Ration Week part 6

Last night I made some kind of shepherd's pie (it was intended to be Woolton Pie but it was a little late in the evening to be starting on the pastry) with the moral support of my brother over the phone. It's his birthday, by the way--happy birthday, Brother!


I used the smallest baking dish I could find but it still wasn't very full. It turned out quite well nevertheless and I was able to use up a lot of odds and ends, which of course is the point of shepherd's pie.

I'll be the first to admit that this looks a little gross, particularly with the nearly fluorescent SPAM poking through. I promise it wasn't as repellent as it looks here!


When I got to mixing everything together, I realized I was really low on meat (used up the other half of my ration, which was one pork sausage); my brother suggested frying up a bit of bread to put in. I did that, but not having much left the broken-up bread still left it wanting...so I threw in some SPAM (gag). Thankfully it doesn't actually taste like much--it seems to really just be filler, and cut up small enough you can't really tell it's there. In the end, the lack of meat (or meat-like substances) worked in my favour. I love shepherd's pie but I've always found it tremendously heavy and consequently a little dissatisfying, even if one only has a small piece. In this case, it was mainly vegetables that made up the lower portion so it didn't have that horrible density which can be so sickening. I think I still need to fiddle with the proportions in the future, but it was good enough.



I have this weird habit of eating everything off really small plates, which I shouldn't have done in this case; it was a kind of messy dish and the gravy was at risk of sliding off the plate altogether once I actually cut into it! Ah, well. It was very tasty. I'm excited to make this again, and next time, to try filling up the whole dish.






As usual, let's end this thing off with a few links.

The first is a film from 1939 about what the hell to do with your ration books in the event that rationing would come into force (food rationing started Jan 8, 1940). It's 'hosted' by W.S. Morrison, who was the Food Minister from Sept 1939 to April 1940. After him came Lord Woolton, who was Food Minister until sometime in 1943, I think (I don't know why, but this strikes me as kind of funny--Lord Woolton on the cover of Time Magazine--March 26, 1945).

In the same video, there's a thing about sending off all your waste (paper, metal, bones, rubber, etc) for the war effort. Obviously I have no idea if these films originally followed one another, but the second part is cool--it's kind of stop-animation with bits of paper and metal piling up and a parcel apparently wrapping itself. Plus it's narrated as though it were a children's book which is very funny in a way that perhaps wasn't intended.


Finally, something about planes! There's a dude who's uploaded several episodes of "Dogfights" (among other things) onto YouTube. It's obviously in several parts because it's an hour-long program. Anyway, I found one of my favourites, which was about the Tuskeegee Airmen (those guys were AWESOME). If you have 44 minutes to watch the episode, here are the embedded videos in order (Insert disclaimer here--this is the property of the History Channel and I am not hosting these videos, merely providing links). I haven't watched it on YouTube, but I assume it's all there and working.


Part One:


Part Two:


Part Three:



Part Four:



Part Five: