Thriftlady's wartime experiment

thriftlady wrote: »

Son has been eating black market food :rolleyes: ds2 has returned from tea with a friend. He has had scampi, calamari, banana splits and chocolate milkshake -surely his mother has obtained these on the black market ?:eek:

Thriftlady, what's a banana Not seen one of those for ages

donnap wrote:

Hi

What is snoek!!??

Donna

It's a type of fish.

wisewoman wrote:

Hi thriftlady! I have nominated this for post of the month.

You beat me to it! Was going to do that later. Will go and put my shilling on the thread.


Penny. x

thriftlady wrote: »

Question does anyone know if tablet jellies were available during the war ?

I think that they were available, there's a mention of 'cutting the block of jelly into squares' near the bottom of the page (under The School Party) in this link.

Thanks for starting the thread thriftlady.....it's fascinating reading all the posts.

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Originally Posted by thriftlady
Son has been eating black market food :rolleyes: ds2 has returned from tea with a friend. He has had scampi, calamari, banana splits and chocolate milkshake -surely his mother has obtained these on the black market ?:eek:
[/quote]

I told you not to forget all the goodies available on the black market
Can he get any nylons? The gravy powder is running out :rotfl:

Suet didn't come in little boxes it came in a lump from the butchers and had to be chopped up by hand. Dried fruit (if you could get it as it was often unavailable) had to be washed and picked over taking all the stalks etc off the currants/sultanas/raisins which came seperately not in the same pack. I remember my mum doing this before making the Christmas puddings. And candied peel came in lumps of individual candied fruits which had to be chopped finely. The smell from the chopped peel was wonderful even though I didn't like to eat it as it was a lot stonger flavour than whats in todays mixed fruit. We had National Dried Milk for babys and this was still available from the NHS Clinics when my eldest was a baby in early 60's. We also had concentrated orange juice which we could buy cheaply and this was introduced during the war years I think. When I started school in 1949 we had 1/3 pint of milk every morning and in the winter the milk would freeze as it was left outside the school by the milk man and had to be warmed by the fire to thaw it out a bit before we could get a straw in the bottle. I love the frozen cream at the top that pushed the (cardboard) top off the bottle because the milk expanded when frozen. I can also remember when aged about 9/10 I used to stand on a chair and heat the milk for the teachers coffee on a small gas ring which I had to light myself. Carefully pouring it into the cups (2) and taking them to the teachers desks. It was a small village school with 2 rooms 1 for infants with a open coal fire and big fireguard and the other for juniors with a bit black boiler that took coal. Outside toilets too. We never did have a flush loo while I lived it that house. The loo was in a little shed at the end of a path flanked either side by a hedge and was a bucket and chuck it. Every Sunday my Dad had to take the pan to the bottom of the garden and bury the contents. I can also remember that at home we had no electric until I was about 9 and before that I used to have a small Alladin oil lamp alight beside my bed all night. We may have lived in the middle of the country (Essex) but I think life was as risky there without the bombs as it was in the middel of London.lol. BTW we were actually bombed out 3 times because the planes jettisoned whatever they had left on board on their way back to Germany and had to fly over our house to get there.

There are some more wartime mock recipes here and here

I must stop reading this thread or I'll be up all night!

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