One hundred suppers American families cooked when the money ran out, 1930 to 1979 — written down with the quantities, the method, and the price counted twice: what it cost then, and what it costs now.
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72 pages · 10 chapters · 100 suppers · illustrated PDF
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Not an opinion about inflation. The actual pan, the actual ingredients, priced in the year it was cooked and priced again at today's shelf.
| Supper | Cost then | Cost now | Multiple |
|---|---|---|---|
| Beefy bread dressing supper | 35¢ | $4.00 | 11× |
| Beef rice patties | 38¢ | $4.00 | 11× |
| Cabbage beef hash | 40¢ | $5.00 | 13× |
| Hamburger potato soup | 45¢ | $5.00 | 11× |
| Beef and lima beans | 50¢ | $5.00 | 10× |
| Spanish rice with beef | 55¢ | $6.00 | 11× |
| Onion burger supper | 60¢ | $7.00 | 12× |
| Skillet macaroni | 75¢ | $8.00 | 11× |
| Beef and noodles | 90¢ | $8.00 | 9× |
| Potato-top hamburger pie | $1.00 | $9.00 | 9× |
Ten of the one hundred. Every recipe carries the same two figures — the period price from the year it was cooked, and what the same ingredients cost at a 2026 supermarket.
No celebrity chefs and no restaurant food. These are the suppers that came out of one skillet on a Tuesday, when the pound of beef had to feed six.
Photographs are modern illustrations of the dishes. The book itself is a typeset almanac — recipes, tables and eleven line drawings.
Real quantities. One pound of beef, one onion, three cups water, one cup cornmeal.
Plain steps, the pan named. Brown it. Boil. Stir. Cook thick.
In the year it was cooked.
Same ingredients, today's shelf.
Each chapter closes with a table — supper, main stretcher, pan used, how many it feeds — so you can scan for what is already in your cupboard instead of reading front to back.
"In 1961, I knew what was in the skillet before I knew what day it was. Ground beef, onion, and enough gravy to make it look like a plan."
Printed here exactly as it appears in the book — nothing added, nothing tidied.
Use one-half pound beef, one onion, three cups water, one cup cornmeal, salt. Brown beef and onion. Boil water. Stir in cornmeal. Add beef. Cook thick.
Eighty-four. Born 1942. The same Ohio farmhouse kitchen since she married at twenty.
She is not a chef and never worked in a restaurant. She is a grandmother who fed children through years when the money ran short, and who remembers what a pound of ground beef cost, who made a dish, and what it was like to eat it.
Fifteen short first-person notes are scattered through the chapters — a year, a kitchen, one detail. Nothing sentimental.
"I do not romanticize it."
One hundred suppers with the quantities, the method, and both prices. Pay once, yours forever.
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Instantly. Gumroad emails the download the moment payment clears, usually inside a minute. It is a PDF, so it opens on any phone, tablet or computer, and prints on plain paper if you would rather keep it by the stove.
Yes — that is the point of the second price. Every recipe lists real quantities and a method in plain steps, and the last chapter covers how to shop for these meals now. The ingredients are ordinary: beef, onion, potatoes, cornmeal, rice, cabbage, bread, milk.
Because it is the honest measure of what has happened to a grocery bill. A supper that fed six for forty cents costs about five dollars to put on the table now. Both numbers on the same line beat any inflation chart.
No. It never calls a food healthy or unhealthy and makes no health claims of any kind. It is a record of what families cooked when money was short.
It is one hundred suppers with no filler. Every page carries a recipe or a chapter ledger. It is deliberately a working almanac rather than a doorstop.
Seven days, no questions asked. Email and the $17 comes back the same day. Keep the book.
One hundred of those suppers, written down with both numbers, before the people who cooked them are gone.
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Nothing here expires when you close the tab — the book stays one hundred suppers either way. But the next time you stand at the stove wondering what a cheap supper even looks like, this is the page you'll be trying to find again.
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