World War 2 Rationing Challenge: too much food?

[StoatofDisarray]

My partner has bet me I can't follow the UK world war 2 ration for November 1943 for a week.

I've just done the shopping for it and it seems like too much food. I can't work out what I'm doing wrong. Has anyone done this?

From Wikipedia
Canned Snoek was imported in large quantities into Great Britain and government marketing of the product was not successful and may have had a negative effect. In the end, the vast majority of 10 million tins of snoek from South African along with 9 million tins of Australian barracuda were sold off as cat food.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thyrsites

Dripping from roast beef is delicious! Delicacy of my childhood.

You’ve definitely taken one for the team @StoatofDisarray! Have a 🏅
You earned that toast and jam for sure.

It’s funny how dripping seems to evoke such transports of delight. My dear mum and dad always rhapsodised over it. One day we had some on toast and my DB and I were distinctly underwhelmed.

Thanks @Grawlix ! My partner thinks so too and he says he's going to bring me a bar of chocolate when he comes round, like an American soldier :-)

You did so well with the snoek!! Not even your gorgeous little parrot wanted in on it by the looks of things!

Love that face on the envelope op 😂

Sorry, but £12.50 for a portion of fish and chips??? Whaaat

I think perhaps the answer is that many people relied on sugared tea for their energy, at least in part. In NE England, well before WW2, this is what miners' wives would do, going short themselves so that they could feed their DH (the breadwinner) and the DC properly.

So I suspect this was just an extension of what the poorest families did anyway.

I don't know whether the sugar went up in the Autumn or not, so people could make preserves? Does anyone else know?

I’m sure there were provisions for jam making.
Perhaps we also forget the highly sugared stuff we buy.

I live in central London, near Borough Market. I know, right?

Good morning to anyone who is still reading this!

This is what I’ve got left of my ration (pic below). I’m having 15g beef dripping on 2 slices of toast for breakfast, the soup that I didn’t eat yesterday with more bread for lunch, and cottage pie for dinner with some leek and knackered-looking Brussels sprouts, all fried into a hash with 5g dripping. 5g isn’t really enough so I didn’t wash the pan up after yesterday’s hash to make use of the residual fat remaining in the pan.

I’m going shopping today and will do a bit of cooking for the week ahead: a batch of pea and bacon soup, and some beans as a side dish for a few meals.

@SequentialAnalyst

This was on a website I found with a timeline of rationing history:

May 1941: Cheese: 2 oz per week, sometimes 4 oz, and more for manual workers; sugar: extra granted for jam making.

Women would also scrimp and save to keep sugar back if they possibly could, to keep a small reserve for things like jam-making - but I don’t suppose that would have been easy. However, if nobody in the family had sugar in tea and they could use saccharine for sweetening stewed fruit etc, I guess it could be done.

The rationing ends today so I need to go to the shops and buy food for the upcoming week. Here are some things I learned this week which I will incorporate into my diet:

Beef dripping on toast is great for breakfast. Star ingredient of the week!!!
Homemade soup in a thermos is perfect for lunch (although I already have this) but add bread (which I don’t)
Eat carrots as snacks
Eat more game and offal. I already eat it occasionally but I always forget about it, probably because it’s best eaten fresh and I can only get to the market on Saturdays.
Find some reheatable bean/pulse-based side dishes to go with meat/fish/game on a weekday night
Be realistic about my willingness/ability to cook every evening.
Never -ever- run out of coffee.

Top tip: The right way to reheat cottage pie is not to try to emulate a cottage pie that just came out of the oven, but to make a hash out of it. Put a bit of beef dripping in a pan, fry up some leeks or onions and any leftover veg, tip in the cottage pie, season it and cook it as a hash, turning it over occasionally to preserve the crispy bits.

Well done

I suppose the way to try and eat more is seasonal. Not rationing extreme, but not summer fruits in December.

We have a pick you own strawberry farm nearby and picked and froze lots back in June. They have been amazing for having hot with Homemade waffles/ pancakes and Greek yogurt for weekend breakfast. And I don’t feel so bad eating non seasonal fruits

I agree! Preserving (whether pickling, drying or jamming) and freezing are the best way to extend the life of seasonal foods.

I read recently that historically, Spring was the time when most peasants starved in the UK because they'd eaten the food put away for winter but there were no early crops yet, which is something I hadn't realised before.

In fiction, people always starve and freeze in the snow, but the image of someone dying of starvation under a blue sky as the snowdrops and crocuses come out seems more abhorrent.

I read recently that historically, Spring was the time when most peasants starved in the UK because they'd eaten the food put away for winter but there were no early crops yet, which is something I hadn't realised before.

Uncoincidentally, Lent, a time traditionally associated with fasting, is at the time of least food availability in the northern hemisphere.

Yes, funny how that worked out, isn't it? :-/

Yes that makes sense. We also grow a fair amount, and even things that store well like butternut squash we have usually harvested around end September and they are gone by Feb/ March.

It's officially known as 'The Hunger Gap'

https://www.ecoandbeyond.co/articles/mind-gap-hunger-gap/

I love watching the Ruth Goodman series... Edwardian Farm, Tales From The green Valley etc and she is always talking about it!

Thanks, Pebble: I'll look out for her programmes.

Tales from the Green Valley is wonderful. Mind you, it’s set a few centuries earlier than WW2 rationing! We live in a house and setting very like the one where they recreated their household for the programme, and it gave me a shiver to imagine our predecessors dressed like that, working and cooking and living their lives in our/their rooms. A real timeslip moment.

When is it set? I went through a period of cooking c. 1810 foods once. Whig buns and seed cake FTW!

It’s set in the 17thc - apologies for the derail. But they did face very similar challenges of scarce food resources at certain times of the year.

I’m also very interested in hearing about the 1810 cooking….perhaps that’s another thread? I’ve got an original copy of Mrs Rundell’s A New System of Domestic Cookery and I’ve made a few cakes from that.

From the same makers is the series, 'Wartime Farm' though, which is living as on a farm in WW2 so very apt!

The rationing week ends today :-) so time to do shopping for the week.

I took my milk bottles back to the Hook’s Dairy stall at the market and got a few bits for next week. While I was browsing, I thought about the week, and here are 5 things I would I do differently if I lived on the November 1943 rations again.

1.	Plan and cook ahead but in smaller batches. 
2.	Do it during a holiday period when I’m off work. Because I knew I wouldn’t have much time for cooking and shopping during the week, I batch-cooked a cottage pie, a rice pudding, a fruit crumble and some soup for lunch (in a thermos) so I had to eat the same foods quite frequently during the week. If I did this again I’d do it during a holiday period so I could spend more time sourcing and preparing ingredients (even acorn coffee!) and taking more time to cook.
3.	I would definitely swap half the milk, 3/4 of the sugar, all the tea and all the boiled sweets for protein (offal), an onion and/or coffee. But not for snoek.
4.	Points: I would spend my 5 points as follows:  two rations of dried marrowfat peas, one ration of lentils, one ration of pudding rice, and 1 tin baked beans in tomato sauce.
5.	Game: I’d get a pheasant and a rabbit for a week. Anything I could conceivably have fished or foraged from a river or the seashore would be fair game too: trout, razor shell clams, crabs, mussels, oysters. And mushrooms and nuts are in season right now. 

My last check-in will be tomorrow night (Monday), when I will be dining on a surprise extra ration item!

Not a detail! I'm cueing it up to watch :-)

There are also the Victorian Farm and Edwardian Farm series by the same team.