Historical Food Fortnightly Challenge #9 - The Frugal Housewife

The Challenge

"Throughout history, housewives and housekeepers have kept a close eye on their budgets and found creative ways to pinch pennies while providing delicious and nutritious food. Create a dish that interprets one historically-documented method of frugal cooking."

 

 

It would be impossible to talk about mid-century food and recipes without mentioning the phenomenon known as The Baby Boom.

Young men returning to the United States and Allied countries after World War II began families.  The dramatic increase in the number of births from 1946 to 1964 in the United States is called The Baby Boom.  During this time 79 million babies were born.  That is an average of 4.2 million per year for the 19 year span compared to an average of 2.3 to 2.8 million per year in the 1930s to early 1940s.

 

And every one of those 79 million children needed to be fed.  And every one went to school.  So where could a housewife be frugal in her food budget?  In our home with 4 young girls all attending school at the same time the answer was in packing school lunches.  Although lunch was available at school, it did cost extra and our still growing family with a working father and a stay-at-home mother needed to save pennies in every way possible.

 

The CBS Homemakers' Exchange Recipes has some tasty ideas for School Lunch Sandwiches in the January/February/March 1951 issue.

 

Easy ingredients:

Not a raisin-only bread, but we really LOVE cinnamon!

A multigrain bread with walnuts, hazelnuts, and almonds.

 

Combine everything:

Spread on bread:

Wrap in waxed paper (because there weren't nice little plastic bags with locking tops):

And if you were a really lucky child you had an awesome box to carry your sandwich, apple, and celery sticks and a cookie:

 

 

Now for the details:

 

Historical Food Fortnightly

 

The Challenge:  Challenge #9 - The Frugal Housewife

The Recipe:  CBS Homemakers' Exchange Recipes - School Lunch Sandwiches

The Date/Year and Region:  Jan/Feb/Mar 1951, United States

How Did You Make It?  Followed recipes closely.

Time to Complete:  30 minutes including hard-boiling eggs and frying bacon

Total Cost:  $3.50 for 4 sandwiches

How Successful Was It?  Very, since neither of us thought it would be tasty, we were very surprised when it was.  Patrick doesn't eat olives and ate them!  And raisin bread?  Yum!  These sandwiches had such a wonderful blend of flavors!

How Accurate Is It?  Completely.

 

Do you remember taking sandwiches to school for lunch?

 

Happy Eating!

Patrick and Jeanette