Meet Clara. She’s 91 years old and she’s got a series on YouTube about her starchy, dollar-stretching recipes from the Great Depression. Pray the current economy bounces back, but, in case shit gets really bad, note her recipe for a “Poorman’s Meal”:

Clara is, obviously, the cutest person on earth. She’s like the Bob Ross of food. But kill me if I ever eat fried a hot dog.

30 replies on “How We’ll All Be Eating Soon”

  3. @ 1) I have eaten fried hot dogs. So I guess I should have written, “Kill me if I ever eat fried a hot dog again.” But My family was actually dang poor for several years when I was a kid. And my parents, being basically European, would save money by buying weird parts of the cow. One week they sent me to school with leftover cow-tongue sandwiches. Grosser than a hot dog–for sure–but at least I knew what it was.

  4. Do you remember the Little Rascals episode “All about Hash?” Poor Robert Blake’s parents would fight because his mom would always serve hash. Delicious, delicious hash. He and the rest of Our Gang went on the radio to put on a skit about it to try to get the grownups to stop fighting.

  5. My parents are of the depression era, and we ate pretty thrifty when I was growing up, even though Dad had a good job. Chilli, Macaronni ‘n Cheese, meatloaf, pigs in a blanket, etc.

    The one thing we never had was stewed tomatoes or Spam. Both of my parents said when they thought about the depression, those were the first two foods that came to mind.

    btw, if you want to get a good idea about how people got through the depression in Seattle, get ahold of Betty MacDonald’s “Anybody Can Do Anything”. It takes up after “The Egg and I”, when she leaves her husband and comes back to Seattle during the depths of the depression.

  8. “kill me if I ever eat a fried hot dog”

    “you were obviously never poor as a kid”

    jeez – as if frying a hot dog is that outlandish? sometimes this blog is really a fucking echo-chamber.

  10. Wtf? I agree with pffft. You guys are insane. I fry up Tofurkey hot dogs all the time.

    Have you never eaten mac & cheese & hot dogs either?

    PS Deep fried hot dog = corn dog

  13. Wait a sec. I make this with leftover chicken all the time and call it chicken hash. Although I use some vegetables like celery or Brussels sprouts. As a matter of fact, we’ll be having this for dinner tomorrow night using the leftovers from tonight’s roast chicken.

    The Greatest Depression in here!

  15. I grew up in Hawaii. I loved SPAM before I was poor. SPAM is great! I may make sweet and sour SPAM tonight. (and yes I know what it is made of)

  18. ooh, my parents used to make something like this but even simpler: fry potatoes in the electric skillet, then add corned beef from a can (the kind you have to use a key to open). Fry till the meat chunks are crispy on the outside & season with salt and pepper. It was called “corned beef hash.”

    yum, canned corned beef:
    http://www.export-forum.com/americas/ima…

  20. Poor is wishing you had a can of tomato soup, or that the distribution of surplus commodity foods was more frequent. Hot dogs, or any other convenience food, are not what you eat when you’re really poor. Thus speaks the youngest of 13. Poor is wishing you had ANYTHING to eat.

  22. @20, yeah, a close friend of mine was the middle of 15 kids. I used to invite him over for supper all the time and he was excited every time. He was also the only person who ever actually ate our school food (free lunch).

  23. @22: My husband ate the school lunch too, when it was available. In the late 60s, Seattle Schools offered free lunch, but only when they could pay for it with levy money. At home, they sometimes ate mustard sandwiches. When his mom could afford it, they ate at Herfy’s because of the free condiments. Endless pickles and tomatoes.

  24. I just have to vent. I can’t fucking stand meat eaters and the way you push your immoral and unhealthy practices on others. I’m vegan, and all I want is for people to respect our choice to not eat meat, but no. Every time we go a restaurant and everyone else is eating meat, we get ostrichized. FUCK YOU lard bags, all of you are candidates for strokes and heart-attacks, sitting on your computers jerking off and getting fatter and fatter. Look at my face, make you hard nerds? Will as long as you eat meat you’ve never got a shot at touching a girl like me. And guess what? When I eat, I don’t have to commit murder to fill my belly. What is your rational? It’s okay to mutilate and eat animals cuz they are less intelligent? Would you mutilate and eat a mentally challenged person? Think of the starving people in Africa that could have been fed with the produce that was used to fatten your fat, pot-bellied cows. I hope you all rot in hell. I want you to watch this video: http://www.kentuckyfriedcruelty.com/f-kf…. If you have a shred of decency, you will see my point, but if not, when you’re touching yourself tonight thinking about a girl like me, why don’t you just do the rest of the world a favor and rip your dicks off. Jerks.

  27. Part of the fun of eating meat is knowing that something was killed for your pleasure. If you know it suffered, that makes it even better. Everyone knows that animals that are frightened when they die taste better.

    Sometimes its fun to waste food, knowing that the animal truly did die in vain, and there was no need for its existence. Sometimes I’ll buy a chicken, for example, and just throw it away.

  28. Get some hot dogs from the deli case, not the cheapest ones, and fry them in peanut oil. I’m not kidding. Peanut oil will make you want to eat fried hot dogs twice a month for the rest of your life.

    @24: We are all food. But I’d like to see us get ours less cruelly, I’ll give you that.

  29. #24 has to be a joke. what kind of idiot says “look at my face” on the internet without pics/video? the only thing that makes me think it might be real is the overly judgmental attitude. i haven’t eaten meat in years and often eat vegan, but people like this actually make me wish i was a meat eater. sometimes i swear PETA is a front for the beef council.

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