Mom did the powdered milk thing, but we could never stomach it so instead she would use it in cooking. For whatever reason it was fine cooked but not to drink. She even tried putting it in the milk jug but we always knew and we just didnt drink it or eat cereal.
My kids and I LOVE cubed steak w/mushroom soup, I serve it with mashed potatoes or rice, DBF and I use the soup as gravy, the girls dont like gravy so they skip that part. We usually eat it with green beans & pickled beets, YUM!
We always saved grease too, sometimes I still do but there arent many things I like to use it for, its just too unhealthy.
Government cheese, we always had a big block in the fridge. Mom made the best grilled cheese sandwiches with that stuff
it melted soooooooooo good and it tasted good too, maybe its different from what others had but our cheese was the bomb, in fact my friends would come over (who didnt get government cheese) and beg my Mom to make them grilled cheese with her special cheese. LOL
Spam, we did spam & eggs every 2-4 weeks. I loved it, but now I only want it if Im eating it in Hawaii! LOL My girls have only had it at our local Hawaiian BBQ, I never make it at home, and I havent been to HI for 13 years so the only place Ive had it lately is our local Hawaiian BBQ.
We had a garden, we grew everything you might want for a salad, we canned and we pickled. Mom made homemade pickles and they were so good
.we had fruit trees too, we picked and canned and ate it during the winter. We did meatless meals (I still do these today with my kids) and we did breakfast for dinner a lot. Day old bread was fine with us, so were day old donuts, muffins and any other pastry. We added extra water to concentrate, added less sugar to Kool Aid and made our own freezer pops from juice or Kool Aid. My favorite type of cookie was graham cracker cookies, 2 graham crackers with frosting in between. I still like them and get a warm fuzzy feeling when I have them.
We had a big house, built in the 1800s, no central heat so we used our wood stove. It snowed, we would stack wood on the back porch to keep it dry so it would burn but we had to bring new wood in to keep dry when we got low, so we did family trips to the mountains, cut trees down, chopped them, took it home, stacked it outside, tarped it, then brought it inside and had to restack to keep the dry wood in the front. It was a chore but it worked.
We didnt have paper towels or napkins unless we were picnicking or camping, then we had them but after the picnic or camping trip they got packed up again. We used washcloths to do dishes, no sponges.
My Mom sewed, she made my drill team costume and mine was the CUTEST, other girls had store bought but mine was awesome! Mom made mine and my BFFs, we were so smug about our outfits. LOL And Mom scrimped and saved and bought me a pair of red and white Nikes to wear on game days so I would match, our school colors were red and white. My skirt was white with red insets so when I twirled the skirt twirled and the red showed. She also made me Barbie doll clothes as Christmas gifts. I loved those clothes and Im pretty sure she still has some in her closet.
NO family vacations, our vacations were trips to the mountains camping. NO McDs in our town at all, only the A & W and we got to eat there maybe once a month, or if Mom was horribly sick. Mom & Dad went to dinner once a month with no kids, that was usually a nicer place to sit down and eat but rarely did we kids get to go.
I babysat for money, from the time I was 13 I was babysitting for money. Not much but it was enough that I could buy my own school lunches (we had open campus, I could get fries and a coke from a drive in nearby for $1!) and still get myself nail polish or something from the drug store at the end of the week.
I wore my sisters hand me downs; I hated that because everything was out of fashion or the wrong size for me. I have made it a goal to make sure that DD10 doesnt have to wear too many of her sisters hand me downs. But sometimes DD10 will point something out to her sister and say get that, I want to wear it in a couple years LOL We had jeans shorts too, and I still do that for my girls too. Its a good way to use up the jeans. LOL Coats were always bought 1 size too big, we had to get at least 2 years of use out of them, then they were handed down as play coats and we got new good coats.
To this day I still reuse certain wrappings, gift boxes are used until they are falling apart, bows are reused, gift bags are reused. In some cases Ill save tissue paper for various uses, my girls like using food colors and dying the tissue paper and making butterflies. I learned those tips from my Mom & Gma and I love them, we save so much $$ on wrappings. LOL And I always buy that stuff after the holidays the following year, so I need to swing by Target and get some new gift boxes and gift bags. I loved gifts from my Grandparents, they always used the comics to wrap and it was so fun to read them as you were opening, it was like 2 gifts in 1.
But every year for bdays and Christmas we always had plenty of gifts under the tree and we always got what we wanted, no matter what hoops Mom had to jump thru to find me that Strawberry Shortcake doll
which I still have btw
Gma still saves her Ziploc bags & tin foil, in some cases I save mine too.
My kids are taught to respect what they have and what they are given. Hopefully that stays with them, neither of the 2 that are at home are overly selfish, sure a little but thats normal kid behavior. Of course they arent teenagers yet either so that may change. My DD21 is the opposite, she had a major sense of self entitlement, so much so that she bought a truck she couldnt afford and expected ME to bail her out on it (my sister did, but DD has paid her back), she bought a cell phone and ran up the charges and wanted ME to pay for it, she was told if she went to college she could live at home for free but if she did not she would be required to pay for her car (before the truck I gave her a car, it was paid for) and pay rent, she chose to get a job and she did pay rent for a while, but then she ran up a cc bill and wanted me to pay for it!! When I said NO she stopped paying rent and started to save to move out, only it took her over a year to save up enough
.. LOL This was all when she was 18 (shes a Feb baby too) but still at home and not graduated. Then she moved in with her DBF and they now have a baby (DGD will be 1 in Feb about a week after DD turns 22) and DD is finally understanding EVERYthing I did to give her what she has
its nice to be vindicated. It really makes no sense tho, I tried to raise all my kids the same and the 2 younger ones are much more appreciative. Again, that may change when they hit the teen years but somehow I doubt it.
This is an awesome thread, its been fun to remember.
Oh ya, we had a tarp that we ran water over and slid on too, our very own slip n slide. LOL
We had Chunky Soup over No Yolk Egg Noodles. Actually I made it the other night, never thought of it as a way for my mom to stretch the $ till I saw your post. We have it now when it is cold out and it just seems like a heart meal.
I made them for my DH a few months ago and he hated it.... I was ok with it, though, because I just made "salmon burgers" for lunch for the rest of the week. 
They simply wouldn't spend the money. Sadly I paid for that decision big-time: years of teasing, no dates, non-existant self-esteem, and huge difficulty in presenting and selling myself in job interviews. I eventually had no choice (if I ever wanted a career and social life) so I paid for braces myself as an adult (with no professional job and no insurance). By then the cost was five times as much than if I did it as a kid, since I needed surgery as well as the braces. I was very angry at my parents for not stepping up to the plate and making the right decision to get me braces as a kid, but saving money was far more important to them. I had to learn to live with the teasing and try to have a better personality to deal with it, they told me when I was growing up. 
