One of my long-time passions is obscure history. My dad, a huge history buff, would spend hours telling me about the lives and struggles of people of the past. It’s a memory I still hold dear to my heart, and something I’ve tried to pass down to my own children. While I’m not as knowledgeable as my Dad was, I do my best to look up the information if it’s something I didn’t already know. Due to the recent shortages we’ve encountered at our grocery store, (#noeggnoodles#havingtogetcreative) we decided to learn about food and the Great Depression. Here are some fun things we learned: Vegan cooking was invented. Unlike the trends of today’s vegan cooking, people of the Great Depression had to do it out of necessity. Because of food shortages and rationing, many home cooks had to learn how to cook without many staple ingredients. People learned to leaven their bread with Soda or baking powder, and cakes and cookies had to be made without butter or eggs. A lot of these recipes became very popular and are still widely used today. Lots of Jello was used as a cheap protein source. Unlike the desserts we know today, in the Great Depression, almost anything could be put into Gelatin. Corned beef and vegetable Jello was a popular recipe among a lot of housewives. Depending on how you look at it, people got really weird or creative with the stuff. Box mac and cheese was invented. Many people have fond memories of eating macaroni from an iconic blue box growing up, but few realize its origin. During the Great Depression, boxes of macaroni and cheese were produced and advertised as being able to feed a family of four for only 0.19 cents. You could purchase 2 boxes with one rationing coupon, and it was a great comfort food favorite when meat and dairy were almost unattainable. Hot dogs were very popular and were a great cheap meat source for the working class. “Hoover stew” or “Poor man’s stew” was a hearty soup that consisted of mostly canned vegetables and chopped wieners. For only a nickel in Chicago, you could get a “Depression Sandwich” which consisted of a hotdog topped with dill pickle, relish, or whatever other topping they could muster up. Thus, the Chicago Dog was born.Luckily our modern generations haven’t had to experience anything as severe as the Great Depression and hopefully, it will stay that way. Because egg noodles are out of stock everywhere, our family has had to learn to eat our favorite stroganoff with rotini noodles instead. But hey, I’ll take that over beef Jello any day! ^-^