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The Depression Kitchen Tools

Four tools that do the arithmetic the book leaves to you: 1933 money in today's dollars, the period substitution for whatever you are out of, any recipe scaled to the number at your table, and the prices the Bureau of Home Economics actually published.

1933 money, in today's dollars

The book uses the Bureau of Labor Statistics consumer price index: one 1933 dollar is worth about 23 of today's. Type in either box.

Rounded. An index is an average across everything a household bought, so it tells you the shape of a price, not the price of one loaf of bread.

What a year of food cost, per person

The four model diets the Bureau costed at 1931-32 retail prices, and what each comes to in today's money and per day.

Diet1933TodayPer day

The cheapest of the four, the restricted diet for emergency use, is the one the recipes in this book were written to fill out.

And the printable Starter Kit

The four tools above need nothing from you. This part comes by email, because it is a set of sheets to print.

Double opt-in: one email to confirm, then the kit. Unsubscribe any time. Your email is never used for anything else.