Ration Rebels: A five-part serues food history series built from the Bureau of Home Economics’ (BHE) “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.
The BHE asked whether its guide pushed too many potatoes, then answered no: few vegetables delivered more nourishment per dollar. Where white potatoes ran cheap, families should eat them [nutritionist tell us that red potatoes, yams, and sweet potatoes are a healthier option]; where sweet potatoes, or yams, ran cheap, those belonged “in their territory.” That phrase drew a map of hunger. Southern relatives of Northern migrants claimed the Depression changed little, since doing without had long been their normal. Caste explains why: the dominant caste monopolized land and overcharged the lower caste for inferior food (Wilkerson, Caste, 19–20). The bureau even scolded cooks for serving both potatoes at one meal, policing plates it never filled. Whose rules governed a sharecropper’s supper? Up North, one Harlem preacher answered with a fifteen-cent plate.
[Side Bar]
The BHE paired this dish with pork shoulder, kale, and corn bread, treating a regional staple as a vegetable course rather than dessert.
Scalloped Sweet Potatoes with Apples Recipe
Ingredients
3 medium-sized sweet potatoes
4 medium-sized apples, pared and cored
½ cup sugar
½ teaspoon salt
Butter, or crisped bits of salt pork
Directions
Cook the sweet potatoes in boiling water until tender; cool, and skin. Cut the sweet potatoes and apples into slices, place in alternate layers in a greased baking dish, sprinkle each layer with sugar and salt, dot with butter or with the salt pork, add a little water, and bake for 30 to 45 minutes, or until the apples are soft and the top layer is brown. Serve in the baking dish.
Bureau of Home Economics, U.S. Department of Agriculture, “Family Food Guide for Low Cost Meals,” Philadelphia Tribune, October 12, 1933, 16.