2024 Fashion On The Ration Challenge

Sarahspangles

Laura_Elsewhere said:

And Gran would have bottled some of the tomatoes and runner beans, and made jam of the marrows, I suspect. So they would have enjoyed them all freshly-picked, but also had them until well into the winter. 

If you have less than 43 tomato plants, obviously you're just not trying!  

My Granddad had quite an impressive setup on his allotments with a couple of brick built greenhouses with stoves. He visited every morning and evening on the way to and from his job. He grew a lot of tomatoes. My grandmother dutifully bottled them but the only way they were ever served was on toast for breakfast. Tomato sauces just never entered her repertoire!

diminua

I only have one tomato plant I'm afraid - and I only have that because it's a little trouper that spontaneously grew from some bought compost (along with two siblings) and even though it's only been on the windowsill and I've been away twice and not had anyone in to water it not only refused to die but even grew and ripened four whole tomatoes. I've shifted it a little way indoors to avoid frost and am hoping to overwinter it and put it in a bigger pot and maybe get more next year. 

thriftwizard

@Cherryfudge, thank you, that book looks interesting; I've just ordered it from the library.

@Laura_Elsewhere, ginger beer is totally necessary here in Dorset, Blyton notwithstanding. But it's the real deal, home-brewed & actually probiotic, as is real lemonade, the way it used to be made; lightly fermented (i.e. just for a few days) with just the natural yeasts, like elderflower or rhubarb champagne. Very refreshing, with an absolute minimum of alcohol. But that apple cake looks delicious, and the whole meal quite scrumptious!

@diminua, I've tried overwintering tomatoes in my conservatory & have to say, they didn't do too well - not enough sunlight. But many of the "grafted" tomato plants sold next spring will be side-shoots from plants that have been overwintered in warm, light industrial greenhouses, so it can be done.

My tomatoes have done well this year, and are still going, but only to the extent that we'll eat in the immediate future, My allotment, a "half-plot", is really only a quarter the size of a standard plot, but I'm finding the dilapidated-but-still-functional greenhouse an utter delight! We're not going to run out of dried chillis for the foreseeable future... However I think I could easily run out of sugar "on the ration" between baking, preserving & fermenting. I'd love to know what my Great-Granny did; she combined the rations - and the cooking - for 4 adults and one teenager (Mum) plus whatever eggs their hens laid and all the veg Great-Grandad could grow in their quarter-acre garden. Did she keep & store anything non-perishable more than was needed that week? Or would that have been frowned on? 

Mum, now 98, still remembers the National Loaf; she's currently living in WW2 in her head and quite often speaks to us in French now as she's convinced she's in La  Résistance - she grew up in Kent & was 18 when the war ended! Great-Granny made a "National Loaf" once and they all hated it with a passion; it ended up being fed to the chickens, as did most peelings & outer leaves, boiled up & mashed. So there must have been flour available to make other kinds of bread, even if you'd swapped some of your allowance for poultry feed, as she's certainly talked about eating sandwiches in the air-raid shelter. 
 

ETA: @Nelliegrace, please could you share your bara brith recipe? I love the stuff but have never managed to make it well!

Cherryfudge

@thriftwizard, I wonder if your Mum had an actual connection with the Resistance? My Mum used to revert to the Fifties and her office job in London when she was older and unwell: I'd heard various tales from when she was younger but it was quite fascinating to get a phone call from her and be treated as a contemporary, and I had to promise to let her Mum (who passed away in the late 1970s) know she was unable to get the train that evening. Of course the whole thing would have been confusing had I asked who she thought I was and what the date was, but I just went along with it, secure in the knowledge she wasn't by then physically able to leave the house and if her mind was at rest, she was safe enough. But as far as I can tell, the situation she felt she was in was based on real memories, which makes me wonder whether your Mum may be remembering something, too.

Regarding older people and other languages, one more short story: Mum was educated in Spanish and in the hope of jogging that part of her memory, I asked a Spanish member of staff at the nursing home to try his language on her. She gazed at him as if at a curiosity, but said absolutely nothing so in the end we gave up. When he'd left the room, she turned to me and remarked 'That man was Spanish, you know'.

On another tack, I think I need to try to overwinter my 'best' tomato, inspired by people's efforts here. Do you prune them back, keep them warm/cool, watered/dry? I should have made notes when I've tried in the past as I seem to have a sure-fire method of killing them!

CapricornLass

Gosh - what a lot has gone on!  And so fascinating to read, too.  (I've been buried in OH's tax return, so that's why I've not been on for a while.)

Earlier on this year, my mum recorded some of her memories of her childhood during the war in Glasgow and Clarkston.  I've copied out the bit about food and clothes rationing.  It has a bit about the sugar, and also jam being a replacement for butter on bread - something my grandparents continued to do long after the war had ended.

It must have felt that everything was rationed.  Not only was it rationed, but sometimes the quality was poor.  I can remember going to a restaurant well-known for good meals.  My mother tasted her meal and left the rest untouched.  The manageress was in tears – it was the best the kitchen could do with the ingredients supplied.  She didn’t fancy the meal either.

Perhaps it would be easier to think of those foods that were unrationed, such as potatoes, carrots, swede, turnips, cabbage.  Basically, those that could be grown in this country.  The same rough guide can be applied to fruit- apples and pears.  In summers there were strawberries and raspberries.  In addition to rationing, you had to register with the shops from which you would buy your rationed foods.  You couldn’t flit from grocer to grocer.  There was a Black Market which was illegal.  If you had family living abroad, they could perhaps send a parcel of the tea, coffee, biscuits and chocolate which was a welcome addition to your weekly ration.

Canned foods also cost points. Strange to relate, milk and eggs were rationed, but the biggest loss for me was sweets and chocolate.  My mother’s greatest loss was surely chocolate biscuits.  She stopped taking sugar in her cup of tea, so that she could continue to make jam with the berries in the garden.  If we ran out of butter, we could put jam on our bread.  Rationing was difficult, especially so for those on special diets.

Each person had a ration book, the colour of the cover indicated to which group you belonged, male, female, child, pregnant, heavy worker, etc.  When you paid your bill, the shop-keeper cut out the number of coupons from your book.  You then had to count the number of coupons left in your book to see if you had enough coupons left so that you could buy e.g. a packet of biscuits.  Having the cash to buy was simply not enough.

No doubt rationing was fair, but there was not enough for extras.  Brides had to hope that friends and neighbours could give a coupon or two to help her having a wedding cake, which would then be hidden under a beautifully decorated cardboard “cake”. 

Towards the end of the war, they thought to save paper by not putting a label round tins.  It was infuriating if you opened a tin to find the contents were the peaches you had been saving for a special occasion!

Clothes and Shoes

Clothing children during the War was a great problem for mothers and when children were growing rapidly.  I have written elsewhere about coming home from school with very wet feet.  The problem was not a lack of money but a lack of coupons.  You can do lots of repairs to clothing but few things can prolong the lives of shoes.  Use of rubber soles does not help if children have out-grown their shoes.  I got very wet feet one day going to school.  One of my friends’ mother saw me, and gave me a pair of another of her daughter’s shoes which she had outgrown and which fitted me.   Many fathers were hammering tacks (small squares of metal) on the heels of ladies shoes.

Holes in jumpers and knee length stockings were carefully darned but coats and jackets and blazers needed patches (leather ones if possible).  “Fashion” did not exist.  Hair was often short, but women whose hair was longer would cut the top from a lisle stocking to use as a hair band and tucked their hair up.  Head scarves were very popular.  Stockings were made of lisle which wrinkled badly at the ankle.  Young ladies who wanted to look smart would draw a line up their legs so that it looked as if they were wearing silk stockings.

Towards the end of the war the first nylon stockings appeared.  They were an instant success.  Every young girl wanted a pair of nylons.  In 1951, six years after the war had ended, Ian [my father.  He and Mum eventually married in 1956] went to the USA.  He brought back two pairs of nylons, one pair, 30 dernier, and the other 15 dernier.  Wow!!

She also recalls one of her aunts who ran a small shop in Glasgow spending a lot of time after the shop had closed trying to sort out the coupons and making it all balance.  

Nelliegrace

Midwife Mary Thomas used to make this for the staff when she worked night shifts. At other times we took turns to supply toast and homemade jam for the 5 a.m. low point. Word would go round that Mrs Brown (the teapot) was at the desk and we made sure that everyone could have a few minutes to swallow something, to complete the long shift and get home safely. She wrote this for me in a hurry one night. 

I use half and bake one alongside a Sunday pot roast, then bung in a crumble or bread and butter pudding when the bara brith is done, and finally some flapjacks or rock cakes. 

Cherryfudge

Thank you @CapricornLass and @Nelliegrace - we are rich in the human touch today, those are so interesting to read. And @thriftwizard, my Mum remembered the National Loaf too. She would never touch brown bread afterwards!

Nelliegrace

27th, June 1940, The Times.

PollyWollyDoodle

Thank you so much for sharing your mum’s memories @CapricornLass - it really brings that time to life.  

talesfromamicroholding

Golly absolutely loved reading the posts which have sprouted over the weekend. I tried my hand a few times at rationing last year and loved every time. We had to be a bit lenient with the cheese ration as the other half has cheese sandwiches everyday and has done since I meet him 18 years ago! I'm hoping to have another go next year and see how long we do, though this time I think I will have a few weeks of meal plans sorted first as sometimes that was the hardest bit was figuring out what to eat!

Anyway I digress! @PipneyJane, I love the Majestic jumper as well and for once actually like the colours chosen. I think Chrevon will be next on my list to knit once I've finished my latest round of knitting. I've been wanting to knit it for a while but didn't have the brain for the maths to make it my size. I've also got a discount from JA for doing their test knit so with my Mill Member discount I should have enough to afford a jumper weight of actual yarn and not fibre, which will be lovely.