Anyone getting stocked up on food etc just in case?

neverdespairgirl

Charis wrote: »

Personally I can't think of one interesting meal I could make from those buckets on their own, let alone a year's worth. Maybe they are meant to supplement your own smallholding? Also, without a good fuel source most of the ingredients would be useless.

Apparently, according to the website, it's a complete year's food supply, with the only additions necessary being vitamin pills and cooking oil.

I agree, after a few months eating that lot, you'd be dead of food boredom.

neverdespairgirl

Norfolk_Jim wrote: »

Yup, The Atkins diet - no carbohydrates so the body strips its own fat supplies inducing Ketosis.

Same with those diets where you don't eat anything at all, just drink special milk shakes. Not one for me, months without eating anything at all!

neverdespairgirl

dopester wrote: »

Mice can't easily climb up walls to get up in to lofts can they? I'll admit one dog food box I took out from stockpile (to use before replacing) did show some signs of attempted intrusion, but perhaps it was damage from my own fingers when placing the boxes in a difficult to reach store area.

The Christmas decorations brought down from the loft here show enough signs of being munched for me to conclude that the little sods can climb with absolute ease.

dopester

neverdespairgirl wrote: »

I'm reading an absolutely fascinating book my mother gave me for Christmas, called "Nella Last's War" which was a diary kept by a housewife in Barrow-in-Furness from September 1939.

Her entry from Monday 4th Sept. 1939, the day after war was declared, includes the passage:

My husband laughes at me for what he calls "raving", but he was glad to hear of a plan I made last crisis and have since polished up. It's to keep hens on half the lawn. The other half of the lawn with grow potatoes, and the cabbage will grow under the apple trees and among the currant bushes

Reading about the introduction of rationing is interesting, because of the different shopping pattens now. An adult was allowed, per week, 4oz each of bacon and butter, and 12 ounces of sugar. So a household such as Nella's, with 2 parents and 2 young adult sons was allowed 3lb of sugar per week. that seems like a hell of a lot to me!

An example of an adults weekly food ration allowance in 1943 was;

PICTURE: A typical weeks rations - could you have survived on this?

3 pints of milk
3 1/4Ib - 1Ib meat
1 egg or 1 packet of dried eggs every 2 months
3-4 oz cheese
4 oz bacon and ham
2 oz tea
8 oz sugar
2 oz butter
2 oz cooking fat
+ 16 points a month for other rationed foods (usually tinned) subject to availability.

These weekly rations were stretched with the help of un-rationed extras like bread (incidentally not rationed until after the war), cereal, potatoes, offal and fruit and vegetables.

Hmm.. maybe you are right now I've put that together and thought about it some more. Presumably the rationing allowance of sugar was cut between '39 and '43.

8oz sugar = 0.5 lbs. 4 people = 2 lbs ... which is a pretty fair amount between 4 people. There is more about rationing in WW2 at Wikipedia that is worth a look.

*One of the few foods not rationed were fish and chips. Strict rationing caused many people to buy food on the black market; however people were often tricked with cheaper substitutes such as horsemeat instead of beef.

* Rationing continued after the end of the war. In fact, it became stricter after the war ended than during the hostilities. Bread, which was not rationed during the war, was rationed beginning in 1946 and potato rationing began in 1947. This was largely due to the necessity of feeding the population of European areas coming under British control, whose economies had been devastated by the fighting. Sweet rationing ended in February 1953, and sugar rationing ended in September of that year. The final end of all rationing did not come until 1954 with the end of it on meat and bacon

* Restaurants were exempt from rationing, which led to a certain amount of resentment as the rich could supplement their food allowance by eating out frequently and extravagantly. In order to restrict this certain rules were put into force. No meal could cost more than five shillings; no meal could consist of more than three courses; meat and fish could not be served at the same sitting.

Yet one of the sons gets called up for service? The one in to flowers?

neverdespairgirl

Yes, the younger son is called up and pushes off, leaving distraught mother and (I presume) BF behind. But I've only got to early 1940!

Barneysmom

There does seem to be a lot of sugar in that allowance, mind if you think about it, all our food has sugar in now doesn't it? I mean tinned stuff etc.

And I don't think I could do without that special part of my 5-a-day, the bar of Cadburys

beaujolais-nouveau

Norfolk_Jim wrote: »

Honestly! I've spent time in rural Malawi where people have no money, no utilities, no services, and nothing to buy if there was any money anyway, and I survived and so did the exploding population (though less so the local forests).

You forgot to say that Malawi is in the tropics, so you don't have to spend any money on clothes to keep warm or fuel to keep warm. I think, too, that you are being a bit glib about the quality of life in Malawi: the people there are incredibly poor and undernourished. Infant mortality is 94 per 1000 live births - in Britain it is 6. You omitted to mention the HIV AIDS epidemic in Africa.

Jennifer_Jane

Wouldn't something like this mean that people pushed off somewhere else (Norfolk Jim presumably back to Malawi, and I'd be back to South Africa) where it's cheaper to live.

The Irish did this and so has pretty much every other nation (I pushed off to Belgium in 1969, then South Africa in 1972).

I remember rationing but can't really remember any specific diets, and from 1947 to 1950 or so we were in Sri Lanka, so probably missed the worst of post-war diets.

Jen
x

vigilaire

There is no downside risk in stockpiling long life foodstuffs. If possible buy while on offer, replace and use in rotation and the peace of mind knowing you have 3 or 6 or 12 months worth of staples put by is very reassuring.

The Cubans still have basic foodstuffs rationed and never go to bed hungry. When the alternative is hunger it is quite suprising how palatable pulses and rice can become.

We none of us know what is round the corner but there is never an emergency if you are prepared for it.

mardatha

Nella Last's war is a great book, I first read it twenty years ago and its still interesting & relevant now. Also remember people in country areas during the war were able to supplement their rations/diet with rabbit, fish & game. This still applies now, so maybe the old skills will never die out completely. I have a son who was a brilliant poacher and we ate well for a few years. until, alas, he discovered wimmen..