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?

Most normal people who grew up back then only ate one main meal a day - either lunch or dinner. That might help the flactuence

I had porridge for breakfast and a sandwich for lunch: I haven't had a main meal yet!

Have you seen this, @StoatofDisarray ?Very interesting!

I bookmarked it to watch tonight! Thanks :-)

How about 2 rabbits - well-fed on veg scraps - for a nice chicken for my big birthday meal ?

Can be made pie-ready, & make some very warm gloves as winter is coming.

I think rosehips are still around

For swaps, my grandmother in Glasgow used to swap her family's tea rations for cheese. Tea was always in demand and my granny didnt drink it and had five children to feed. She felt guilty about it as she knew she was taking precious protein from other families - but she still did it.

My mum was a wonderful cook and her main memory of rationing was how phenomenally boring the food was. I'll look back and see if you are using lard instead of nicer fats. My mum still used lard a lot when we were children. I never do.

Dinner tonight and a snack later: half a pheasant and 30g smoked streaky bacon, potatoes, leek, Brussels sprouts and kale fried in 15g dripping

Some of a rice pudding (2 pints whole milk, 15g marg, 20g sugar, grated nutmeg, 75g pudding rice)

Aww, no judgement on your grandma.

I'm using a pot of beef dripping which was the closest thing I could get round here at short notice, but I was bought up on lard.

I make a lovely rabbit pie :-) i don't think I could get my hands on the chicken you crave though, Georgy!

Is that a parrot?!

Yes, his name is Figgy (Figaro). He's a green-cheeked conure and he's always got his beak in everything.

Somewhere I still have my mum's ration book.

My mum was 7 when WW2 broke out so it was a major part of her childhood as rationing was still in place when she married at age 21 in 1953. They had to save rationing coupons for her dress and the afternoon tea served at the reception.

In East London where my mum lived during the war many products listed were not available such as rabbit and pheasant. Most people even in rural areas would have struggled to get pheasants as only the landed gentry had shooting rights (or people with connections to estates ... or illegal poachers). There was quite a bit of bartering that went on though.

If you lived in a big town there was very restricted access to fresh veg and fruit unless you were wealthy or had connections. If you had a garden then you dug it up to make a sort of allotment. My grandad dug up his prized garden to grow veg and to build an Anderson air-raid shelter to sleep in at night during the bombings.

Ration coupons also had to be used when your kids did cookery at school. I remember my mum talking about the added pressure of doing O level cookery and knowing that you were using up to a week's rations of some items for the exam to make the required Victoria sandwich cake and a supper dish (she made potato, cheese and onion bake) ... and also knowing that if it went wrong there would be nothing for the family dinner.

What strikes me is how much our (well my) taste in food has changed. I don’t think I could eat margarine or spam. Maybe if I was absolutely stuck. I suppose they were absolutely stuck but none of it is day to day food here now. Obviously would eat an apple 😳.

Really? Where did you find that out?

One of my relatives who went through the war in France told me margarine then was made out of fish oil, I would much prefer margarine you can get now !

I think they were kept open for two reasons

• good for morale (like keeping theatres open)
• central feeding stations were more effective (less waste, fuel economy)

Portion size was tightly controlled, and the range of dishes was often pretty narrow (or erratic, depending on what could be had)

Of course those who had been called up were fed by the military (I had 2 family members in the catering corps) and they perhaps got rather more weekly calories than civilians

There are lots of sources for this @sixteenfurryfeet - diaries, novels and memoirs as well as official histories. But see, for example:

Meals eaten away from home, whether in expensive West End restaurants or industrial canteens, were ‘off ration’ and a popular alternative with Londoners who could afford them. The conspicuous ability of the rich to enjoy almost pre-war levels of gastronomy at top hotels led to such resentment from Londoners at large that the government prevented restaurants charging more than 5/- a meal from 1942. This curbed the most ostentatious examples, though it did not completely solve the problem. Other restaurants fell more within the average Londoner’s experience, especially the country-wide chain of Lyons’ tea shops and Corner Houses. Reliable and reasonably priced, they provided a respectable meeting place for all and were popular right across the social spectrum

That's a relevant quote from here

that must have been so hard, rationing went on after the war until 1954

Thanks @Grawlix that's interesting, because both my parents were young adults living in London throughout the Blitz (both in reserved occupations) and when I was young I heard many tales of wartime bombing, rationing, wedding cakes made out of cardboard which hid a small sponge cake inside, the lot, but that was never mentioned.

This is so interesting, I really look forward to seeing your meals.

I'm far too young to remember rationing at 55, but I remember having dripping on bread as a child with salt and white pepper sprinkled on it and I really liked it. My mum (now 78) always saved the dripping from roast beef and we enjoyed it very much.

DD and I made Woolton pie once and we rather liked it.

We've started watching the 1940s house after a pps recommendation upthread. They aren't doing too well so far with their rations! You look like you're doing a great job so far OP!

Thanks! I'm really enjoying reading about everyone's experiences too.

This is another fantastic watch

My Nan was just 9 when the war started, so she remembered quite a lot from it and food was very important to her.

She spent the war in east London, wasn't evacuated and was from a poor working class family.

Said they had lots of rabbit - but always suspected it was cat as a skinned cat and rabbit were hard to distinguish.

They kept ducks and chickens for the eggs. When her dad killed one of the ducks for Xmas dinner none of the kids would eat it as it was their pet.

Generally didn't have much meat, it was eked out as much as possible. Think that they probably had access to lots of seafood as that was a traditional east end food. They also had a lot more offal than we eat today.