Cooking with Clara: Depression Breakfast

I love these Great Depression Cooking videos featuring Clara, a 93-year-old grandmother and great-grandmother who shares her recipes and experiences from living through the Great Depression!

Two years ago, Clara’s grandson decided to videotape Clara preparing meals that she and her family ate when Clara was a young woman during the Great Depression, and so far we’ve seen Dandelion Salad, Pasta with Peas, Egg Drop Soup, and Peppers and Eggs.

In this video she prepares a typical Sunday breakfast that she and her family would have enjoyed. She starts out making a sugar cookie, made using 3/4 cup of sugar, 3 beaten eggs, 1-1/2 cup flour, a pinch of salt, and then mixes to combine. She then forms the dough into a tube, incorporating another 1-1/2 cups or so of flour to make them more manageable. She then cuts the dough into little shapes and places them on an ungreased cookie sheet and bakes at 350 degrees until they’re golden brown. Then they sit to cool for a bit.

I love her story about how for a typical breakfast they’d have just bread and coffee, but that these cookies were a special treat on Sunday mornings, along with wafer cookies that she and her brother would split up.

She also shows us some old pictures while she makes the pot of coffee using an “old Depression pot” and freshly ground coffee. She says her and her siblings’ coffees were mostly milk with just a drop of coffee, and that they used evaporated milk (though later on she says it’s condensed milk).