Chipped beef gravy on toast or egg noodles. I'd eat that right now. The sauce as my grandmother cooked it was creamy and peppery--a great contrast.
I had that bargain basement barbecue sauce on mini hot dogs at middle-class cocktail parties in Mexico City (with Mexico having one of the world's most complex cuisines!). Another surprise in Mexico--when people were entertaining--was to pour Cheez Whiz on almost anything and call it estilo americano. And people often made those things for us as a courtesy or an appeal to our presumed taste.
The things that you are describing for the most part are things that could be made from canned or at least partially prepackaged food. In the summer my mother and grandmother canned like crazy during the month of August. So we never bought canned food. We had shelves and shelves of it in the basement, including ketchup, tomato sauces, whole tomatoes, diced tomatoes, corn, green beans, peaches, applesauce, etc., etc. And bins of potatoes, apples, and carrots. A kid's chore was to check for spoilage and pick out any that looked like they were going soft--that went a long way to preserve them for most of the winter. The idea of buying fresh food out of season was unheard of in my childhood where I was raised. And our refrigerators had a freezer with held two ice cube trays and not much more.
My oldest brother transcribed my mother's recipes for all of the siblings one Christmas. He was working from a source like looks like your photo!
My mother's cooking was fancier than my grandmother's but that was because there was a class difference interjecting itself there. My mother came from an upper middle-class family. But she did all of those recipes (which they called Depression Cooking) at popular request along with some very awesome French country cooking and Alsacien dishes (kind of Frenchified German cooking).
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I had that bargain basement barbecue sauce on mini hot dogs at middle-class cocktail parties in Mexico City (with Mexico having one of the world's most complex cuisines!). Another surprise in Mexico--when people were entertaining--was to pour Cheez Whiz on almost anything and call it estilo americano. And people often made those things for us as a courtesy or an appeal to our presumed taste.
The things that you are describing for the most part are things that could be made from canned or at least partially prepackaged food. In the summer my mother and grandmother canned like crazy during the month of August. So we never bought canned food. We had shelves and shelves of it in the basement, including ketchup, tomato sauces, whole tomatoes, diced tomatoes, corn, green beans, peaches, applesauce, etc., etc. And bins of potatoes, apples, and carrots. A kid's chore was to check for spoilage and pick out any that looked like they were going soft--that went a long way to preserve them for most of the winter. The idea of buying fresh food out of season was unheard of in my childhood where I was raised. And our refrigerators had a freezer with held two ice cube trays and not much more.
My oldest brother transcribed my mother's recipes for all of the siblings one Christmas. He was working from a source like looks like your photo!
My mother's cooking was fancier than my grandmother's but that was because there was a class difference interjecting itself there. My mother came from an upper middle-class family. But she did all of those recipes (which they called Depression Cooking) at popular request along with some very awesome French country cooking and Alsacien dishes (kind of Frenchified German cooking).