War time recipes 6 December 2022 at 5:01PM edited 6 December 2022 at 5:04PM in Old style MoneySaving 75 replies 7.7K views

Pollycat

Re portion sizes:
we're eating less than we used to (we're late 60s).
OH can't bear to have his plate piled up.
He'll just look at it and lose his appetite.
So I'm careful about how much I cook.
I've got Christmas dinner down to a fine art.
I know exactly how many sprouts, roast potatoes etc to put on his plate to ensure he's had enough but not too much.

RobM99

As an aside (who, me?) I used to work nights and my ex-wife struggled with that. Who wants to come home 0630 Sunday, wake up at 14:00 and have a roast dinner the size of Bristol plonked in front of them. "It's Sunday dinner!" Yeah, but I want a slice of toast and half a grapefruit!

Katiehound

Re: child's portions
(I am not quoting since the last debacle!!)

I remember friends going to a very upmarket 5 * hotel for Sunday lunch and they were horrified when their grandson (6 yo?) was offered the children's menu- everything & chips  type thing when he was used to having child sized portions of adult meals. I think they were just too gobsmacked to ask for a small portion, or if they did, it was not possible. whatever, they were not impressed.

A very nice fairly local, fish & chip restaurant (long ago) would let elderly folk order a child's portion. The adult portions were large to absolutely enormous!

Doom_and_Gloom

In all honesty we have the large square plates and bowls. However personally my diet mostly consists of  vegetables so is more about volumetrics so it works. The OH doesn't eat as many vegetables as me and his plate or bowl always has some room left on it.
We have some old very small bowls that my grandparents had and passed to me that are used for breakfast. Perfect size for just enough cereal and milk for a portion, though many would say it isn't enough. They are just large enough for a good amount of porridge too if you don't add fruit to the bowl but have on the side.

We still have a couple of old style plates that were my grandparents as well. I distinctly remember going to theirs as a young child and was there for lunch which didn't usually happen. I was presented with a very full plate of roast dinner, it was piled up high. Sure there was not a lot of meat on my plate (I didn't go veggie or vegan until I was a teen and I must have been 8 or 9) but there was a huge Yorkshire pudding covered with vegetables and gravy on it and the amount of roast potatoes was more than I'd ever seen on one plate at that time unless it was the serving plate at home.
My grandma saw my face and felt sorry for me saying gently that I didn't need to eat everything if I couldn't which was very unlike her. There was no way I would have been able to finish it though. My two cousins who were also there ate their dinners with gusto and once finished they split what was left of my dinner and finished that too!
When I questioned my dad later if those servings sizes were what he had as a child he nodded his head. Their main meal was always as large as grandma could make it, often bulked out with as many potatoes, Yorkshire puddings, dumplings or the like depending what was made. He said bread was served with most of those meals too. Like my cousin's him and his sisters always ate everything.
I learnt a lot about how to bulk a meal out from my grandma, dad and ma so overall I'm happy. My OH still comments from time to time how he is shocked how many portions I can get from the ingredients used.

The ice-cream van was a rarity for me as a child. It was only ever supposed to be for days out as a big treat. A van went down our street once in my whole childhood, as we just weren't on their usual route. Dad was working on the car at the time in the driveway and he stopped the van so we could have ice-cream. It was a very nice surprise and one I knew at the time would never happen again.

I'm 33 so not old but brought up with old style ways.

Elisheba

Katiehound said:

But maybe more acceptable than ersatz coffee which was roasted acorns & beechnuts(among other things!)

and now can't comment on  my own thread

tried below- can't get into a white space so the 'body ' is too short!

Fubsy is short & squat- what for coffee??
 whereas ersatz is 'substitute'

can anyone offer a way to get rid of the posting problem. I tried signing out. nada. I  don't want to clear cookies as I save my banking details.
Frustrating

Click on the format button at the top of the posting box.  It lets you get out of the quote box and/or delete the quotes boxes you are stuck in.  Took me ages to work out! Dunno what the glitch is but I've had it before as well.

Elisheba

Reading about the WW2 Home Front is one of my hobbies, and I have a few reproduction cookbooks from then.  Portion sizes were smaller, but as someone else mentioned there was always a pudding.  After I have a meal I've never any room for pudding these days, so swings and roundabouts I suppose.

Another website people might be interested is https://the1940sexperiment.com/rationing-diet-sheets/ and she has a FB group where people try it as an actual diet as well.

Longwalker

We have a wee cafe in town, a proper old style cafe, not a new posh one that does sausage rolls and scones the size of footballs. A proper cafe, with proper food

And they do senior portions - a full on dinner, with tea - £5 and I struggle with that

I felt really cheeky when I asked for one the first time, I was only early 50's at the time and thought Id be refused but they were angels and said I could order what I wanted 

Also a lot of carvery places offer a small plate. I like those, can take as little as I want rather then feeling like I must fill the plate cos of the cost

Seriously I have seen people go to the carvery ( and here you can have as much as you want as long as it fits on the plate ) and sit down with a plate with two roasts, a piece of pie and a fish in batter and maybe a couple of sausages for good measure  - because they have "paid for it "

pamsdish

Pollycat said:

Re portion sizes:
we're eating less than we used to (we're late 60s).
OH can't bear to have his plate piled up.
He'll just look at it and lose his appetite.
So I'm careful about how much I cook.
I've got Christmas dinner down to a fine art.
I know exactly how many sprouts, roast potatoes etc to put on his plate to ensure he's had enough but not too much.

My SIL took my breath away last Christmas when she asked me, I was peeling potatoes she was doing the button sprouts, did I want 4 or 5, I would have half of one of those bags. 250g ??

CapricornLass

My sister always used to buy 12 sprouts every year, 6 for her and 6 for my father (TBH, he adores sprouts, and would cheerfully tuck away twice that number.  But no-one else in her family would eat them.  

The portion sizes of Christmas turkeys always got me.  A 5kg turkey was supposed to feed 8, but I can easily get 20 portions, and use the left overs as the basis for other meals.  And they aren't mingy portions either, not when its my OH in charge of the carving knife.

Childrens' menus - I couldn't stand them either.  When my boys were little, we took them to a posh fish restaurant in Tenby while we were on holiday, partly as a treat, but also to train them up in how to behave properly at a formal meal.  The waitress duly offered the childrens menu - the usual something fried and chips - which I refused.  She came back a short while later to take our orders,  My younger son - about 6 at the time- looked up from the menu he was holding and announced very seriously that he would take the lobster..... Her face was a picture!

(He didn't get his lobster.  He settled in the end on a grilled trout, so he had a lesson on how to take the backbone out, and to his credit, managed to eat almost all of it.  But he was allowed to leave the potatoes!)

Toonie

Two of my great aunts were cooks in the WAAF during WW2. I will have a look to see if I can find some of their bits and pieces to share. One thing I do have is some of their recipe books with handwritten notes. They are absolutely brilliant. My Dad was born in the early 50s and was brought up by his Mum and two aunts (they all lived together) and he always used to tell us stories about how there would always be drop scones, fruit scones, fruit loaves, cakes, or biscuits for when he got home from school (that was his tea alongside some bread and butter as he'd had a hot meal in the day).