WWII Rations

KTFrugal

I've just read "Bombers and Mash" by Raynes Minns, well worth a look for life on the home front, including some Old Style recipes, including how to make one pound of butter into two...you soften the butter and beat in half a pint of boiled and cooled milk and a pinch of salt, with a fork, not a whisk. Apparently, it doubles in volume.

A summer project, perhaps?

There's also some humdingers like Sparrow Pie, How to Cook an Old Duck and Snoek Piquante. We're not that hard up, are we?

Eliza252

KTFrugal wrote:

Sparrow Pie?

hee hee! Has anyone read Roald Dahl's 'The Twits'? There are some fantastic illustrations of bird pie, with all the beaks sticking out of the pastry - that's the image I get for some reason!

Also, I think that the poor sparrow population is in serious decline at the moment so baking them would definately be a no, no!

Anyone who wants to come and cart away the greasy London pidgeons that are constantly trying to sneak in my flat windows are very welcome!

Kippsy

Wasn't there someone a few years ago catching london's pigeons and selling them to restaurants?

Anyway, I bought my Mum a cooking bible/encyclopedia type thing and that had a recipe for blackbird pie!!!!

Not tempted to go out and steep myself in the rationing lifestyle... though really I think it would be the variety and the sweeties that I would miss!

Rage_in_Eden

Queenie wrote:

I have the book "We'll Eat Again" (plus the other 2 in the series) which is full of recipes made with rations.

There is a book called "The Ration Book Diet" but I haven't got that one (yet! )

Repetative? I know they were very *inventive*!

Everyone grew veggies in the garden, local parks were turned into allotments so every scrap of ground was used for growing vegetables.

I've got this book too and regularly OH gets meals from it..... My Mum particularly liked the Woolton Pie I made as she said it took her back.... ah :A I once made the apple chutney from it to see at a Brownie sale of work and it went like hot cakes - especially as I put a sign infront of the jars saying what is was and where the recipe was from etc.... only downside was that OH said that the house stank of vinegar......

Rage_in_Eden

Chipps wrote:

My grandma remembers making pastry with liquid parafin. Not sure I would like that one!

At least you would be "regular" :rotfl:

Austin_Allegro

Our rations weren't too bad compared to the poor old Russians and Germans who ended up eating things like boiled shoe leather and cats/dogs by the end of the war.

But be warned as someone pointed out it was a very fattening diet, but most people in those days walked/cycled everywhere, did housework manually and/or worked in manual trades so they burned it off.

thriftlady_2

This is a really interesting thread,I'm a bit obsessed with rationing and the home front.I've got the book The Ration Book Diet and although its got lots of good background info its not nearly as good as Marguerite Patten's books,and it doesn't give you a diet to follow just weekly menus for main meals only.

There was a lot of stodge in the wartime diet but as people have already said ,activity levels were much higher -less car use, less labour-saving appliances, gardening etc.

I am quite tempted to have a go at living on rations.But I wonder whether my egg-allergic dd would have got something else to replace her egg ration or would the rest of us shared out her egg?

filigree_2

thriftlady wrote:

This is a really interesting thread,I'm a bit obsessed with rationing and the home front.

I'm glad I'm not the only one with this hobby! The Imperial War Museum shop in London has loads of books on the subject, my credit card is in serious danger every time I go there! Next time I'll make a list of the titles and then shop around for cheaper prices.

I don't believe the ration system took any notice of allergies and goodness knows what vegetarians were supposed to do. I know a certain amount of unofficial trading went on - my grandmother was diabetic and she used to swap some of her sugar ration for cheese.

Veggies were off ration and theoretically you could eat as much as you wished but in reality there were shortages of certain veg and what you could buy was strictly home grown and seasonal - so a narrower selection than we are used to these days. I understand onions were particularly hard to find.

My other gran remembered recipes for cooking with paraffin in place of cooking fat. When the war was over the government had to hurriedly put out notices saying to stop using it because it was in fact bad for you! I don't suppose many people ate paraffin cake more than once though...

Don't forget fish& chips was off-ration so you could treat yourself if you had the money :snow_grin

thriftlady_2

Vegetarians were catered for, they had extra cheese, but I suspect you're right about allergy sufferers,of course its much more common now so I expect they were a rarity.

I know onions became very scarce at one point during the war, they were even raffled! Cucumbers were also rare unless you grew them yourself.This was because they aren't that nutritionally valuable so commercial growers weren't allowed to grow them,or at least only a few,they concentrated nutritionally rich crops like tomatoes.

thriftlady_2

An interest in rationing is not the only thing we have in common filigree,we have the same birthday too.
My ds1 has just done a school project on WW2 and is so relived I've stopped wurbling on about Woolton pie and mock duck bless him.