94 year old great-grandmother Clara has been videotaped by her grandson as she prepares meals that she and her family ate during the Great Depression. In an attempt to capture not only the recipes and the methods of preparation but Clara’s stories and memories of the time, she and her grandson have created quite an archive of precious videos!
I’ve previously written about several, including Sicilian Fig Cookies parts one and two, Depression breakfast, dandelion salad, pasta with peas, and poorman’s meal.
In the video above, Clara prepares Eggplant Parmesan, though she says right off the bat that she actually makes it …read more

On last week’s Great Depression Cooking with Clara video, 94-year-old Clara showed us the beginning of her Sicilian Fig Cookies, a treat she and her family enjoyed just after the Great Depression ended.
She and her granddaughters, for whom this is a yearly tradition, prepared all of the fruits and nuts before letting them sit overnight in the fridge.
Part two, above, picks up with Clara making the dough for the cookies. She measures out ten cups of flour and mixes it with a pound of lard before adding a cup and a half of sugar. She then adds one cup of …read more

Great Depression Cooking with Clara on Youtube is one of my favorite channels to watch. Clara, now 94 years old, and her siblings grew up during the Great Depression in the late 1920’s and 1930’s, and like many families they made do with what they had, which included some creative family meals. You can see some of her previous videos here, here, and here.
In this video, Clara shows how to prepare Sicilian Fig Cookies, a treat that her family only made once a year around the holidays. She mentions that it was pretty much something they only did after the …read more

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 …read more

A new “season” of Great Depression Cooking with Clara has been produced! I was very happy to have stumbled across this the other day, as I actually found myself wondering last week how Clara was doing and if she and her grandson had any plans for more videos. I’m glad they did, and Clara looks to be doing well!
Great Depression Cooking with Clara is pretty self-explanatory: In an effort to preserve his grandmother’s recipes as well as her memories of growing up during the Great Depression, one of Clara’s grandsons started video taping Clara as she prepares an economical meal …read more

You remember Clara, the 91-year-old great-grandmother who shares her recipes for Depression-era meals?
Here’s another sweet video of Depression Cooking with Clara, preparing Pasta with Peas. While she fixes the food she recounts memories of what it was like to live through the Great Depression and how her family survived.
The inexpensive meal consists of potatoes, onion, canned peas and pasta, with a little tomato sauce added at the end. I actually think this sounds really good, though I’d use frozen peas instead of canned!
I really love watching these videos of Clara. They not only remind me of my own grandparents who …read more