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Around the holidays we focus on food. And we usually have too much food, which means we have leftovers. I love leftovers and nothing but disdain for people who say they don’t like leftovers or that they can eat them once and then no more. I tell them I eat them until they’re all gone. Sometimes I give some to the dogs. But I don’t say that. I say, “You must not have grown up hearing about the Great Depression like I did.” It was one of Daddy’s favorite lectures. He’d tell us about how folks were roaming the countryside starving. They’d turn up at his parent’s farm begging to work for food. If any of us children smirked during these accounts, we were in for it with a double dose of scorn and accusations of ingratitude for not appreciating how easy we had it.
It must have had an impact because I’m forever going around saying, “Waste not. Want not.” I say it so often, my neighbor Gayle found a folk art piece of a buzzard perched on a limb with a dead possum on the ground and a caption “Waste Not. Want Not.” It’s hanging in a prominent place on a wall in our home. I’ll take a picture and put it on Facebook if I can, so you can see it.
After I started thinking about all of this, I got out my cookbook, “Recipes & Remembrances of the Great Depression,” hoping to share a recipe or two with you. Ground Hog Meatloaf was a little too disgusting. At first I thought the recipe referred to ground pig, but that wasn’t it. It was groundhog like the one who comes out on Groundhog Day. So since a lot of folks survived on gravy during the Great Depression, I’m passing on a recipe for Dish Rag Gravy, which isn’t as bad as it sounds.
“Use bacon drippings or other grease. If desired, sauté a little onion for flavoring in grease. Brown enough flour for thickening and slowly add water, milk or water poured from potatoes for mashing. (This adds a little flavor and minerals for nourishment.) Add salt and pepper to taste. Mom used to make this when we didn’t have any meat. When I asked her what kind of gravy this was she would tell me “Dish Rag Gravy.”–Beatrice K.
Sylvia Cooper is a Columnist with The Augusta Press. Reach her at sylvia.cooper@theaugustapress.com
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