Thriftlady's wartime experiment

BerkshireBird

Oh that reminds me so much of my lovely Gran who unfortunately died 12 years ago. She loved bread and milk and always had it if she was feeling unwell as it was what she was given as a child. She had it loads when she got into her 90's, because she found it so comforting.
She also said it was very easy to eat with no teeth!! very useful if you were born before the time of NHS dentists!

Loving money saving old style, have made own house cleaning sprays by re using spay containers and watering down Stardrops, it's fab.

thriftlady_2

If anyone familiar with the workings of Photobucket can tell me how to get the pics to appear on my post instead of via a link I'd be eternally grateful.

catewithers

Hi thriftlady.

To get your photos to appear in the the thread you copy and paste the IMG code that's below your photos on the Photobucket website.

HTH.

PS
Your pie looks great!

Topher

thriftlady wrote: »

Oh brilliant find Sproggi :T :T So, that's £8.85 for my lot -that's a bit less than I'd hoped, but it sounds realistically stringent I t puts my free range chicken out of the picture though:(

Of course in those days all the meat would have been free range and organic too probably.

Edit : if you calculate the amount for earlier in the war, say 1941 it comes to £1.99 or £9.95 for a family of 5

I've always found it difficult to work out the quantities of meat, because the price fluctuated so much depending on what they wanted to ensure sold well, and what wasn't available. I believe offal wasn't counted within that price margin, so had only the limits of availability (once you've accounted for the obvious limit of those who could & couldn't afford it anyway.)

Late tinned meats were controlled by being on the points system too.

(Still looking for the cabbage sausage recipe, I've forgotten where I got it from. I seem to remember Ruth Mott making it on T.V. so maybe it was wartime Kitchen & Garden.)

Basically, cut the base of a Savoy cabbage so that it can sit on a trivet in a pan ith shallow water. I rinse what leaves I can gently tease out first, so there'll be some water between those. Keeping the cabbage whole, steam for about 8 - 10 mins. Fish it out, and drain it briefly upside down. Then, still keeping it whole, pull the leaves downwards so you're opening it out, layer by layer like a flower.

Meanwhile add to the sausage meat a similar looking amount of breadcrumbs and an egg. (when I say similar amount, I'm looking at a similar volume, but not weight as the sausage meat.) season, and mix. I use my hands so that I kind of squeeze the mixture together into a sausagey paste. (for taste you could add brown sauce at this point... I buy good flavoured sausagemeat, so I don't add anything else)
Starting with the centre of the cabbage, push some sausage mix between the layers of leaves, and bring the cabbage leaves back up to re form the cabbage. Build up in layers of meat and leaves, until you've rebuilt the cabbage, the last, outer leaves wrapping the whole, as when it was just a mere cabbage. I drive in two wooden skewers crossed through the body of the cabbage to pin the outer leaves into place. Place in a deep ovenproof dish and seal over with foil. Bake for 45 mins. I can only guess the temperature at this stage would be about Gas 5. I take off the foil near the end so that some of the outer layers of sausage achieve some colour and firmness. Sometimes this burns some leaves but hey.
Quarter and serve.

This is my best guess, as I now cook it from memory, but I will try & look it up.
Topher

Errata

Don't forget - You can stretch your rations by having a meal out at a government restaurant !

thriftlady_2

catewithers wrote: »

Hi thriftlady.

To get your photos to appear in the the thread you copy and paste the IMG code that's below your photos on the Photobucket website.

HTH.

PS
Your pie looks great!

Cheers, I tried that but it didn't work -off to have another go.

We've got leftover pie btw -excellent way to stretch a lb of bangers

Lyndsay_21

i am going to try the golden syrup cake for OH today, we're really skint till he gets paid so i've been trying to pad the kids out with puddings after their dinners, so far they've had rice pudding, peach cobbler (the american way) tinned peaches reduced to 10p in the local co-op!!!

Is the cake similar to the one you can buy?

sproggi

thriftlady wrote: »

So, that's £8.85 for my lot -that's a bit less than I'd hoped, but it sounds realistically stringent I t puts my free range chicken out of the picture though:(

Of course in those days all the meat would have been free range and organic too probably.

Edit : if you calculate the amount for earlier in the war, say 1941 it comes to £1.99 or £9.95 for a family of 5

Don't forget that this only goes up to 2006, so you can add an extra 6p per person to allow for 2007, might not sound much, but every penny helps:D

Pie looks yummy btw

Sproggi

thriftlady_2

I thought some pictures would be a good idea, but as you can see from the earlier post I could only get one of them to appear on the post and they won't resize Anyway onwards and upwards.

Menu for today

Breakfast- the kids are enjoying the chocolate spread I made yesterday on toast.

lunch- leftover soup and leftover pie followed by leftover jelly

Tea- Ragout of pigeon breasts (getting posh now), asparagus, carrots and peas and potatoes.
Rhubarb and strawberry cobbler (Black Saturn's recipe )

The pigeon ragout is basically a stew but they won't need lengthy cooking. I haven't got a recipe as such. I think some stock from the freezer, a splash of sherry and some redcurrant jelly and mushrooms will go in it though.


I have one rasher of bacon left, and that with some leftover boiled spuds will be fried up for the kid's breakfast tomorrow. OH hasn't had his egg this week so he's getting egg sandwiches tomorrow. There's still quite a lot of cheese left so the kids are having cheese sandwiches tomorrow and I'm planning a cheesey main dish -cheese and potato pie maybe ? There's lots of sugar left which I will save for preserving later in the Summer (If I'm still at it by then). There's about 5 pints of milk left.

All in all it's been a successful week. No one's been hungry. I've eaten less as I've stopped snacking. I haven't been hungry between meals because our meals have been filling. Next week I'm cutting down on alcohol and saving it for Fri, Sat and Sun and I'm going to make a note of my weight and see if I lose any.

I'm still doubtful about how authentic I'm being -we seem a bit too well fed to be doing it right. I think I'm not taking into account how difficult it was to get storecupboard items, well, it's hard to know what was around and what wasn't. I can't work out the points system (don't think it was like WWs lol). Maybe I'll not buy anymore tinned good for the next 4 weeks and just make what I've got do

I've enjoyed the week immensely, not least because of the interest it has generated here. This has really kept me focused and stopped me from giving up. I'm definitely continuing for another week and a month seems like a good goal to aim for if not longer.

thriftlady_2

Lyndsay_21 wrote: »

i am going to try the golden syrup cake for OH today, we're really skint till he gets paid so i've been trying to pad the kids out with puddings after their dinners, so far they've had rice pudding, peach cobbler (the american way) tinned peaches reduced to 10p in the local co-op!!!

Is the cake similar to the one you can buy?

Not really Lyndsay, it's more like a teabread I think not as moist as a cake.

You've reminded me about rice puds, my kids love them and I've got lots of milk so we might have rice or sago instead of cobbler with strawberry and rhubarb sauce.