Christmas Dinner during the Great Depression and a Giveaway!

By Pamela S. Meyers

As Christmas day fast approaches, I thought it would be fun to interrupt our tour of Lake Geneva, Wisconsin mansions to time travel back to the town of Lake Geneva in 1933 and drop in on the Alden Family. Meg Alden is the heroine in my book, Love Finds You in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. 

The Alden Home (an actual house in the town)

I have several cookbooks I used for research when I was writing the book and thought it would be interesting to plan a simple Christmas dinner for the family and see how much it would cost to prepare it. 

The average yearly income in 1930 was about $2000 and by the end of the Depression it was a couple thousand dollars less. Mr. Alden is an attorney and makes an adequate salary for the time, despite having less of a client load than before the stock market crash. Still, the family has had to tighten their budget and that job falls mostly to Mrs. Alden who shops and prepares the meals.

My mom during one of her Depression
Christmases

Two years ago, she turned part of her lavish flowerbeds into a vegetable garden and cans much of the harvest to sustain them through the winter months. Also, she  picks berries at local farms during strawberry season and brings them home to make preserves.

Sunday dinners usually mean roast chicken that she stretches into two more meals, so for Christmas dinner, she has set a dollar or two aside to splurge on a beef roast at 15 cents per pound. Sounds like a bargain today, but back then a six or seven pound roast costing 85 cents, could easily be a stretch for people on their meager salaries. 

She plans to serve mashed potatoes at 19 cents for ten pounds (She will use the remaining potatoes for other dishes in the coming days.) and green beans  that were canned last August from the summer garden. 

A humorous Christmas card from the Great Depression,
laughingis always better than crying.

Christmas dinner always calls for a special dessert. She hopes to make Mr. Alden’s favorite—a chocolate soufflé if eggs can be found. A dozen eggs costs about 18 cents, but since the grocer buys his eggs from local farmers, cold winters mean fewer eggs because hens don’t lay eggs as much during cold temperatures. 

So far, the cost of the meal comes to $1.22, but other items like milk for the soufflé, coffee or tea, etc. will add to the cost. I couldn’t find prices for those items. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could pay these prices today for Christmas dinner on our current incomes? We can dream.

At the front of Ruth Wakefield’s Tried and True Recipes is a list of helpful hints. Some may still be useful today! 

What are you planning to serve for Christmas this year and how much do you estimate it will cost? 

Is anyone willing to replicate the meal I just described and calculate how much it would cost today?  

Here's the giveaway! Did you think I forgot? 

Leave a comment and contact info and I'll put your name in the 'hat' to draw for a copy of my book Love Finds You in Lake Geneva Wisconsin. If you already have a copy of the book, I'll send you a copy of my newest release, The Bucket List Dare--a contemporary novella collection of four stories written by four different authors. 

I will draw a name on December 11.

Sources:  Ruth Wakefield’s Tried and True Recipes; M. Barrows and Co., 1946

  Metropolitan Life Cookbook, Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, 

  copyright unknown.

  www.thepeoplehistory.com: 1930s Food & Grocery Prices

A native of Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, author Pamela S. Meyers lives in suburban Chicago with her two rescue cats. Her novels include Thyme for Love and her 1933 historical romance, Love Finds You in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin Her novella. What Lies Ahead, is part of a novella collection, The Bucket List Dare, which is now available at Amazon in both print and Kindle formats. Second Chance Love from Bling!, an imprint of Lighthouse Publishing of the Carolinas, will release in January 2017. When she isn’t at her laptop writing her latest novel, she can often be found nosing around Wisconsin and other Midwestern spots for new story ideas.

        

Linden Lodge: An Eclectic Design Built by a Self-Made Millionaire on Geneva Lake & a Book Giveaway!

Linden Lodge as seen from the lake.

It’s time for another trip back to the late 19^th Century for a peek at how the other half lived among the Chicago wealthy who built summer “cottages” in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin.

This month’s featured home, Linden Lodge, is especially interesting to me because the home sat on property that is now within the city limits of the town of Lake Geneva. The land was subdivided in the 1930s and over the next 30 or 40 years, the subdivision known as The Lake Geneva Manor, became one of the town’s higher-priced neighborhoods. Anyone who owned a home there gained rights to a private pier for swimming and opportunity to own a boat slip, even if you weren't privileged to have one of the homes directly on the lakeshore.

Levi I. Leiter came to Chicago in the mid 1850s and worked his way to financial success in the dry goods business. 

A somewhat blurry picture of Levi Leiter

He became partners with a man named Marshall Field and together, they began a department store operation known as Field, Leiter and Company. The partnership suffered through the Great Chicago Fire, when the store burned to the ground, only to be one of the first to recover by opening for business in a railway company’s car barns. You’re likely familiar with the store name, Marshall Fields, which was a mainstay for decades in Chicago, before being taken over by Bloomingdales.

Leiter purchased his 37-acre Lake Geneva property during the 1870s and built his huge 37-room mansion. Labeled as primarily Victorian, many people scratched their heads at the eclecitic  mix of styles. A recent article about the home in the Lake Geneva Regional News referred to a quote said back then about the home as “… a rather weird combination of mid-Victorian, Swiss, Strasbourg Castle, and American what-not.”

The home's barns and it's famous windmill.

Whatever it was, the structure had to have been very impressive to those who passed it by boat or walking along the footpath. Not to mention, the six-story high windmill erected near the home to provide water and a source of power. A story is passed down that the windmill drew so much attention that Leiter purchased a bull to keep on the property to stop people from tramping on his land to look at the windmill. It worked well until he himself had trouble entering his own property because of the bull. The animal was seen no more.

The Leiters had three daughters and a son, and their wealth afforded them acceptance in high society, both in the U.S. and in Europe. They often entertained at their Lake Geneva home by hosting parties, yacht outings, and sailboat races. As the daughters were coming of marital age, they were welcomed into English society at a time when many wealthy American young ladies were marrying British noblemen who had lost their financial underpinnings. The women’s wealth served to help maintain their elaborate manor homes. Think Downton Abbey. On a sidenote, Julian Fellowes, the creator and screenwriter of Downton Abbey is quoted as saying he created Nora Crowley’s character out of his research on this practice which was dubbed "Cash for Coronets."

Back at home in Chicago, the Leiter son squandered much of the family fortune and Leiter was eventually forced to sell his Chicago property to make up for the loss. 

Oh to have been able to peek in at this family’s life of tea parties, yachts, and visiting English noblemen.

Because it's summer and summer is the best time to visit Lake Geneva to view many of the mansions still standing on the shoreline, I am giving away a copy of my book, Love Finds you in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. Set in 1933, when the Riviera building was built at the lakeshore in the town of Lake Geneva, LFY in Lake Geneva, WI is a love story with much of the history of the town and area at that time woven into the storyline. Please leave your name and contact information by August 11, 2015, and I'll draw names on August 12th. 

I’ll be back on September 4, 2015, with another story of one of Lake Geneva’s mansions that was built under a circus tent.

Resources Used:  
Lake Geneva Regional News, Welcome Home Magazine,7/16/15, Jessica Franzene, author.

Lake Geneva, Newport of the West, Ann Wolfmeyer & Mary   Burns Gage, authors.

A native of Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, author Pamela S. Meyers lives in suburban Chicago with her two rescue cats. Her novels include Thyme for Love, and Love Will Find a Way, contemporary romantic mysteries, and her 1933 historical romance, Love Finds You in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. When she isn’t at her laptop writing her latest novel, she can often be found nosing around Wisconsin and other midwestern spots for new story ideas.