Tomatoes were cheaper: a 1932 grocery bill

[Lady Day]

The Argo starch I found was corn starch.
Ah well.

LD

 

[cassylynn]

I was just reading through my 1943 Wartime Victory Cookbook and there is a section that reads "How to feed a family of five on $15.00 per week" A few tips that were written in this section that still apply today were: Buy fruit and vegetables that are in season, Make a check list in your kitchen and stick to it and stay within your food budget. During the war the good cuts of meat were sent over to our troops so the homefront mainly ate sweetbreads, organ meat and the less than better cuts. Of course, they were also urged to grow a Victory garden.

Cookbooks back then were designed to help the homemaker run her home and plan weekly meals, not just look for new recipes like the books of today. The first 150 pages are just on daily menus! It was also the responsibility of the homemaker to budget. They suggest having a group of envelopes labeled with your biggest expenses: rent, gas, light and heat, groceries, milk, clothing and taxes (or savings). Then when you run out of money from that particular envelope you know you spent your months allowance. That still sounds like a good idea!

I can't complain about our food prices here in Pennsylvania. Where I live even if you live in the "city" farms are all around just a mile or two away. My husband and I have started to buy raw milk from a local farmer, the cows are grass fed and we don't have to worry about the pasteurization process taken away valuable vitamins and nutrients. We spend $4 gallon for milk but to me it's worth it.

We also buy organic beef from a local farmer, we purchase a 1/2 cow every year and this past February it cost us $1.86 per pound cut, wrapped and flash frozen (hanging weight). We received roughly 200 pounds of meat and the nice thing about getting it butchered yourself, you get to choose how many roasts and steaks you want and then the rest is usually cubed or ground. Organ meat and sweetbreads are free.

We have about 5 orchards within a 5 mile radius. I just bought a bushel of peaches this morning for $30.00, I'll be canning those on Monday. I just finished up canning 24 pints of sweet pickle relish this morning for a little over $20.00. The sweet peppers cost me $0.25 each, the sweet onions were $0.45 each and the pickling cucumbers were $1.25 pound. The size of the peppers and onions were perfect, 1 onion gave me 2 cups when it was chopped! I think the biggest expense was the canning jars and I bought them at a discount warehouse lol

Anyways, I could go on and on and on. But there are still ways even in 2009 to spend less for more and you can still get nutrition and vitamins out of the produce of today it just may take a little more effort to find what your looking for. I heard there are some great farmers markets out on the West Coast!

 

[Elaina]

Soup was pretty common in the 30s to my understanding, and I know I use cornstarch as a thickening agent in that. I also come from a line of women that used it as deodorant since there's a nasty allergy to that and I knew at least 2 women from that era used it for that purpose.

And the ironed and starched everything, and I use the same recipe one of my great grandmother's used, which came via an Aunt, and it requires a cup of starch each time you make it (apparently they liked their clothing to walk off the board), which to me accounted for the Argo brand.

Some of those ideas I've heard in my family for a while, so I'm sure some of them were used then. Cornstarch was always kind of a "magic powder" in my family for uses.

 

[Shangas]

The last time I bought a bottle of ink, Parker's Quink, from the local art supply place, it cost about $8, and that was only the year before last. Either the price has gone way up since then, or the regional variation in stationery products is even worse than the food supply.

Annoyingly, stationery in Australia can be rather expensive. Here, I think Parker Quink costs about the SAME, maybe a bit more. The ink I wrote about was Waterman's Blue.

 

[Helysoune]

Laundry starch and cornstarch are two entirely different, non-interchangeable things. The latter I buy in a 1# box and just let it sit in the cupboard to be used as needed in teriyaki chicken, pie fillings (especially cherry), gravy, soups and stews, and most recently chicken paprikash. It produces a smoother product than thickening with flour and doesn't ever get that pasty flavor flour thickening can impart. Also, unlike flour, you don't have to dilute cornstarch with water prior to adding it to your cooking to keep it from lumping.

Laundry starch is a different compound and is not edible. Craving it is indicative of a medical condition called pica, which most notably presents in pregnant women. Other non-food items craved include soap, dirt and even cigarette butts, among other things. Pica generally denotes the iron-deficiency type of anemia, though why the body tries to correct that deficiency with non-iron rich things is beyond me. It can be quite a dangerous condition (for both mother and child) and any such strange cravings should be reported to a doctor immediately. One woman I know of developed a taste for chewing on dryer sheets, up to several boxes a day, and actually gave herself aluminum poisoning from this.

 

[Lady Day]

Very interesting, LD. I tried to stay as close to the original list as I could, tho, instead of modernizing it. Strange how some prices are the same and some are way off, due to areas too and being in a city/country. I'm sure even that was the case back then too.

Id be interested to see this list priced at a Whole Foods. Anyone?

LD

 

[Lady Day]

Laundry starch and cornstarch are two entirely different, non-interchangeable things.

Well, this site says you can use cornstarch as a starch for clothes, which is what I assumed the list meant.

Home-made Spray Starch

1 tablespoon cornstarch 1 pint cold water Dissolve cornstarch in cold water. Pour mixture into a spray bottle and squirt to apply (shake before each use).

LD