WPA Iowa Recipes Part 1

Honey beehives in Apalachicola, Florida, 1948, Courtesy of the Florida State Archives, Florida Memory Project

During the Great Depression US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) launched His Works Progress Administration (WPA) as one of his many New Deal Policies promising North Americans a way of out the Great Depression. WPA officials at the state level hired workers and scholars to travel throughout the country collecting and documenting local traditions including food traditions. A WPA administrator interested in food decided to publish a collection called America Eats. Here's a selection from the Iowa records on the use of honey in the kitchen to make cakes, cookies, and sweetened dried fruits. People In Iowa also used honey for medicinal purposes. For example, people used it to heal cuts and one man used it to heal piles. 1 tablespoon of honey three times a day is suggested for healing one from rheumatism. Those suffering from granulated eyelids rubbed it on their eyelids in the evening and morning until they felt relief. And below is a cough syrup recipe from. Warning, this is an attempt to document the medicinal use of honey and not a recommendation to use these from ailments you may be suffering.

Iowa Honey and Pine Tar Cough Syrup Recipe

Ingredients

2 tablespoons coal or pine tar

1 pint of strained honey

Instructions 

Bring the ingredients to a boilt and then remove from the heat and add one teaspoon of borax.[Borax is a mineral comprised of sodium, boron, oxygen and water which supports brain function and boosts the immune system] Dosage: Take 1 teaspoon every two hours.

More on Borax

Books On America Eats

Zora Neale Hurston and the WPA

Southern Food and Civil Rights: Feeding the Revolution 

Metro New York Book Event January 13, 2017

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