A Culinary History of the Great Depression

“They embarked on all kinds of reducing regimens, including the canned pineapple and lamb chop diet, supposedly popular among movie stars: “For breakfast the order is one lamb chop and one slice of pineapple. For luncheon two lamb chops and one slice of pineapple. For dinner two lamb chops and two slices of pineapple.”
― Jane Ziegelman, A Square Meal: A Culinary History of the Great Depression

“In 1928, the Chillicothe Baking Company of Missouri began selling the first loaves of presliced bread under the Kleen Maid Bread brand.”
― Jane Ziegelman, A Square Meal: A Culinary History of the Great Depression

“Keeping the family nourished on half of what we had to spend four years ago takes more than womanly instinct and maternal advice. It takes knowing whether you get more protein for your money in eggs or meat, whether there’s enough calcium for Johnny’s bones and teeth in spinach or do you have to buy the more expensive vegetables. It takes knowledge of the chemistry of cooking: the effects of heat on vitamins, and how to cook cheap cuts of meat so that they are nourishing and palatable.5”
― Jane Ziegelman, A Square Meal: A Culinary History of the Great Depression

“CHOCOLATE CAKE ½ cup butter ¾ cup cocoa ½ cup hot water 1 cup sugar 3 teaspoons baking powder 1 cup honey 4 eggs 1 cup milk 2½ cups cake flour Cream butter, sugar, honey and cocoa and add the hot water, beat well, then add well beaten eggs, flour, baking powder and milk. Bake in a moderate oven (350) for 40 to 50 minutes.2”
― Jane Ziegelman, A Square Meal: A Culinary History of the Great Depression

“In the great urban centers, the pulse of the factory served as a kind of metronome for the city at large. In the urban workplace, where wages were paid by the hour, efficiency was a measure of success. Factory hands demonstrated their worth by completing the maximum number of standardized motions in a given period. After the factory whistle blew, their time was their own. But even at leisure, city dwellers saw time as a resource, like coal or copper. The fear that time might run out, as every resource will, left them with the dread of time wasted. On the farm, meanwhile, time was not something you stockpiled like firewood. Farm chores took as long as they took—there was no rushing an ear of corn—and the workday stretched to accommodate the tasks at hand. Time was elastic. The minutes and hours that mattered so much to city folk were irrelevant to the drawn-out biological processes on which the farmer depended. In place of the clock, the farmer’s yardstick for measuring time was the progress of the seasons. As a result, his view of time was expansive, focused on the sweeping cycles of the natural world. For city people, time was fractured into finite segments like boxes on a conveyer belt. On the farm, time was continuous, like a string around a tree, one season flowing inevitably into the next. For”
― Jane Ziegelman, A Square Meal: A Culinary History of the Great Depression

“Food, like language, is always in motion, propelled by the same events that fill our history books. Wars, advances in science and technology, and shifting patterns of migration and commerce are continuously shaping and reshaping the foods that sustain us.”
― Jane Ziegelman, A Square Meal: A Culinary History of the Great Depression

“The food authorities who led America through the Depression were overwhelmingly white, Anglo-Saxon women. Not unreasonably, their ideas about food reflected where they came from, culturally speaking. Who but a WASP could think up a diet based around milky chowders and creamed casseroles?”
― Jane Ziegelman, A Square Meal: A Culinary History of the Great Depression

“For city people, time was fractured into finite segments like boxes on a conveyer belt. On the farm, time was continuous, like a string around a tree, one season flowing inevitably into the next. For”
― Jane Ziegelman, A Square Meal: A Culinary History of the Great Depression