My father was an infant in rural Maine when the stock market crashed in 1929. He, to this day, remembers how awful an economic catastrophe it was to live in the 1930s.
One in four heads of households was unemployed. Twenty-eight percent of the population had no income at all – no Social Security, no welfare checks, no unemployment compensation, nothing.
People then survived on being frugal. They saved everything – string, rubber bands, old rags, razor blades, paper clips, tin foil and so forth.
Later in life, as a school teacher, my father would show me pictures of American kids who during the Depression were malnourished and suffered from distended bellies and from rickets and pellagra.
Like many elders of his World War II and post-war generation, he is a thrifty and frugal man and he remains so still to this day. And that extends to how he prepares food.
In our family, when I was growing up, we called it Dad’s fricassee. Both my parents worked and so if my Dad came home first, he started dinner. Usually, it involved taking the previous day’s leftovers and throwing them in in a frying pan or pot and then adding anything else in the refrigerator that was edible.
We couldn’t always recognize what was on our plate from the night before, but we didn’t go hungry. And nothing was thrown away. We ate a lot of soup. If we had chicken on a Sunday, we would have the bits and pieces throughout the rest of the week and then boil down the bones and have a stew.
When it came to holiday meals, my parents used and reused every morsel of stuffing, potatoes, vegetables, and meat. Anything extra was packed in tinfoil for leftovers. And if we had turkey or a roast, well you could be sure that we would be eating it for at least three or more days plus sandwiches. Thereafter, the bone or carcass was simmered with an onion or carrots or peas for, you guessed it, soup.
Which brings me to an article I read last year in the Boston Globe about former Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis. After reading about how he never throws away a turkey carcass after it is carved and all the meat is gone, it reminded me of my own parents.
The governor even invited people to drop turkey bones at the door of his Brookline home.
People obliged and left enough for the governor to donate some to Boston-area senior centers and to fill his freezer with a supply that has lasted to this holiday season.
“Well, look, when you’re the son of Greek parents you save everything,” says Dukakis on the phone as he was getting ready to meet with his graduate students at Northeastern University in Boston.
If you remember the governor, you remember his reputation for thriftiness. He cut his grass with a hand-powered lawn mower, used frequent-flier miles when flying, and rode the subway to the Statehouse for work every day.
He says he still can’t stand throwing food away: “I’m not a throwaway guy; I hate waste.”
I tell him about my own parents and how they lived through the Great Depression and how they saved everything.
“Well they were right, and that’s the way our parents brought us up,” the 83-year-old tells me. “I mean can you imagine the millions of turkey carcasses that were thrown out after Thanksgiving just this year alone in the United States?”
With leftover turkey, he and his wife, Kitty, will prepare and enjoy turkey croquettes, turkey tetrazzini, and any other concoction they can come up with. And, of course, turkey soup, he says. They’ll eat all of it until it’s gone. “Kitty joked that she’d even eat something if it had mold on it.”
They’ll then clean the turkey and store the carcass in their freezer. At some point, and he still has one left from the 27 he received at his door, he’ll boil it with enough water to cover the bones. He adds an onion, some rice and vegetables and simmers it for three hours, making a delicious soup.
“Turkey soup is perfect for cold evenings,” says Dukakis. “The grandkids love turkey soup.”
I ask him if there is a lesson involved here, too, that extends past his soup bowl and kitchen to our communities. “Absolutely,” he says. “This goes directly to the meaning of a sustainable planet and what each of us can do.”
Nearly 40 percent of the food produced in our country is thrown out, along with 25 percent of the potable water supply and other resources. About 35 percent of the turkey prepared for holiday meals will not be eaten. With one in six Americans going hungry every night, all of this food could feed millions of Americans.
Modern consciousness today has a hard time grasping what the Depression was like, but as we approach the next set of holidays, there is something we can all learn about a generation that didn’t throw anything away, even if it’s a carcass of meat.
From a generation of cooks who were raised on a make-do cuisine come several other practical lessons: Avoid waste, stretch what you cook, learn to shop wisely and make lots of turkey soup.
John Paradis, of Florence, is a retired U.S. Air Force lieutenant colonel who writes a monthly column that is published on the second Friday of the month. He is a veterans’ outreach coordinator for VA New England Healthcare System.