Sunday 5 May 2013

Rations


Hullo! It has been a rather relaxing week - despite the revision and the essay deadlines - and I decided to give rationing a go. I spent a lot of time going hungry, which was not as bad as I thought it would be, and thoroughly enjoyed cooking for the week. This is the weekly ration for one adult per week.
Bacon & Ham: 4 oz
Meat: to the value of 1s6d (generally about 8-10oz, but as war went on the actual amount fluctuated)
Butter: 2 oz
Cheese: 2 oz
Margarine: 4 oz
Lard: 4 oz
Milk: 2-3 pints
Sugar: 8 oz
Preserves: 1 lb every 2 months
Tea: 2 oz
Eggs: 1 fresh egg per week (usually...)
Sweets: 12 oz every 4 weeks (if you were lucky)
These rations were subject to much change as the war went on. Offal - things such as kidney and liver - were not generally part of the meat ration and was often sold quite cheaply. Preserves could be bought, or exchanged for an extra sugar ration to make your own. The egg ration could be exchanged for chicken feed if you kept your own chickens. A child's ration was generally half of an adults, but there was extra provision in certain areas (e.g. milk)
On top of these rations there was a complicated points system, limiting a great number of things (tins of baked beans, for example), and food prices were under inflation of up to 25%.
Monday's dinner was... (drum roll, please) roast squirrel! Yes, you read correctly, I cooked a squirrel - two, in fact - and then ate it. It tastes surprisingly nice, quite a lot like chicken. I served it with the stuffing I wrote about in the last blog post, purple sprouting and beetroot leaves, and potato cakes.


Preparing the squirrel!

On Tuesday, I cooked a dinner for my grandparents, who came round to dinner with us. With the help of my trusty cookbooks in supplying a potato shortcrust pastry recipe (with some rosemary mixed in), I cooked up a liver and bacon pie, served with some cabbage. The cake wasn't a wartime creation, but rather a  gluten-free treat for my coeliac sister (and not made by me - my food is not particularly beautiful).

And to finish off this week's post, here are two photos of what I have been wearing -pretty much the same outfit every day, and a couple of bad-quality snaps of my now clean bedroom!

Jess xx

3 comments:

  1. those potato cakes look awesome. where can i get the recipe?

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    Replies
    1. This recipe makes about 8 decent sized cakes:
      1 smallish onion
      1 1/2 - 2 oz margarine
      1 lb mashed potato (I kept the skins on, but it is really up to you)
      5oz self-raising flour
      seasoning
      herbs - it really depends on what you're having them with, but a few handfuls of parsley tastes fantastic.

      Fry the onions in a little of the margarine until soft, then mix everything together until it reaches a dough-like consistency. You can hand-shape each cake, or roll the mixture into a sausage shape and cut into slices from there.

      They cook at 200 c or gas mark 6 for 15-20 minutes, or you can fry them.

      Jess xx

      Delete
  2. OH LORD! All the food looks absolutely to die for *drooool*
    You look very classy and pretty by the way :)

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