Wartime recipes, substitutions and other related austerity hints

Wednesday2000

This thread is making me feel old even though I'm only 43. I remember having chilblains and I used to call them corned beef legs too.

I had to do Home Economics at secondary school and I hated the sewing classes. I always remember making a pineapple upside down cake in the cooking class. The only time in my life that I have ever tasted that type of cake.

Mrs_Salad_Dodger

mardatha wrote: »

I was the same Mrs SD - one term of cookery, one of sewing, and one of "housekeeping". Then onto better things! I'm 70 at Christmas and I still can't cook :rotfl:

I bet you can mardatha

My mum didn’t manage to teach me to cook - she spoiled the 3 of us + I was a lazy c*w I got married 1st time round at 21 & quickly learnt to follow a recipe but never brave enough to wing it :rotfl: Following baking recipes was always easier for some reason Divorced at 25.
I still follow recipes as a starting point for lots of things but am more likely to improvise & add extra ingredients or replace them with something more to my liking - especially over the last 25 years. DH no.2 is quite adventurous re taste & I have used that to experiment a bit more & there is always baked beans on toast or a fish finger sandwich if it all goes horribly wrong :rotfl: Fortunately only 2 disasters over the years - one recently - an hm soup made from leftovers which even the pigeons wouldn’t eat :rotfl:

My DH’s mum was a school cook & he used to have 2 school dinners every week day in term time :rotfl: She sadly passed in the 90’s but she did know how to make a penny stretch to a shilling. Sadly I didn’t really know her long enough to hear lots of her stories but she was always well turned out & her 3 children never went without even if she did.

Previous generations were made of stern stuff & knew the value of everything as well as the cost.
Some of it has rubbed off on me because I can still darn, I actually like to repair clothing & repurpose when not fit to wear. Hate spending money on clothes - still have a jumper that is 41 years old bought from a CS

More stories please !

MrsSD

PipneyJane

Mrs_Salad_Dodger wrote: »

Just decided to read this thread & I would like to thank you all so much for sharing your stories :T

I will be 60 this year but am another one who uses the butter/margarine wrappers to grease cake tins - learnt from my mum.
I was a grammar school girl - one term of cookery & one term of sewing & no typing (still a one fingered typist :rotfl:) - we were all supposed to go to university & get a profession Presumably we were also all supposed to hire people to cook & sew :rotfl:
My paternal grandmother & mum taught me to knit. Mum used to make clothes for me & my 6 years younger DSis - matching outfits much to my chagrin :rotfl: & knitted all our jumpers (for DB & dad as well). I well remember when we had outgrown them they would be unpicked & we were used as wool winders :rotfl: In the way of mums she never knitted for herself - I think she thought it was too extravagant

I have upset myself now so will sign off

MrsSD

Oh honey! Big hugs to you.

It's funny how this thread has turned to a discussion about chilblains. As an (expatriot) Aussie, I don't think I have ever seen them but, according to this episode of ABC's* The Money, chilblains are still a huge problem in Australia, where houses are built to combat the long hot summers and not their short, comparatively icy winters. They are the main reason people visit podiatrists.

- Pip


* The Australian Broadcasting Corporation, their equivalent of the BBC.

mardatha

Wow pipneyjane that's interesting I didn't know that.

monnagran

I think that happens on these threads, we start by discussing wartime recipes and then find ourselves wandering down all sorts of unexpected lanes. New subjects are brought up and people's experiences shared, New friends are made and things are learned, and I think it is lovely.

Primrose

I remember our so called "Domestic science" classes in my first year at secondary school. It must have been around 1951/2 when rationing was still in place, so what we could cook was limited to what could be spared from the family rations.

I recall one famous afternoon where our enterprise featured Lentil Soup. The only household thermos flask had broken so I was forced to bring my efforts home in a saucepan on the top of a bus, having waited with it trying to hold it upright at the bus stop for about half an hour first. Given the constant stopping and starting of the bus at every stop, there was very little of it left by the time I arrived home thoroughly fed up, and the floor of the bus was awash with the stuff. This just shows how impractical it was to provide practical "hands on" experience in some domestic skills during the immediate post war years.

We did attempt some modest baking efforts but the boys would all rush into class from their woodwork session and scoff our efforts so there was rarely any evidence of our efforts to take home.

However, to this day I still rely on making a pot of lentil & vegetable soup as a satisfying & warming meal on a cold winter day so I guess my abortive attempts tipped on the floor of a London bus haven't deterred me. And I've since learned on this forum what a valuable commodity lentils are for extending and stretching meat based dishes such as spaghetti bolognese, and shepherds pie.

And despite having learned how to make a haybox for emergency cooking, and how to cook an egg in a cut grapefruit half over an open fire for a Girl Guides cooks badge, I'll never make it to one of these Bake Off programmes!

Primrose

Mrs_Salad_Dodger wrote: »

I actually like to repair clothing & repurpose when not fit to wear. Hate spending money on clothes - still have a jumper that is 41 years old bought from a CS

More stories please !

MrsSD

I still have the now tattered navy quilted anorak I wore on my honeymoon 53 years ago. It's now relegated to gardening wear and fence staining. Completely falling apart but for sentimental reasons I can't bear to bin it! Even a tramp wouldn't give it a second glance.

DWhite

Not sure if anyone remembers the tv series from the 80’s or 90’s of the Victorian kitchen garden and the wartime kitchen garden? I was quite young, born in 83. But loved to watch them. I just found the wartime kitchen garden series available in YouTube. I’m sat watching some of the episodes on my tv that I send it to from my phone. Sounds like this would be good for what people on this post are looking for 😊

Brambling

We did basic cookery and sewing at primary / middle school and like many the first year of senior school we rotated between home economics (where I was shown how to correctly change a plug, iron a man's shirt and hand wash a wool jumper :cool:) sewing and wood work. When we selected our options at 14 we had to choose two (there must have been a fourth option) and the girls were steered towards HE and sewing (although the sewing was called something difference then?)

The basics learnt at school were good building blocks for later life including meal planning and learning to calculate the timings when cooking a meal as well as sewing a hem, changing a zip and using a sewing machine. I still can't make clothes without them looking home made but I can mend and repair what I have as well as making curtains and other home furnishings. Unfortunately it meant i was the go to Auntie to take up school trousers, make custumes for school plays and mend soft toys, as my sister manage to avoid retaining that information. When money was tight I could cook a cheap filling meal knowing how to cook cheap cuts of meat amongst other things and those habits have been retained

dreaming

I also went to a grammar school and the first lesson of "domestic science" was spent embroidering our initials onto our cookery overalls (white to distinguish from science which were blue). We then went on to make such delights as beef olives, asparagus wrapped in ham, tomato consomme - all "dinner party" food of the 60's. I had never encountered a lot of the things we cooked as I came from a very poor, working class family, and my mum had died when I was little, so our family food (cooked by my dear old dad) tended to be roast on Sundays, stretched to Monday and Tuesday, then fish fingers or beefburgers and tinned peas, with fish & chips on Friday Saturday was usually a fry-up. I don't think I realised at the time but it must have been quite difficult for my dad to afford the ingredients of this "posh" food which we ate but none of it was very filling so we then loaded up on bread and jam (or Weetabix and jam - mmm!). The best thing I really remember about it was the lovely wicker basket we had to have to carry everything (another expense my dad could have probably done without). We also had to make a gingham elasticated cover for it. I still like the look of the baskets but just make my own tote bags now from material remnants. I have to say that most of my skills were really picked up much later when I had my own family but I suppose there were some things that stuck.