Post #73 – Women’s Memoirs, Rosie the Riveter Recipes– Matilda Butler and Kendra Bonnett
Willing to Share a Favorite Family Recipe from The Depression or World War II?
We are seeking recipes and we’ll give you a FREE Rosie the Riveter gift. Here are the basics:
1. Please send us a quick email stating:
— Name of the recipe
— Recipe
— Source of recipe (mother, great aunt, great-grandmother, family friend, etc.)
— A few sentence with your memory about the recipe
(e.g. My favorite aunt, Juanita, made her special cheese grits for all the family gatherings when my father, his six brothers, their wives, and children got together. As was typical of the time, Aunt Juanita willingly gave us her recipe when we asked. But she neglected to tell us about the Tabasco she added so our efforts never quite matched her dish. That all came out much later during her funeral service. Cheese grits were popular in the south during the war as they were fast and inexpensive to make and could serve as a main dish or as a side.)
(2) If your recipe is chosen, we will let you know via email.
(3) We’ll THANK YOU by mailing you one of our hand-painted enamel Rosie the Riveter Employment Badges or other Rosie-inspired gift.
Just Send a Message to Matilda (at) Rosiesdaughters (dot) com to Tell Us About Your Recipe
If you have a problem with the email, just leave a comment below and I’ll get back to you.
What did Rosie the Riveter make for dinner, or breakfast for that matter? She cooked during the WW2 years of rationing when there were limited amounts of meat, sugar, butter, oil, coffee and so many other ingredients.
Rosie had to become a creative cook using what was available and learning to waste nothing. Leftovers from one meal were transformed into another meal. (See DID YOU KNOW Tidbit below.)
Why are we contacting you? We need your help! We researched the recipes Rosie likely made. We even created a Rosie the Riveter Legacy Cookbook based on some of our well-loved family recipes as well as some found in a WW2 Department of the Army cookbook.
We are now expanding our cookbook and are looking for recipes Rosie might have prepared.
We hope you are interested in sharing a treasured family recipe that might have come from The Great Depression (one important source of recipes for Rosie) or from WW2. Perhaps your relative had a Victory Garden and grew her own fruits and vegetables and made a special Tomato Pie or Zucchini Cake?
If you have a recipe you’d like us to consider for our new and expanded Rosie the Riveter Cookbook, we invite you to take part in our ROSIE THE RIVETER RECIPE contest as detailed above.
If your recipe is chosen, you’ll WIN a beautiful, collectible, hand-painted enamel Rosie the Riveter Employment Badge / Collar Pin based on those worn by women in the Westinghouse Electric Service company where J. Howard Miller drew the iconic Rosie the Riveter poster.
We look forward to hearing from you about your “Rosie Recipe.”
Want to swap a recipe? Here’s mine for you. Hope you have fun with it.
ROSIE’S POLKADOT SOUP
2 onions sliced
4 carrots sliced
3 potatoes, peeled and sliced
2 tablespoons bacon fat or vegetable shortening
2 bunches beets
1. Melt shortening in skillet, add first three ingredients and cook for 15 minutes.
2. Boil beets from 2 bunches for 30 to 40 minutes. (Save greens for another meal.)
3. Remove the skins (under cold water). Slice cooked beets.
4. Put 8 cups water into saucepan. Add beets to water as well as vegetables cooked in skillet. Cook for 30 minutes, covered.
5. In Foley food mill, puree the soup. (A modern-day Rosie will probably use a food processor or blender.)
6. Return puree to saucepan and warm. After serving in bowls, put thick sour cream in pastry tube and add polka dots to Rosie’s soup. (Or simply take a small spoon and add tiny scoops of sour cream to soup.)
Interesting Tidbits from World War 2 cooking suggestions:
DID YOU KNOW? Fruit cobblers could be made with honey, brown sugar, maple sugar, corn syrup or maple syrup instead of white sugar. When using a liquid sweetener, the suggestion was to omit half of other liquid in the recipe.
DID YOU KNOW? A fruit filled yeast coffee cake was a substitute for pie when rationed fats were not available. Prune, raisins, dates and figs, high in natural sugars, made good substitutes for sugar.
DID YOU KNOW? The soup kettle was once again as popular during WWII as it had been during The Depression. All kinds of leftovers (minus desserts, of course) were added to the pot to simmer. Leftovers from one meal because the basis of another meal.
DID YOU KNOW? Zucchini proved to be prolific in Victory Gardens and the inspiration for numerous recipes. Many of these recipes became popular again with Hippies in the late 1960s and 1970s. Today we even feature fresh zucchini noodles made with a spiralizer. We think Rosie would have loved this idea!
And Remember, Just Send a Message to Matilda (at) Rosiesdaughters (dot) com to Tell Us About Your Recipe.
If you have a problem with the email, just leave a comment below and I’ll get back to you.
