Ration Rebels is a A five-part series food history series built from the Bureau of Home Economics’ “Family Food Guide for Low Cost Meals,” published in the Philadelphia Tribune, October 12, 1933. In 1933 Washington handed hungry families a menu. The guide promised access to cheap calories but left untouched the question of sovereignty: who decides what gets grown, who moves it, who profits, and who eats. Lower caste groups answered that question with their own kitchens and local prices.
“Milk for children, bread for all.” With that slogan, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Bureau of Home Economics (BHE) taught Depression-era families to eat on pennies, and in October 1933 the Philadelphia Tribune shared the plan. The guide offered access, a list of cheap staples, but not sovereignty, the power to decide who grows food, who moves it, who profits, and who eats. Its weekly budget for five leaned on bread, canned milk, and twenty pounds of potatoes. Gastro-politics reads such lists as messages from the powerful about what the powerless should expect (Appadurai, “Gastro-Politics in Hindu South Asia,” 496–497). Should families accept a menu written in Washington? A Southern tuber reveals whose kitchens the bureau pictured.
[Side Bar]
Served as supper on the BHE’s low-cost menu, this chowder tied poor kitchens to canneries and packinghouses those families did not own.
Corn Chowder Recipe
Ingredients
1 qt. diced raw white potatoes
1 pint boiling water
4 tablespoons diced salt pork
1 onion, chopped
2 cups canned corn
1 pint milk
½ teaspoon salt
Pepper
2 tablespoons chopped parsley
Directions
Boil the diced potatoes in the pint of boiling water for 10 minutes. Fry the salt pork and onion for about 5 minutes, and add these and the corn to the potatoes. Cook until the potatoes are done. Add the milk and the salt and pepper, bring the mixture to the boiling point, and add the parsley or celery leaves. Serve very hot in soup dishes and place two or three crackers in the dish before pouring in the chowder.
Bureau of Home Economics, U.S. Department of Agriculture, “Family Food Guide for Low Cost Meals,” Philadelphia Tribune, October 12, 1933, 16.