Food from the Great Depression

My father was a child of the Great Depression, born in 1925.  During his childhood, my grandparents moved back and forth from southern Illinois, where they had a house and garden, to Chicago, where my grandfather was a hired laborer.  He worked on constructing the then-brand-new transportation system, called the Elevated Train, or—as we know it—the El.  When in southern Illinois, their family could live cheaply out of the garden, or from the goodwill of their farmer neighbors and family, but in Chicago, life was much more expensive.  My father often told of being “sick to death” of cornbread and navy beans, but the family subsisted for long winters on this simple meal.

My recipe is more elaborate, but based on my grandmother’s ingredients, which are still relatively inexpensive.  I don’t know what dried navy beans cost back then, but I do know that a ham bone was cheaper than a ham from the butcher, and provided a lot of nutrients and flavor from the bits of pork and marrow.

I bought a ham bone from our Triple S meat-buying club for about $2.  My small bag of organic dried navy beans were more expensive than the non-organic ones (and have probably been on the shelf a bit longer), but I still want to adhere to buying the organic products whenever possible.  I soaked them overnight to try to make them less gassy.  In the morning, I got out my slow cooker, rinsed the beans, and dumped them in.  I chopped and added one of those previously mentioned super-potent onions from Greg, some bay leaves, the juice from an organic lemon, a couple of cloves of minced garlic, some organic chicken stock from a carton (about 4 cups), a teaspoon of salt, and about 4 more cups of water.   I wish I had used some thawed-out homemade chicken stock from a Triple S chicken carcass that I had simmered and strained a few weeks back, but unfortunately, I completely forgot to thaw it in time. White pepper would have also added a little flavor, now that I think of it.  I threw in the ham bone, started the slow cooker on low, and programmed it for eight hours.

When I opened the door at 5:30, I was greeted with an amazing aroma.  I grabbed my mixing bowl and preheated the oven to 400 degrees.  A cup of whole wheat flour, a cup of unbleached white flour, 1 ½ cups of cornmeal, a teaspoon of salt, 1 ½ teaspoons of baking powder, and ½ c. sugar got whisked together.  Added a couple of eggs, 1/3 c. oil (I used canola, but light olive oil would be good, too) and 2 ½ c. milk to make a batter.  Poured it into a greased—my favorite—10-inch iron skillet (if you have one, make sure it has a handle that can go into the oven); a 9x13 pan would work, too.  Baked for 30-35 minutes (or until the butter knife came out clean).  I sliced this lovely rustic cornbread into 16 parts, and I estimate it at around 210 calories for each extremely filling piece.

The bean soup came out sort of watery for my taste, but leftovers will be perfect; next time I’ll put only seven cups of liquid.  The combination was wonderful, though.  The little bits of ham were falling off of the bone, truly a warming winter meal.  I wonder what Grandma and Dad would have thought….