Great Depression Cooking With Clara

ACCORDING TO CLARA, the Depression was bad, potatoes used to cost a dollar a sack and a peppers-and-eggs sandwich was the coveted school lunch.

Maybe potatoes cost a bit more today, and maybe kids would rather eat a processed meal of Lunchables and GoGurt, but there is still much we can learn from 93-year-old Clara, all via her YouTube show, "Great Depression Cooking With Clara."

Between simple instructions for simple food, she weaves childhood stories, such as the time her brother mailed her a garden snake — but, she assures us, "he got a good whipping that time." Throughout the show, Clara uses her sense of humor, storytelling ability and old-school-style cookery (she never uses a cutting board) to turn six-minute clips into a family-bonding experience. Well, if you pretend that Clara is your grandmother, which of course you will.

Part history lesson and part cooking show, Clara lets you in on the harsh times of Depression-era living, all revealed through food. "I had to quit school 'cause we couldn't afford socks … but we survived. We were all fat, eating potatoes. … We ate potatoes every day: potatoes with pasta, potatoes fried, potatoes with eggs."

Clara laughs as she recalls her mother telling her to go outside and get the meat for dinner: She had to venture through a wintry backyard to dig up their buried food in the snow because her family couldn't afford a refrigerator. And while 2009 will probably not be a year of surpluses, let's hope Americans will not have to hide our produce in an apartment windowsill. But some of Clara's ideas can be put to good use today because we all want food that is, as Clara remembers of her childhood, "very inexpensive and very nutritious and very good."

» One Pot Meals. For egg drop soup, Clara sautees potatoes, creates broth and scrambles eggs all in one pot. One pot meals mean less cleaning, less fuss and less water wasted washing dishes.

» Potatoes, Potatoes, Potatoes. Potatoes have gotten a bad rap. But a computer-mouse-sized potato, with the skin on, is an important source of vitamins and it's not that fattening. Clara throws potatoes in with soup, hot dogs and pasta for a cheap way to add bulk to a dish.

» Saving Gas. Many foods, once heated to a high enough temperature, will continue cooking after they have been removed from the heat source. When Clara makes her pasta and peas (with potatoes!) she lets the noodles cook in the heated broth with the stove off, unlike the boiling method that's currently preferred. This was a trick her family used during the Depression, but it could help lower gas bills this winter, too. "Anything to save anything," Clara reminds us.

So while you might sub tofu for Clara's potatoes and choose not to bury your delicata squash under the porch, you can take comfort in your Internet grandmother's culinary wisdom: "Everything was terrible, but we had good food."

Spoken like a true foodie.

Written by Express contributor Stefanie Gans