THE Prepping thread - a new beginning :)

DigForVictory

Dear Mrs LW, oh to have a money tree! I'd back you to spot one amongst the spring greens & me to kill one even from a garden centre within three weeks.

Being a vegetarian at war simply wasn't an option for squaddies, and I think Everyone had to be ingenious with the available variety. Certainly, reading war cookbooks, mysteries like Snoek (which turns out to be a sort of mackerel but blimey noone seems to have said that too loudly at the time - however it was processed for shipping clearly rendered it different to the critter we know) and dried eggs appear - and yet my parents remember war food relatively fondly.

In Cornwall, butter was rationed, but double cream wasn't as firmly policed, so it would be bread & cream. To this day mum does not look on cream as much of a treat, but loves jam. She even made rose hip syrup & made us drink it as children. She & Granny are at my shoulder / in my memories whenever I make jam. (I would love to eavesdrop on Granny & Nostradamus on cherry jam - I found his instructions barely comprehensible but I'll lay odds she & he would have been in complete agreement on the colour.)

I think if you had the time and energy, rationing would have been merely thoroughly inconvenient but also a satisfying stretch of cooking talents. Good housewives who could quickly convert gluts of home grown veg into jars of future provender would be able to work from a wider range of choices. Recognising the edible shoots would bring healthy salads where city women had to stretch their cans as far as possible. Hurrah for the railways that moved fresh food into the cities as well as whisking children off to evacuation locations.

I'm very partial to the idea of the 'pig club', where a piglet would be housed for a few weeks around various families until it had grown sufficiently to be butchered - and all off-ration. Having raised a lamb from 3 days old to 3 months, a piglet would be an interesting challenge. No wool though, and not as flavoursome as an older sheep.

A techie pal said coolly that we couldn't pull off another Bletchley - we've lost that "all in it together" (abused by politicians)/ Blitz spirit (although I see that reappear for short periods) & are too used to be able to be in touch with each other so easily. The whole keep mum, you never know who's listening bit where our young are becoming semi-professional jobseekers? Two different ends of the modesty spectrum. Their great grandparents would have served silently for the greater good - I do not want to speculate how severe and personal a threat would have to be to shut the young ones up.

[Deleted User]

NewShadow wrote: »

There were known vegetarians during rationing and the vegan society traces their origins to 1944 - so it's fair to guess their would be vegans living on rations during the wars.

I wouldn't think it would be difficult being vegetarian/vegan, during rationing.

I doubt you would have much trouble, finding someone to trade some vegetables, for a hunk of meat.

monnagran

Those were different days Lyn. Food was of necessity more basic, less plentiful and the choice was more restricted. In fact quite a lot of families saw their standard of living RISE due to the rationing and some families actually had more money due to women being encouraged to work in places like munitions factories and earning money for the first time in their lives.
I'm sure that there were grumbles from time to time about the lack of some of the more indulgent food. The fact remained that the system was fair, a supply of basic foods was guaranteed, even if in small amounts, and nobody starved.

The media, basically the press and the BBC, kept everyone informed about what was available and how much they could expect to receive, also many tips about how to make the most of their rations. Everyone was more or less resigned to the hardships that there were. Most folk were quite cheerful about 'making do' and really, set against the probability that you would quite likely be bombed out of your home at any time, the fact that you couldn't have sugar in your tea or butter on your bread didn't cause you much grief.

I find it fascinating that, as children too young to have many memories of pre-war food, there was so much that we didn't realise we were missing. I do recall my mother trying to explain to me what ice cream was. I got the general idea but for some reason had the impression that though it was cold (no fridges, I'd never eaten anything frozen) it had the texture of sweet hard pressed powder. I was staggered when ice cream came back in the late forties, to find that it was wet!

So no. I don't think that there was much unrest about imposed rationing. There was more disappointment to find that When the war was over things got much, much worse. Things were rationed much more stringently than they had been during the hostilities. The comment that I remember hearing most was , "I thought we were supposed to have won."
Of course by then we were trying to also feed all the occupied countries, millions of refugees and our erstwhile enemies. But that is a whole different story.

Sorry to go about it but having experienced these things first hand I get a little bit amused by people trying to recreate the panic, fear and uncertainty of those times whilst sleeping soundly in their beds at night.

I'll shut up now.

jk0

I thought I'd travelled back 50 years waiting at the checkout in Waitrose today. Serving the woman in front of me, I'm sure the checkout girl asked her for 'Six pounds, three & nine pence.'

I think the bill was £6.39 and the checkout girl was foreign.

GreyQueen

We have choice unparallelled now, there were far fewer choices available to the general populace in the immediate years pre-war. Even the elite classes would have had what would be considered quite a boring diet by modern standards.

The poorer people often struggled to have enough to stave off hunger without getting into a lather about restricted choices. People like my great-grandfathers who did manual work on farms for 5.5 days a week and then came in for a quick bite and then out to do more hours manual work on their gardens and allotments weren't indulging in a lifestyle choice.

They'd've given you a pretty strange look if you'd suggested that it was a hobby, either - it was about putting food on the family's plates.

THIRZAH

I have a friend who was a vegetarian during WW2. She was in the WRAF. They were usually given a piece of cheese instead of meat with their meals. Not a very balanced diet but she seemed quite happy with it.

jk0

BTW, not at all relevant to prepping, but a bit of fun...

Has anyone else come across Youtube channel: Postmodern Jukebox? I just discovered them. They perform modern songs in a retro style.

This is my favourite: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nz-OMn1o22Y

maryb

Lazy modern journalists who parrot the line that we were never healthier than during rationing don't connect the dots. The war eliminated destitution by eliminating unemployment so everyone was able to afford an adequate diet. Many people got enough to eat who simply hadn't before. That's why we were healthier as a population. That's not the same thing as saying it was an optimum diet.

Si_Clist

jk0 wrote: »

I thought I'd travelled back 50 years waiting at the checkout in Waitrose today. Serving the woman in front of me, I'm sure the checkout girl asked her for 'Six pounds, three & nine pence.'

I think the bill was £6.39 and the checkout girl was foreign.

Ah. Is there a trend here? Last month I had cause to phone Waitrose customer service (that being free and them being slow answering emails). Long story short, the surly woman with the thick accent to whom I was connected had a problem working out how much they owed me, and at one point said "It is less than two pounds. It is not even a pound and a half."

Perhaps she thought she was still behind the market stall ...

moneyistooshorttomention

maryb wrote: »

Lazy modern journalists who parrot the line that we were never healthier than during rationing don't connect the dots. The war eliminated destitution by eliminating unemployment so everyone was able to afford an adequate diet. Many people got enough to eat who simply hadn't before. That's why we were healthier as a population. That's not the same thing as saying it was an optimum diet.

Quite and I understand that people were hungry and weak for lack of food - there are certainly comments about this in the book "Our Hidden Lives - the remarkable diaries of post-war Britain" by Simon Garfield for instance.

From comments in that, for instance, I rather think it must have been more "propaganda" than fact that people had enough to eat.