A review by bwluvs2read
A Square Meal: A Culinary History of the Great Depression by Andrew Coe, Jane Ziegelman

4.0

I've always been interested in the cookery and food wizardry of the Great Depression. Whenever I cooked with my great grandmother, I saw the remainder of habits and recipes that she used throughout a dark time in order to keep herself and her family fed. Ziegelman travels throughout the United States, turning her perspective on various groups of individuals who persisted and existed during the Depression. For example, chapters focus on the well-dressed men who waited for hours in breadlines in New York City, the midwestern farm wives who tempered abundance with hard work and planning, the new generation of single women who moved to the cities to work, the kitchenette housewives who used small spaces to their best advantage, and the schools who strived to feed thousands of children a day. Expansive in scope, "A Square Meal" provides a comprehensive history of nutrition, well-fare, and eatery in the United States, during a time when food was at its most abundant and, at the same time, scarcest.