Forgoing Favorite Food From Necessity - Famine Food - 18th Century Cooking
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 25 ก.ค. 2024
- Our Brand New Viewing Experience ➧ townsendsplus.com/ ➧➧
The Country Housewife's Family Companion www.townsends.us/products/the...
Retail Website ➧ www.townsends.us/ ➧➧
Help support the channel with Patreon ➧ / townsend ➧➧
Instagram ➧ townsends_official
Pinterest @jastownsend
A Baba went out to the fields every day, culling and weeding them. She would return at night to fix a mash for herself and her grandson. Who had just lain around the house. He always complained about the food: “Babushka, the food is bland. It needs some spices, or something.” One day, she got him up and took him to the field with her. After working all day, they went home, and she cooked the meal. “This is the best meal I’ve ever eaten! What spices did you use to make is taste to wonderful?” “Hunger”, she replied. “Hunger is the best spice.”- old Russian proverb
Salt of his brow
little salt or butter is enough to make it tasty... even without it gingger will do
I remember when I read Che Guevera's Motorcycle Diaries, and he often used the phrase "Seasoned by hunger" which always stuck with me
Adobo > Hunger
There's an Irish saying just like this, it translates to "hunger is the best sauce"
I grew up poor in the 70’s-No heat or plumbing (NC foothills). We ate mostly beans,cornbread ,and potatoes for supper; and gravy, biscuits,rice or oatmeal for breakfast. The neighbors had a garden so they gave us tomatoes and cucumbers in the summer. I still love to eat that stuff!
It's because it's the food you grew up with, so it's comfort food.
@@JeffDeWitt
And because it’s good food.
I can relate ,beans cornbread fried taters..still my favorite supper.
Love lentils.
I spent much of my childhood with my great grandparents in rural Appalachia. Lots of good dinner and suppers with them. Fried taters, sweet taters, hog jawls, cornbread, pintos, salad and turnip greens. I remember thinking some of the meals, and ways they were prepared were weird. Like Grandma saving and reusing tinfoil. Now I realize it’s because of the way she was raised in the late 20s early 30s. Some darn good, cheap, food. I’ll never forget her taking about how they would catch possums and fatten them up to kill and eat.
I hope Famine Foods becomes a series
I've always been fascinated by what foods people are able to scrounge up in times of hardship, or military expeditions gone wrong.
Hearing stories of polar exporters making a stew from barnacles, lichen, and boot leather.
th-cam.com/video/92kcJeOcOTM/w-d-xo.html shows how To Serve Boot!
That's a great idea! I think they already have at least two shows on this subject. It'd be a great subject for a Playlist.
There are some videos and articles of people trying ration food, what the people for for example the UK ate during WW2 rationing. Very interesting stuff, check it out.
@@vinercent215 You're right - those are very interesting too.
Oh I definitely want to see John eat that
For a long time, lentils were my idea of poverty food. They are tasty, filling, and nutritious, but my mother would always trot them out at the end of the month or during times when my dad didn't get work, and when she made lentil soup it was often a sign that there was nothing else left in the house. These days I'm just glad we didn't have to go without food most of the time. And I've come to appreciate lentils again, both made into my mom's soup (which is honestly pretty tasty) and in recipes I've never made before. Unlike most dry beans, lentils cook in about half an hour, so they're quick to prepare and they taste good. Anyway thanks for coming to my TED Talk
In Hungary there is a tradition that eating lentil stew on New Year's is good luck.
I grew up eating lentils too. 2 or 3 times a month at least. There’s an Armenian saying ; “He’s forgotten how to eat / cook lentils.”
Basically means they’ve forgotten what is was like when they were poor. Kind of slamming lentils; they’re nutritious,filling and easy to cook.👍🏼
Lentils are a nutrition powerhouse. Really good for you, and tasty too. Especially if you have a few spices on hand.
Here in America we see PORK as lentils.
Tbh we are almost all fatties here,but better to be fat and happy than vegetarian and skinny sad.
In Sweden as a daughter of poor finnish immigrants here we have a respectful relationship to the 'swede' and the rutabaga,,, but also the Råg and cvitamin rich hips and berries...we still forage for them every year....part of our diet but makes me trustful we will not be starving this year either... Always grateful for the knowledge my people gave us....m
Thank you for what you wrote. The perspective is wonderful for the rest of us.
AND my husband's grandmother (from Munsala Finland) made lutefisk.
@@marilynmitchell2712 Please take no offense but lutefisk is something I'd have to be starving to eat. I can not fathom people eating it for anything other than a last resort brought on by trying times. Especially in a day and age where one can simply freeze your fish catches in a cheap chest freezer. As I have done myself, when I have caught way more than my family could eat at one time.
@@Mojo_3.14 In Sweden, we have lutfisk every christmas! Yummy! 😋
@@Mojo_3.14 Real men eat Lutefisk. 😎🐟
My mother would take me and my brothers to nearby farms.
She would ask permission
to gather the potatoes and green beans that were left behind after the harvest machines were finished.
We ate a lot of green beans and ham soup.
My favorite was the small potatoes fried in bacon grease.
I do that to this day.
I remember as a kid it was still common to see farmers leave a portion of their crop standing in the field after harvest for the gleaners.
Leviticus 19 Love Your Neighbor
9When you reap the harvest of your land, you are not to reap to the very edges of your field or gather the gleanings of your harvest. 10You must not strip your vineyard bare or gather its fallen grapes. Leave them for the poor and the foreigner. I am the LORD your God.…
@@YahushuaMyAll ❤❤❤
Keep your God out of it
@@clairevero That was rather rude. The verse shared is culturally relevant to the practice in question. If you have an issue with it, you can always scroll on past.
@@YahushuaMyAll ❤❤❤
I live in a very rural community in the south. Our little community is about 15 miles from town, and town is less than 7000 people. This community has always been a bit self-reliant And independent by necessity, back in the day, when 15 miles was a day’s journey when few had cars. Back during the Great Depression, one year the crops failed miserably. Likely from drought. Our highest recorded temperature in the last hundred years was in 1936. The rains finally came in early fall but the damage had been done. All of the families in our community came together to decide what could be done to sustain everyone through the winter, as literal famine was on the doorstep. Every family planted turnips as they would grow well through the winter, providing greens for eating as well as the turnips themselves. The turnips literally saved people from starving that winter. Your video reminded me of the story. Great video. Thanks for sharing.
my Mother would be turning 101 this December if she were alive.
I learned alot from her kitchen ways...
One of her sayings was "THIS IS wat were having... EAT IT. IT WILL STICK TO YOUR RIBS.... AND THANK GOD FOR WHAT WE HAVE.
Sounds like my mom. She would have been 100 this December . ❤️ Small 🌎
Ha! My great great great great great grandmother would be turning 472 if she were still alive.
there werent many picky eaters back then.... and the ones who were didnt make it very long.
Many forget to THANK GOD...hence is why we have trials in lives...HE humbles us to remember HIM and worship HIM the way HE instructs us too. ALL PRPAISE & GLORY to THE MOST HIGH YEHOVAH CREATOR of heaven and earth and ALL that is in it and HIS BELOVED SON YESHUA. The KING IS COMING!
@@YahushuaMyAll Amen 🙌
Gather ye round children and Harken to my tale of the man who saved many of us from the famine of 2024. His simple foods from the 18th century saved a'many of us from complete starvation.
Just know you young'uns that on the cold nights when the wind blows and there's barely a crumb left in the house, if you catch the smell of nutmeg in the air you may count yourself lucky for he's been here and there may just be enough food to see another day.
Seriously though. I found this channel years back searching for a pemmican recipe and I have yet to be disappointed. Our noble content creator and his band of merry men put out nothing but quality.
@@__Salty nope. Mechanic from Alaska
You joke, but they eat mud cookies in Haiti. Literally, water and silt mixed and left to dry in the sun. It's appalling.
I couldn't agree more
My grandfather, born in 1885 in Indiana, used to say: “Hunger treibt es herunter, selbst wenn es Rüben sind.”
“Hunger drives it down, even if it’s turnips.”
With my family in Holland, the saying went, " Je eet wat de pot schaft", You eat what the pot provides.
My grandmother was born in 1900, in Galicia, near the Polish/Ukrainian border. I was told she had a saying. If you're hungry, you'll eat.
@@alexgrootveld8712 Wow, Dutch is very close to English.
@@dwaynewladyka577 The old stories still have relevance. There is a core human experience that does not change. I think we will again tell these stories widely.
@@alexgrootveld8712 The German equivalent would probably be "Es wird gegessen, was auf den Tisch kommt." You eat what's on the table.
As a kid growing up in West Virginia we ate alot of what I call staple foods. We gardened about 1/3 acre of hillside. We grew tomatoes, beans,zucchini, potatoes,etc and ate em fresh and canned some. We ate alot of spaghetti, stews,biscuits and gravy,potatoes ever way you could think of,and oatmeal. Cereal,milk,cheese,and such was considered a luxury more often then not. I flipped out the first time I saw a microwave. I also used to laugh at people riding in cars in the summer with their windows up too though,lol. I didnt know about air conditioning.
When I was growing up whenever I would drive with my dad in his truck, he always had the windows down and called his 260 air conditioner. For the longest time I thought it was because the AC was broken as it was an old truck. Only later did I realize he just didn't want to spend money on it :)
Sounds like you ate like a king! God bless from East Tennessee.
Reminds me of Wednesday as a kid, which was always lentil stew day. We hated it, but now buying the food, a bag of lentils is a dollar and feeds everyone for well over a day.
My preferred lentils are red lentils. The taste of brown lentils isn't something I really like. Split peas, red lentils, or pinto beans get cooked in this house at least once a week and I make enough to cover at least two meals. Some diced onion, a couple of minced garlic cloves, a bit of ground chipotle, and a capful of liquid smoke in the pot along with maybe some thyme, rosemary, or marjoram and it's mighty tasty. Mostly it's cornbread with the pinto beans and rice with the split peas or lentils and there's a complete protein in one dish as well as a vegetable. Legumes count as a protein food *and* a vegetable according to dieticians.
To quote my ma ( 96 yrs old and a survivor of the great Depression )........." If you're hungry enough , you'll eat it ". She's one of the toughest people I've ever
known and I love her very much.
Great video . Peace , Be Free .
Where scarcity through expense is irrationally-related to value, corruption and insanity ensues.
With a chicken in every pot, we have brought about the end of our nation.
I know it's not quite the same, but my children and I have walked many a corn field in hard times, picking dropped ears from the corners to feed our chickens and other livestock. What some like to call a recession, is a depression for others.. I thank God every single day that I learned from my grandparents that grew up during the great depression.
There's a Biblical law that many overlook that says no field should be harvested clean. That way, gleaners (the poor or widows) could come along and harvest some at no cost.
Many forget to THANK GOD...hence is why we have trials in lives...HE humbles us to remember HIM and worship HIM the way HE instructs us too. ALL PRAISE & GLORY to THE MOST HIGH YEHOVAH - CREATOR of heaven and earth and ALL that is in it and HIS BELOVED SON YESHUA. The KING IS COMING!
Love Your Neighbor - HE instructs HIS people to help our neighbors.
Leviticus 19:9When you reap the harvest of your land, you are not to reap to the very edges of your field or gather the gleanings of your harvest. 10You must not strip your vineyard bare or gather its fallen grapes. Leave them for the poor and the foreigner. I am the LORD your God.…
As kids we gleaned corn for our horses to eat in winter. We also picked up popcorn out a the fields for us. Didn't even know we was poor it was just what you did
@@YahushuaMyAll The synagogue of satan rebuked him. They are currently running the show. However, he will bring the sword.
It's comforting to hear that the food is good, not nasty or distasteful. It gives me hope for a widow and her children that they would be alright.
God bless our ancestors for what they struggled through, and the Townsends group for what they present to us.
"I don't see any crops yet, hon."
"Oh, I'm sure something will turnip"
Dad talked about during the depression his family lived on a farm and cleared "new grown" for the owner of the farm. The new ground was planted in turnips. The farmer gave them an old sow too old to have pigs. He said their family lived on turnips and fat back all winter.
Yep ... yellow turnip stew with pig back, thickened with flour (if available) and "stoppelt"(is it stubble in english?) potatos from the already harvested fields. Grandmas stew was unbelievable tasty and simply the best! 🥲
Breaking new ground is hard hard work.
A good friend of mine always used to say that folks who keep their eyes open and their wits about them have no need to starve. She used to give talks about the knowledge others have passed down to today. Besides things like Brassicas, old Field Corn, Lentils, there were things like Plantain, Sorrel, Pigweed (Amaranth), Goosefoot, Nettles, Purslane, Curly Dock seeds, Water Lily tubers, Acorns, Day Lilies, Grape Leaves...Unless it's toxic, there's no such thing as a weed to a hungry person.
Absolutely. But many of the foraged goods you enumerate are low-calorie, if you look at any* survival manuscript they all emphasize a solitary thing: calories. Nutrition is oddly enough rather easy to come by in nature... You can forage all manner of things to provide Vitamin C, zinc, magnesium, etc. But calories, calories are another story. Hunting game is extremely resource intensive, too.
@@Retrofire-47 In the wild, lack of calories is mostly lack of carbohydrates...not so easy to come by.
My uncle said that during the depression they were so poor that grandma canned sawmill gravy ( gravy made with water not milk) . He said he was watching her and every 7th jar she put a dash of something in one. He asked "mom what are you putting in every 7th jar", she replied " thats pepper for Sundays."
Very moving. We forget how lucky we are.
These are the little stories I love hearing so much! Just adorable...
🤩🤩🤩😍😍😍🥲🥲🥲
Far to many people don't know what it's like to go without food most have never went more than a day it's amazing how good just about anything tastes when you haven't eaten in 3 or 4 days
Oh pls tell me about it. I lived with my parents in Vietnam during the Japanese occupation during WW2. Starving is a mood.
A friend of mine in China told me her parents (and the rest of their village) ate field corn intended as livestock feed during the famine. Now, although cornmeal is still considered a less-desirable grain best fed to pigs, there are a few corn dumplings that people eat as, bizarrely, comfort food because that's all they had to eat during the famine.
It's a conversation my family has had together. My Dad was raised on a farm one we visited till we were teenagers. We ate field corn when it was first ripe,it was good! We learned to eat turnips and the greens,my mom was raised on farm foods ,too. Yes,we ate what was available. You'll eat anything if you're hungry enough.
Field corn, when first turning ripe, is tasty. It's afterwards that it's taste turns to cardboard.
In Scotland we still use the word "turnip" when referring to rutabaga. It's a direct translation of the Scots word "Neep" and with our national dish being "Haggis, Neeps and Tatties" (meaning haggis, rutabaga and potatos) it was a much more important part of our diet.
That is very interesting. here in the states, a rutabaga is not the same as a turnip, although both are root vegetables.
I'll eat haggis, but I especially love "neeps", especially slightly, cheaper, bigger ones with that tiny "blush" on them. Like parsnips too. Evidently Americans don't eat them either, and beetroot isn't eten much too. Strange, these were the staples of the past.
@@heathermcdougall8023 I know I can't speak for everyone here in the US, but I've been enjoying parsnips for years. And as for beetroot, I think you will find it has increased in popularity among vegans. Personally, I've enjoyed pickled beets ever since I was a small child. And parsnips and carrots, when roasted together, are delightful with a drizzle of Dijon mustard sauce on them.😋Delectible!
My mom grew up during the depression. She told me about her mom boiling cornmeal and milk to make "mash." They were Swedish and that was their version of "mash." Many nights that's all they had to eat. A friend of mine grew up on a farm during the 50s-her family was very poor so many nights her grandmother made rue and added milk, which was their Norwegian version of "mash."
That reminds me of folks soaking cornbread in buttermilk. I've always preferred my cornbread to be the solid and to drink the milk separately.
My mother's family were lucky during the Depression. They lived on the very edge of a very small town and had enough land for a huge garden, a lot of which they canned, a field where they grew corn, both field corn and popcorn, and a pasture for dairy cows with an enclosure for a few pigs and a chicken coup and a chicken run with chickens for eggs. They kept part of the field corn for themselves and to help feed the pigs, chickens and the dairy cows and sold the rest for cash money to buy flour and other things they couldn't produce themselves. They sold milk and managed the cows coming fresh so at least 3 of the cows were always producing milk with any left over going to the pigs. The pigs got anything left over and things such as the tops of carrots, potato peels, etc. and in the fall they slaughtered and smoked at least two of the pigs and sold the rest. Yes, there was flour bag underwear in the family and flour bag dresses and shirts as well, made on Grandma's pedal Singer sewing machine, and there may have been cornmeal mush for breakfast and cornbread or popcorn in milk for supper once in a while, but their bellies were filled and their bodies were decently clothed, if not in the height of fashion. They ate quite a few meals of beans, but at least dry beans were pretty cheap and they would trade for beans with milk or something else, like chores for the grocer. Grandpa had a cobbler's last and could resole their shoes, but they had to buy shoes once in a while because Grandpa didn't know how to make shoes, just repair them, but those shoes got resoled more than once before the uppers wore out.
@@bunnyslippers191 Similar story for my mother's family: small farm where they did much the same. Gran read every night to the children from the Bible by a kerosene lantern, made biscuits & bread every day, canned garden vegetables, raised chickens and pigs, kept dairy cows. One draft horse to pull the plow.
@@feliciapate7926 Cornbread requires eggs, though. Maybe if you were on hard times, there would be no eggs available. And possibly no oven, either.
@@bunnyslippers191 What a great story!
I love Potato soup. I didn't know that when my mother made that It was because really didn't have anything else. But she did a damn good job with that potato soup. But I did know until I was older that things were that bad. Because my folks never acted as if it was. Your attitude Has a lot to do with how you come through things.
Truth. I didn't know we were so poor till I grew up. My parents kept me fed and warm no matter what. Everything that God grew we ate. If it ran we shot it. If it grew in the dirt we ate it!
The plain truth is that countless generations of humans have flourished on simple staple food, like plain grains and root vegetables.
My grandfather who grew up very poor in rural Mississippi in the late 30s to 40s gleaned a lot of leftover ears of field corn as a child. Down in the south they also grew a lot of buckwheat behind cotton as a green manure and as an emergency drought crop in the fall to get something to eat. He very much loved buckwheat pancakes and very much loved squab, which is young doves/pigeons and claimed robins were very tasty. They would catch crawfish in the late winter and early spring as there were more boggy, swampy ditches and bayous closer to town.
Being autumn persimmons have been coming ripe, my pair of wild trees started dropping them in September, but the further north you go the later they will stay on the tree. With the Ohio river valley and Appalachians I've heard staying up until late December or even January, providing a sweet and vitamin rich treat in the dead of winter. And a nifty place to hunt/trap wild game from squirrels to deer and black bear. I unfortunately don't have any around but pawpaws have traditionally been a loved food, which I believed saved the Lewis and Clark expedition from a particularly rough spot.
And of course humble acorns, pecans, chestnuts, hazel, hickory and beech nuts. The lovely American Chestnut being all but lost to us now but they were a good source of food pretty much anywhere chestnut trees grew from pre-Columbian America to forested Europe to Japan. Likewise acorns, particularly from White oak varieties, were an ancient food that came back into the menu during hard times. Beech and hickory nuts are smaller than domesticated pecans and their northern cousin the Butternut, but are tasty non the less.
Not to mention other wild and semi-domesticated edibles like cattails, Jerusalem Artichoke/Sunchokes, muscadine/scuppernong, mushrooms, and a heck of a lot more I don't even know.
The American Chestnut is a sad loss to our ecosystem.
You are right. Love me some persimmons. I have a tree planted but its small yet. I thought it died last winter but it came back. I need to get a butternut planted as well.
@@tessat338
It'll come back once most of us are gone.
Why do you say American chestnuts are a loss? I have 2 in my yard that my Dad planted 20+ years ago.
@@queenbee9581 In a large part of the country blight brought over from China will kill them. The further east and south you go the worse it gets. Only a scattered few exist in the north east and upper Midwest that survive from the old days. The ones in the Pacific Northwest were brought over before the blight and it so far hasn’t spread that far.
It’s pretty well documented as one of if not the worst ecological disaster in US history
my favorite youtuber. always staying out of drama. always caring for their fans. always keeping it real with their fans. giving back to their fans. thank you. ♡
I plant peas and small grains along with turnips and daikon radish to feed deer over the winter. If times get tough, I can dig them up and eat them too. LOL
Barley makes a good alternative to risotto rice. We boil it a while before adding it to the pan but other than that it's very similar.
years ago my grandmother got very excited when nutgrass appeared in the part of the lawn the lawnmower can't reach. she said we should dig them up and harvest the tiny tubers in the fall. it got her family through the great depression when she was a child.
There's enough food growing in most people's front lawns to prevent starvation, though not so much in the winter, of course. Plantain, dandelions, dock, stinging nettles, even pokeweed if you boil out the toxins. Add a little protein by hunting a squirrel or rabbit, and you're in fine shape.
Spoken like someone who hasn't had to!
@@floydblandston108 Actually, I'm a big consumer of wild greens. They're much healthier and tastier than lettuce. Try some dandelion leaves on a hamburger instead of lettuce. You won't be sorry
In medieval times, before the discovery of potatoes in the New World, turnips were a staple crop. They grow easily and much faster than potatoes, 40-55 days, yet are surprisingly expensive in stores. More gardeners should give them a try. They're great in vegetable soup and beef stew, and the greens are edible, too.
Years ago, I hit on the idea of making soup from lentils and pearl barley in proportions of 3:1. (Legumes and grains combine to make complete proteins as in meat.) Both cook in the same amount of time, and benefit from the addition of a little sausage or ham. We didn't eat lentils when I was growing up, but I happily discovered them after buying a can of Progresso lentil soup. It pays to try new things.
Progresso's pasta fazool (pasta i fagiolini/bean) is another delicious and inexpensive soup to copy. Again, the ditalini pasta and cannellini beans with parmesan cheese provide complete protein. This is important for feeding hard workers and children. Use the ingredient list on the label to improvise your own recipe. Cheap grated cheese in a can works fine with some onion powder and a little celery salt. And no, I don't own stock in the company.
I hope that everyone is out harvesting acorns this weekend! And black walnuts and hickory nuts. Spread them out to dry down. Wild nuts are a good thing to have on hand when it's too cold to explore outside. All acorns are edible and there are plenty of processing videos and blogs out there. Two years ago was my year of the acorn and I now use them regularly in my kitchen.
They’re not quite ready in my neck of the woods. The second acorn drop should be coming though. Probably late oct to mid nov.
(Alabama)
I’m eyeballing mine, waiting for them to start dropping so I can beat the deer! 😂
I hope we have acorns this year with all the drought we've had. Last year I didn't see a single acorn around our deer stand in a white oak stand.
@@80krauser They definitely don’t drop every year, not even every other year, at least not here in Kentucky. I love making bread out of it. They’re burr oaks, they drop massive acorns!
A friend of mine in Phoenix has a giant pecan tree in his back yard. The nuts carpet his back yard once a year. It’s an automatic food machine!
I love turnips. I forget about them a lot, though.
When I was about 5 years old my father lost his job. We were living in Canada at the time (my father was American as am I and my other siblings) and he went to DC to stay with his brother to find work. He was gone about 6 months. My parents had 6 kids at the time (they had one more surprise a couple of years later, lol) and I remember she made creamed peas on toast a lot during that time. I loved it. I never went hungry in that time. Fortunately, my father got a really good job and we were fine after that and we never had creamed peas on toast again.
Glad to see another entry in the poor man's kitchen series. Watching the prices in the grocery store has me writing down these recipes.
I'm watching alot of the dishes and such.i may have to make them sometimes, I share to my daughter too
I’m also watching videos on simple two or three ingredient meals...I write them down in a notebook in case the internet goes down!
@@cherylT321 You can do allot with cabbage and it's usually cheap.
@@thegrim418 Yes, I have a bunch of recipes written down involving cabbage; also, zucchini, cauliflower and eggplants!
@@cherylT321 Sometimes I can find cauliflower on sale, but right now the Scam-Mart is trying to sell two zucchini for 5 bucks and eggplants for 2.50 each. The cabbage per pound rounded out to about 3 bucks for a decent cabbage to make soups, boil, fry, or steam. Gotta work on expanding my little veggie garden come spring.
Quite interesting. I have been growing turnips as manure crops this year which have done surprisingly well, and randomly decided I was going to grow barley anywhere there was open ground. The barley has been producing good grain, and grows on rain alone (in Arizona). It's also a good source of straw, a mulch and compost staple for my gardens.
Try daikon radish. The root helps break up hardpan while the greens protect soil from dessication, solarization, and erosion.
@@b_uppy I did daikons last year, thinking they would be good to just plant in compacted soil, and they had a very low survival rate. Those that survived never got big. I couldn't find any daikon seed in my area this year, but I've had success with turnips just about anywhere I would plant them, so turnips it is.
@@GemstonePhilosophy
Did you plant them in Spring or or for winter?
@@b_uppy beyond that, I have many other methods to dealing with the mentioned issues. Mainly, I do an initial till of all my garden areas, followed by a thick layer of mulch (woodchip, straw, pine needles), some good compost, along with a batch of fermented grains, mushroom spawn, and if available, fish/ fish emulsion to increase microbiology. I let that sit for at least 6 months to initiate the ecosystem before planting, and applying regular top dressing as needed to keep the soil covered. Worms usually find their way pretty quick, otherwise, I may seed them into the area from my worm bin. My primary cover/ manure crops are beans, and planning to implement alfalfa for a winter cover crop. Both are nitrogen fixers, so they have the added benefit of increased nitrogen fertility. Alfalfa is already a primary ingredient in my compost heaps, along with cow manure, so it makes a lot of sense for me to just grow it. I will definitely try daikon again if I can get some more seed (probably need to buy online), but I'd be growing it in semi- cultivated areas. If nothing else, I want to make sure I grow a successful batch of seeds.
Barley straw is also supposed to help prevent algae growth in stock tanks, they used to sell little burlap baggies of it at the farm store that were supposed to be thrown into the stock tank.
Turnips probably would be mangels that are huge and fibrous. They were commonly planted as a crop to break up the soil plus be consumed by livestock in winter. Animals like sheep, goats and deer would scrape at the ground to pull up the turnip.
Mangels are a.type of beet. I grew some a few years ago. Yes they are a little fibres but mildly flavored and a little sweet. I used to buy seed from bountiful gardens but the no longer sell seeds. I am trying different places but having a difficult time finding seeds that grow well in south east Michigan.
@@lorashampine3522 You can try Baker Creek. They carry all those "old" seeds.
Pinto beans ware a staple growing up. But some of my yankee friends thought they were only good to feed livestock . Cornbread and pinto beans made a delicious meal.
Whole lotta' hull on most Pinto's- we New Englanders definitely prefer a Soldier or Yellow Eye, but those have become 'fancy' now. Pinto's cooked our way taste like mud with leaves in it, but with tomato/cilantro/etc. aren't too bad- Great Northern's and Navy strike a compromise I prefer to Pinto any day of the week...
Oh my Bobbi! That meal reminds me of my grandma when I was a kid! I had to pick thru those beans and she would cook them up with a smoked ham hock. Served with cornbread made in the cast iron skillet and whipped butter/ sorghum! The best meal. She was very poor.
No doubt. One of my favorites is cornbread straight out of the oven and put a slice in a tall glass, and fill it up with milk. People say it's gross, but I love it :)
I love this kind of topic mixed with actually cooking and eating it, as unpleasant as it may possibly turn out. Please make more, very interesting
When the depression hit, my grandfather lost his job at the Baldwin Locomotive Company. He ended up selling vegetables from a cart in the city with five children to feed. At the end of the day, he brought home the leftover vegetables that were too rotten to sell. Sometimes enough, sometimes not. To my family any food that is intact and wholesome is food worth appreciating and preparing with care.
My maternal grandmother would always enjoy the "greens" that just grew wild in our natural "lawn". WE used to just mow them down until she showed us that they were actually good to eat. Steamed with salt and a bit of pepper, some pork rind if available and served with cider vinegar. Surprisingly tasty!!
We always had turnip greens and turnips in the winter but my dad always made the turnips with other vegetables. Winters were hard and we ate a lot of home canned foods that i still love today. I've met people who knew nothing about value meals for hard times and i always try to pass along knowledge of such meals because it helps. Thank you for the videos you post!
Thank you for putting out this type of video! Times are getting hard and people need to know that food doesn't have to come out of a box!
The urban version of this would be people and animals going "dumpster diving" to find food that others have discarded. We are making some progress, but restaurants still throw out a lot of food that couldn't be sold in time. Now at least some of that gets donated to shelters and others trying to feed poor folk. Thank you for the older, more rural version of that.
More useable food gets thrown out by retailers than restaurants.
Our church collects slightly outdated food to give away. They send a van to get it each week; win win situation!
20 years ago my sister worked at a deli that donated all the unsold rolls and bagels to the local food bank. They would start with fresh one every morning. Until some kind of liability issue happened and they had to stop. I can't understand why, it was such a waste.
I remember watching a few videos on Netflix about how wasteful we are as Americans. One of the videos was of an organization (don't remember the name) that went dumpster diving through streets with a lot of restaurants and took out produce that was still perfectly fine and brought it back to their location and cooked it up with some other stuff and gave it to the homeless on the streets.
I've never dumpster dived from restaurants, but woooo boy do supermarkets and bakers throw out a lot of food. Oftentimes, it's way too much to take away or to eat on your own. Pastries, fresh vegetables, bread, spices, beer and wine, candy, coffee and tea, sodas, meat, dry goods... you name it, it'll get thrown out some day. Sadly, some places intentionally destroy or contamine the food so no one can eat it, and even more hide or lock the dumpster (though I've been told that it's to prevent people from throwing in their own thrash).
There are so many turnips and they are so different. Like you mentioned, rutabagas (I love em), raddishes... Barley, oats, rye, different kinds of turnips considered animal feed is really regional. They used to be normal everyday food in Nordic countries and still are.
"it may not be the best meal we've ever had" my husband and I say that sometimes too. we eat what we have and sometimes it is turnips and tomatoes or turnips and carrots. and though it may not be the most flavorful dish we've ever had, it is nutritious and what we had. we really like your videos. get some good ideas of how to do things differently. thanks
Great lighting in this episode when Jon is sitting by the window. Love seeing that sun streaming in.
In Singapore and Malaysia, tapioca was used similarly as a 'hard times' food, and it is strongly associated with WWII and the Japanese Occupation. Which makes it really funny now that boba, or milk tea with tapioca starch pearls, is super popular in Asia. There are jokes along the lines of "who's eating tapioca now, bitch?"
And just as I'm playing this I appen to be at the community garden harvesting green beans, yellow beans, and zucchini 🙂.
💛...it was mentioned in the comments that saving the peels and other discards would make a nutritious pot liquor... hard times don't create picky eaters...been there and perhaps a refreshment for the memory might be in order to help appreciate our current state...
Salted barley and turnip stew sounds like it'd pass for a super food now, when it was basically dog food then!
I'm sure our modern turnips are much tastier that the ones basically consigned to animal feed back then though
I remember my Grandmother telling me stories from when she was young (shortly after WW2). They also often only had turnips that they took from the field.
Sometimes plain and basic is amazing, mashed potatoes for example. Grandma’s biscuits were simple and the best I’ve ever in my life had.
Yeah... 🥲
Interesting that the now "lowly root vegetables that only show up at Thanksgiving or Christmas" were so very important to our ancestors survival during the winter. I have to admit my Irish/English family only served them on those occasions (rutabagas got the addition of carrots) but I myself will cheerfully chow down on turnips, rutabagas, carrots, parsnips and beets.
I grow White Eagle field corn and cook it as mush with winter squash, just to keep in touch with my past. I still gather and can poke, dock and other greens each spring as well. We're having soup from leftovers tonight. Every meal does not have to be your favorite foods; some will just be sustainment foods like you show here. As incredibly blessed as we are, hard times can still come around, and eating simple sometimes makes it easier and less shocking to our system when that's all we have.
Thank you for this video. Be well and at peace.
Powerful lesson to learn. Thanks for another great video and important thing to learn from history.
Every 12th night, my family makes this dish we call "nutritious mash".
It's equal portions by weight carrots, turnips, rutabaga and parsnips. Boil it all up and mash it with some butter.
It's kinda amazing
Sounds yummy. I planted rutabaga seeds last month and they are growing.
My Dutch great grandma used to make something very similar, except she called it geschtomtepot. Carrots, potatoes, turnips or rutabagas, and white onions, all cooked together and mashed thoroughly, with a bit of butter and a little allspice sprinkled on top. I often make it when I don't have quite enough potatoes to make a standard mash. It's delicious!
@@LaundryFaerie sounds delish! I'll have to try it.
Turnips grow easily, quickly, and early Spring and in the Fall. Boiled they taste sort of like potatoes and are pretty low carb.
"pretty low carb" is the exact opposite of what you want when you are struggling for food
@@TheScarvig I disagree. “Nothing” is technically the exact opposite of what you want when you are struggling for food. Sustenance-seekers such as struggling societies would surely be satisfied with turnips. 😂
@@TheScarvig actually people would eat anything that they could find, even if it is not much.
@@wiseguy371 jeah, jeah...
Bad choice of words from my side....
I meant "Low carb" is a not a good argument for a particular food in such a situation.
I love having some boiled turnip as a side to meals, it's a nice substitute for potatoes or all on its own too. In my house we add a little bit of brown sugar, which makes the boiled turnip taste more like a mix of a potato and carrot, not actually sweet, but not bitter or unpleasant at all. it's always going to have a place on my supper table. Like any root vegetable, adding some butter can be nice too. Like Jon said in the video, turnips can be fine with very little.
It never occurred to me that there can be a gradation of grains. rather, i always think of wheat, rice, barley, oats, potatoes, maize and buckwheat all as parts of one happy family of staples that we rely on.
I'd heard the term "pap" as meaning something meant to pacify as well as meaning a mash. We need to look back on more foods that sustained our ancestors in tough times, please share more.
Before parsnips started costing $1.50, and cauliflower pushed past $3 per pound. I'd add those vegetables, turnips, minced parsley shredded carrots and cheese to upgrade mashed potatoes. Today I like my turnips roasted in an oven.
The staple food of Africa is mealie ( corn) "pap". In South Africa we talk about" pap en vleis" as our regular meal. Apparantly "pap" in Dutch means porridge, and that is what Africans eat and love...maize porridge= pap. It is fortified with vitamins, so it is a nutritious, cheap staple
In Scotland paps are breasts so, yes, pacifying indeed 😂
@@eo2149 good to know, thank you for sharing.
In Holland, Pap or Vla is a dessert.
In Hungary “Pap” word is mean priest😅
My Grandfather would eat a piece of cornbread and half of a raw onion. That would be all he had for dinner.
Its nutritious, if not satisfying. Keeps someone alive.
Raw onions increase testosterone. Helpful to older men especially to maintain their muscle strength.
Basically this is just "mashed neeps" without butter, and with barley added.
Good afternoon from Syracuse NY everyone thank you for sharing your live history videos
This isn't much different from what people were experiencing in the Great Depression, in North America. In leaner times, people have to do what they can to get sustenance. Cheers!
I have a cookbook at home which my great grandma got 1930 for her wedding. It was a present from the city. The shenanigans in there are amazing. There is even a cake with eggs, sugar and rye breadcrumbs in it.😅
True. Our family has a few Depression era stories, too. My father used to tell me about dinners of nothing but bread and milk. He suffered from malnutrition for a while as a little boy and needed help from relatives who had a small farm. He went to stay with them for a while, which helped him regain his strength. There was always fresh milk and loads of vegetables at the farm. I think they kept hens, too.
This makes me think of the Book of Ruth in the Old Testament. Thank you for another introspective video.
Interestingly what you refer to as Rutabaga is Swede in England but 'neep in Scotland who distinguish less between orange & white neeps. Neeps & Tatties are still a budget dish!
... and just delicious. Hopefully always served with a piece of cooked pork belly or back! *fingers crossed*
🤗🤗🤗😀😀😀😋😋😋
I remember as a kid in indiana picking field corn when it was juicy like sweet corn. Butter and salt, it’s very tasty. Great video.
i make mashed turnips or pretty much any root vegetable with some salt, pepper and butter with my meatballs still, pretty tasty ( i know butter was not added here) so there are still remnants of these foods eaten today
This looks like a surprisingly lovely meal (all things considered) - I bet that if you had any "luxuries" like black pepper, maybe some butter, you could easily toss that in for added flavor!
Fun to imagine in our times of abundance and convenience.
As a prisoner of war for four years in Germany my father in law was used as a farm hand the farmers were under strict orders not to feed the prisoners but they grew turnips as animal feed and were astonished that Canadians were happy to liberate some for themselves…I love roasted turnips and Mum always put them in stew.🌟🍀🌟🖖🖖🖖🖖🌟🐂🌟👍👍👍👍🌟🍀🌟🙋🏼♀️💕💞💕
Do you think they still fed the helpers on the down low?
in New Zealand my English dad born 1934 didn't like my New Zealand mum making turnips as a side dish - to him they were animal food. Europeans and their fancy ways
@@rachaelbean1439 some people need a blind test I suppose ? a client of mine diced turnips and cooked them with slices of carrots
One of my nephews asked my son can Aunt Linda make anything that isn’t red as I ran my own business and helped SD with his and made my own tomato based sauces I did make goulashes, spaghetti rice dishes easy to throw together after work or have in the freezer my son took offence and told him his mother could take something and make nothing out of it…the kid tolerated my red stuff but my sister used too many vegetables according to him ….once you get past the colours then there is the tastethe kids were with S.D. On a Ten week trip and my sister stayed with me I loved her cooking one can’t have to many vegetables especially if someone else is cooking them🇨🇦🥳🤩🤷🏼♀️💕🌟💕🖖🖖🖖💕🌟💕👍👍👍💕🌟💕🙋🏼♀️
@@cherylT321 yes they did or some of the farmers did the camp was for non-combatants they would smuggle eggs in if they had been caught it was a death sentence. One time the camp commandant a very short man stood on a box and made a show of frisking a worker who had two eggs in his hat he slapped the man as he walked away after the frisking an egg cracked and the prisoners could see the yolk start to run down his face thankfully none of the guards spotted it he kept on walking and wasn’t caught….myFILSaid that spending some time in an orphanage after his mom died kept him alive some of the young English men died as they hadn’t been fed the crap he was in the thirties and would not eat the stuff they were given.. he went on to say his part of the camp was hard but they were better off then the Russian prisoners who had even worse conditions I can’t imagine how he endured so many years in captivity
@@lindagates9150 Thank you so much for letting me know 😊
I remember Snowmageddon 2010, walking paths around the farm to let the sheep get from the barn to the hay.
Now, we do make boiled turnips and barley pretty frequently, though usually as a side. Mashing the first with an open wire masher, then a tighter mesh one works well.
This type of post is so good for us to watch, remember, and learn from. They are some of the real gems of this channel. Thank you
I can only hope that some day people will be looking back at our times wondering how we got by. Looking from a place so elevated from our world that it's beyond them to think of such trials and tribulations.
For us the USA here in the 21st century, we are fortunate enough to be one of the largest agricultural producers in the world. So long as our politicians don't decide to send our food overseas, we'll be fine in the dark winter that is coming. Of course, the Irish had that exact problem once upon a time, that the British landlords were shipping all the food out of Ireland, so that risk is not purely hypothetical...
Yeah, my Irish ancestors went through the famine, lost kids, were evicted, and went to Scotland where they had a horrible life.
Politicians aren't the only possible problem. Odd turns in the weather have caused problems in the past. We lose farmland all the time to development, and you see very little said about the arable land that we've killed by saturating it with chemicals.
On top of that, famine brings war and strife. Your country may not have a famine itself, but famine elsewhere can set off a chain of far reaching events. One of the reasons why politicians send food elsewhere.
An absurd amount of the US's agricultural output comes from CA, which is currently experiencing a drought and they're rapidly running out of irrigation water. Famine in the US isn't as out of the question as you might think.
@@amberallen7809 And God only knows what our governor is doing behind the scenes. I would love to leave California.
A friend of mine from Missouri moved to Louisiana many years ago. She said she was shocked when people were eating and loving purple hull peas. She was raised where these peas were for livestock.
She still doesn’t eat the peas because of that mindset. She doesn’t know what she’s missing. LOL
I remember watching a French doc many years ago called The Gleaners that talked about folks who would come to a farmers field after it had been harvested and pick up any veg that had been left behind by the trucks.
I remember potatos, turnips, onions and carots "stoppeln" with my grandma as a little boy. There were huge fields behind the new build house block, they've moved in in the 70s and it stayed the last one build. So every year we went there after the harvest... just for the fun... but she always told the stories from her childhood before and after the 2.WW when it was absolutely necessary! I'd loved that! Miss her... 🥲
It sucks that we're in such times, but I'm glad you're putting out videos that will actually help us folks
This is a blessing and listening to this man is always a great learning lesson..... Well life lessons as well . No matter your background or heritage I can relate to these stories . AhO !
What a great story. I know I forget how fortunate we are in modern times to have food security and how scary it could be to people back then to have to sometimes use extreme measures just to get basic sustenance.
My wife's grandparents had a farm in Indiana back in the old days and talked about stuff like this before they passed. Good video!
What a great channel !
It's so homey and comfortable ,
and informative too, of course.
Another thing I really love are the comments,
people sharing their experiences, their ideas and their humanity, really.
It's really relaxing, to get a cup of tea and to sit and read through the comments from people all over the world.
Thanks, guys! A lovely video and very relevant as usual.
In the city I walked 2 miles and stood in line for free bread for my four children (eggs were often only $1 dz back then so we had french toast). I love turnips, but allergic to barley.
Famine, It will be fun this time, when nobody owns a house or land anymore. Real fun.
Man, no kidding x_x
Ain't that the truth! It's hard to live off the land when you don't have any to call your own. It's now getting to the point where growing a garden is becoming less and less of an option.
Good point
Welcome to 1847 Ireland.
Thanks Jon and crew!
I'm glad to see you put up a video on this subject. I'd like to hear what else you can find about what the 18th Century people did when disasters struck. What did they do to mitigate the bad things while giving aid to victims?
Great video, great reminder that we should all be humble for what we have.
Hello from Detroit Michigan brother thank you for sharing your knowledge and expertise and GOD-BLESS
Hope the peelings are saved for broth making!
I really enjoy these food videos. Food preservation, harvest, uses, tough times, etc. THANK YOU for your content!
I have been watching this channel for about 5yeats now and tried a few of them myself. This episode sums up why I love it. Stepping into someone's shoes from 2 to 300 years ago. As well as learning a few good survival tips. Thank you John and son for all the great history and knowledge.🤠
I love how you shine a light on the importance of the simple things.
More like this, and foraging please.
hunger is the best sauce as the saying goes
Kinda like depression food was back in 1929. My grandma said they used to keep the burned bread crumbs from making toast and use it in place of coffee when they couldn't get those rations.
I've eaten field corn. Fresh picked, it is as good as sweet corn from the grocery store.
An old Bohemian woman I knew many years ago said field corn was often passed off as sweet corn in the grocery stores. Not easily done now with bicolored sweet corn.