Not all the seemingly strange recipes of the Great Depression era resulted from extreme hardship and resourceful culinary strategy.  Recipes that may appear odd to us now were everyday cooking for most people during the 1930s.  A cracker pie? Of course!  Cooks had been imitating apple pies using soda crackers for at least a century before Ritz exploded onto the scene and stole the show.

There’s much to be said for Nabisco’s marketing strategies around the Ritz cracker.  First produced and distributed from a North Philadelphia location in 1934, the crackers were well-received from the start. The crackers' unique color, shape, and light, buttery flavor were completely different from their pale, square forerunners.  The Ritz name was also a winning angle for Nabisco, conjuring images of wealth during a difficult time by alluding to the glamorous Ritz-Carlon Hotel in New York.  Above all, Ritz crackers boasted affordable luxury at only 19 cents a box.  Nabisco introduced its Ritz cracker version of Mock Apple Pie in 1935, and the recipe remained on the box for decades. The recipe became a hit with thrifty homemakers who -- across the country and across time -- may have identified with a bit of nostalgia themselves.

Ingredients
• Pastry for two-crust 9-inch pie
• 36 Ritz Crackers, coarsely broken (about 1 3/4 cups crumbs)
• 1-3/4 cups water
• 2 cups sugar
• 2 teaspoons cream of tartar
• 2 tablespoons lemon juice
• Grated peel of one lemon
• 2 tablespoons margarine or butter
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

Directions
1.   Roll out half the pastry and line a 9-inch pie plate. Place cracker crumbs in prepared crust; set aside.
2.  Heat water, sugar, and cream of tartar to a boil in saucepan over high heat; simmer for 15 minutes. Add lemon juice and peel; cool.
3.  Pour syrup over cracker crumbs. Dot with margarine or butter; sprinkle with cinnamon. Roll out remaining pastry; place over pie. Trim, seal, and flute edges. Slit top crust to allow steam to escape.
4.  Bake at 425°F for 30 to 35 minutes or until crust is crisp and golden. Cool completely.

On February 20, 1935, Norwegian Caroline Mikkelsen became the first woman to set foot on Antarctica.  As the wife of a whaling captain, Mikkelsen's visit was short -- only six hours -- but it was significant.  Men had arrived on the continent a hundred years before, and it remained until the latter half of the 20th century that women regularly were part of exploration there. 

In 1947, twelve years after Mikkelson's visit, two women whose husbands were part of a scientific expedition spent a year in Antarctica.  In the 1950's Soviet scientist Marie V. Klenova charted the coastline to create the first Antarctic atlas.  No other women made it to Antarctica until 1970, largely due to a U.S. Navy ban on transporting women to the continent.  The National Science Foundation also refused to fund Antarctic research by women; they would have to send male colleagues to collect the samples needed for their work.  These restrictions finally were lifted in 1969.

Currently about one-third of the scientists and support crew at the American base in Antarctica are women.  Though still in the minority, women continue to make Antarctic history.  Last year, 77 years after Mikkelsen set foot on the continent, Felicity Aston, a 34-year-old British adventurer, became the first woman to ski across Antarctica alone --  1,084 miles (1,744 km) in 59 days, hauling two sleds over mountainous terrain.

With the stock market crash of 1929, the upbeat music of the roaring twenties morphed into the Great Depression's expressions of difficulty and despair.  The easy-listening sound of the jazz age gave way to the more complex rhythms and orchestrations of Swing Era bands.  Most notably, the music of first half of the 1930s is unique for its seemingly endless stream of confessional blues and woeful ballads that forever changed the way Americans thought about their popular music.

During the Great Depression, as vast numbers of Americans moved around the country looking for work, music -- both live and recorded -- provided "portable memories," upholding cultural identity and experience in a time of sweeping social change.  New technologies and industrial processes allowed for regional musicians outside the mainstream to record and bring their songs to a national audience.  Phonographs, jukeboxes, and radio allowed musical styles from all over the country to mingle with each other, combining histories, cultures, and techniques in new ways -- at just the same time as millions of displaced workers began to intersect and interact.

As recorded sound entered the world of the movies, many of iconic songwriters (George and Ira Gershwin, Irving Berlin, Cole Porter) left the East Coast for Hollywood.  Musicals, comedies, and lavish productions allowed audiences to escape from the reality in which they found themselves.  Extravaganzas, like the Gold Diggers series, focused on Americans' obsession with money during the Depression (not to mention with large, spinning Liberty dimes, just like our PIFA project!). 

Of course, with the founding of the Works Progress Administration (WPA) in 1935, music became a governmental priority. Under the WPA's Federal Project Number One, thousands of concerts were brought to the public, as were free music classes. Over thirty new orchestras were created, and American regional and traditional music was documented extensively.

COSACOSA's Spare A Dime project pays homage to all the musical genres of the 1930s, both stylistically and structurally.  The project's visual arts also reflect the imagery of the time, and next week we'll be posting interviews with our visual and multimedia arts team. 
You can hear and see it all at PIFA 13!  Get your tickets now!

"The parallels between what was happening in the 1930s and what is happening today are significant, both economically and socially," said Jay Fluellen, Musical Coordinator and pianist for Spare A Dime at the 2013 Philadelphia International Festival of the Arts.  "Some of the same struggles people of the United States faced then are being faced again today.  Music is the perfect vehicle for illustrating these connections; Spare A Dime references a previous time while vividly portraying ideas in a modern context.  I am looking forward to bringing the completed work to life."

Fluellen is a Philadelphia-born composer, music professor, educator, accompanist, pianist, singer, and organist/choir director. He has a doctorate in music composition from Temple University in addition to certification in music from Eastern University.  Fluellen is currently a teacher with the School District of Philadelphia at Parkway West High School.  He has taught college level courses in music composition, written and aural theory, music history, piano, and conducting at major institutions including Lincoln University, Morgan State University, and the University of the Arts.  Numerous organizations have commissioned his compositions, including Network for New Music, Opera Philadelphia, Relâche, Settlement School of Music, and Singing City.  Since  1997, he has been an organist/choir director at the historic African Episcopal Church of St. Thomas.  Fluellen has received the Christian R. and Mary F. Lindback Foundation Distinguished Teaching Award given to high school teachers in the School District of Philadelphia. In 2011, Fluellen’s Of Journeys and Refuge, a work commissioned by the Bucks County Choral Society for choir and jazz ensemble, was premiered featuring his own quintet in the performance.  In 2012, the African Episcopal Church of St. Thomas Chancel Choir, under Fluellen's direction, was featured in concert with the Mendelssohn Club of Philadelphia as part of their third annual Big Sing. 

"The story of the WPA is amazing, and I've always been fascinated by it," said Rodney Whittenberg, Production Coordinator for the Spare A Dime project.  "That the government took the initiative to put people back to work -- even though, in some circles, it was extremely unpopular -- showed both courage and foresight. The infrastructure that we have in this country today -- interstate highways, airports, bridges -- would not be possible without the WPA.  Even more amazing, and so modern, so early 20th century, is that art was considered valuable work and that artists were an essential part of the project.  Can you imagine trying to do that today -- give millions in government money to actors, musicians, writers, and painters to create new work?  I think it speaks to the more well-rounded education of the last century.  Everyone, whether wealthy or working class, understood that the arts matter and can improve our lives just as much as new buildings or roads."

Whittenberg is an Emmy award-winning composer, filmmaker, and entrepreneur.  He is founder of Melodyvision, a full service music, audio, and video production company specializing in original compositions for film, television, and advertising.  In the past twenty years, Melodyvision has met with critical acclaim for both film and recording, most recently winning Best Sound Design for film The Toll Taker at the 2012 Terror Film Festival.  Melodyvision's lastest initiative, Pre-Concert.com, is an innovative tool for presenters and venues to highlight upcoming performances.  Wittenberg is an active member of The National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences and is a former governor of the Philadelphia Chapter.  For thirty years, Whittenberg has educated the next generation of musicians about guitar, bass, songwriting, and band at major institutions throughout the region, including Drexel University, Lincoln University, and the University of the Arts, where as a student he studied jazz guitar and music composition.  Currently, Whittenberg is teaching audio production at Philadelphia University.

COSACOSA Director Kimberly Niemela composed the Spare A Dime song cycle based on the stories and experiences of Philadelphia area residents during both the Great Depression and our current "Great Recession."  "The stories we collected were so timeless, so universal, that the writing came easily," she said. "The messages of Spare A Dime are simple. Have grace in chaos. Find strength in unity. Work for the greater good. These lessons are, as FDR said, the only path to peace -- within ourselves, 'in the community, and in the world.'  Life really does turn on a dime, so we have to learn to recognize ourselves in one another.  And we're not just connected by the whims of chance, but by our shared needs and hopes for ourselves, for our families, and for our neighborhoods.  Working in community, we see this truth every day; our constituents live this truth every day, and now the Spare A Dime project tells it -- indeed, sings it -- on a grand scale."

Niemela's work in film, poetry, and sound has been performed/exhibited in a variety of venues, including, in New York, Central Park and El Museo del Barrio and, in Philadelphia, the Painted Bride Art Center and Taller Puertorriqueño.  Her public art designs have been widely acclaimed and featured twice in the international award series Designing the World's Best Children's Hospitals.  Niemela has received grants from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts/ American Film Institute Media Arts Fellowship.  She has served as a consultant to numerous community-based programs nationwide, including CTCnet/National Learn and Serve's Youth Visions for Stronger Neighborhoods initiative and for the National Endowment for the Arts/Global Alliance for Arts & Health consulting service.  Before founding COSACOSA in 1990, she served as Director of the Walt Whitman Association and as General Manager of the Yellow Springs Institute, an international residency center for artists and scholars.  Niemela graduated Phi Beta Kappa, summa cum laude, with a Bachelor of Arts in music from the University of Pennsylvania. She also holds a Bachelor of Science in chemistry from Carnegie Mellon University.  Numerous professional journals, including Nature, published the results of her decade of medicinal research.

Familiar with scrapple? Just how well do you know it? Before becoming popular as the Pennsylvania Dutch delicacy called by a more gentile moniker, boiled hogs heads were a Depression-era food and a valued cooking tradition among penny pinchers for decades.  At the turn of the century, German immigrants created versions of gritwurst by gathering scraps and scants of the hog not typically used, then grinding and reducing them with meal, barley, or oats. The resulting concoction left the diner satisfied, while stretching otherwise unmarketable meat into a substantial meal.  Below are two recipes to try, one easily made at home and other to make the old fashioned way!  Give it a try -- after all, what's the wurst it could be?

Modern Gritwurst
Ingredients
• 2 quarts of lean cooked pork
• 2 medium onions
• 2 quarts cooked oatmeal
• salt and pepper to taste
• 1 teaspoon allspice

Directions
1. Cook and grind pork with onions.
2. Make an equal portion of oatmeal using the broth in which the pork was cooked.
3. Add allspice, and salt and pepper to taste.
4. Brown in cake pans in a 350° oven until bubbly all over.
5. Cut into squares, and refrigerate or freeze.
6. When ready to use, fry a square until brown and crisp.

courtesy of Katy at TasteofHome.com


Depression Era Gritwurst
Directions
Boil one hog's head in water to cover until meat separates from the bones.  (A canner makes an ideal cooking vessel.)  Place head on a large platter to cool.  Remove fatty parts, and use lean meat only.  Grind meat, and add copious amounts of allspice, salt, and pepper to taste.  Add an equal part of oatmeal and mix.  Pack in bread tins, and freeze or store in the refrigerator.  Slice and fry for lunches or a nourishing breakfast.

A Bohemian version calls for barley to be cooked and used in place of the oatmeal.  Dry bread could also be added.  Still other versions use a cornmeal mush base.  Salt, pepper, and garlic also could be used to flavor the dish.

courtesy of Kitchen Witch at RecipeSecrets.com

The GG1 design reflected streamlined, futuristic style of the era.  Because of its visual appeal, the GG1 purportedly has appeared in more advertisements and motion pictures than any other train.  Its screen credits range from The Broadway Limited in 1941, to The Manchurian Candidate in 1962, to Avalon in 1990. The locomotive was even the main character of a popular computer game released in 1998.

In spite of the locomotive's long and iconic record of service, the GG1 pulled the funeral car of only one American president (who also had a long and iconic record of service): FDR.

The Spare A Dime song cycle tells the stories of six archetypal American characters during the Great Depression, both before and after the founding of the Works Progress Administration (WPA).  President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) sings his perspective, too, through songs based on iconic speeches of the time.   

Punctuating key moments in the performance are appearances by Spare A Dime's rousing Chorus of Liberty.  In the first half of the piece, in the midst of one character's despair, this ebullient group appears on stage with a giant, spinning Winged Liberty dime. The Chorus sings Suns of Liberty, a celebration of/admonition about ever-present (though often hard to maintain) ideals of freedom and democracy. 

In the second act, Chorus members take on the role of civil society sloganeers with Work is Progress, a song recounting many WPA poster sayings and describing the full diversity of WPA employment opportunities.   At the end of Spare A Dime, the Chorus of Liberty -- and their giant dime -- join the rest of the cast for the final numbers of the show. 

You can join Spare A Dime, too, at PIFA 13!  Get your tickets today!