Growing up, my Dad always liked to have a snack of bread soaked in milk. It was just normal two percent milk and normal white bread, mushed together until it was soft, and he'd eat it just like cereal.  I never understood it. It just looked like... lumps of white in white.  Why would you want to eat that?  But he loved it! Heck, he might still eat it, I haven't asked him.  But the other day I was going around on YouTube and I sort of "rediscovered" a web series I'd watched a few years ago.  It's called Great Depression Cooking with Clara.

It's an older series (it ended in 2009, I think) where a grandson films his grandmother, Clara, as she cooks up food her family used to eat during the Depression.  It's fascinating stuff and Clara was very charming (she died in 2013).  It's nice to hear the stories of someone who experienced such hardship in life. Makes you appreciate what we've got now.  Anyway, I saw one of Clara's videos, and it connected some dots for me. Or, as much as my feeble little brain Can connect.

It makes sense that people in the Depression would not want to waste bread, even if it had gone stale.  So making "cooked bread" seems absolutely perfect.  My Dad was born in the fifties, which put his parents as young during the tail end of the Depression.  I'm sure their parents used similar cooking tips to make ends meet.... and some of it evolved, and stuck.  So in a turned around kind of way, Clara's cooked bread is the same as my Dad's bread in milk!

What kind of things did you grow up eating? Do you have a traditional meal or dish that has come down the family line?

Cookingly yours,
Behka

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