Food Supply

Here is an image of the food supply of migrant workers. This is a pantry in a family's tent. Here we see cereal, canned milk, coffee, baking powder, and various other spices and baking materials. It looks as if this particular family may have been making a decent amount of money because they still could afford coffee and milk (albeit canned). 

Coffee was the drink of choice for the Joads. In fact, it is mentioned over eighty times in the Steinbeck's novel. When the Joads have enough money to afford it, making and drinking coffee is the first ritual of the day before leaving to work in the fields. Like the Joads, migrant workers drank coffee to warm themselves up in the cold, early mornings and to be energized before doing manual labor. 

To the right, is a photograph of an woman by her pantry in her Oklahoma home. This was not a family of migrant workers (the father worked as a day-laborer in Oklahoma), but they faced hunger, nonetheless. There appears to be only flour and other baking materials in their cabinet (no coffee or canned milk), suggesting that the family was living on a small income.