Ration Week part 1

Just for shits and giggles (or bubbles and squeaks...), I've decided to try a week of eating what I might have been consuming had I lived in WW2 Britain (and beyond that--they had rationing in to the '50s). It's something I've been meaning to do for a while and I'm finally getting around to it.

Here are some of the meals so far:
Some kind of stew (carrots, potatoes, cabbage, onion in chicken broth). This wasn't so bad--or even WW2-specific-- but it was really, really bland. I blame this on the cabbage, which seems to suck the flavour right out of everything! Anyway, it was sort of a modified/simplified version of Emergency Meal no. 2 for 100 People; I've used chicken instead of beef, fewer vegetables (no cauliflower, for instance) and there's no bread in it because I didn't have any when I made it. Oh, and I only made it for one person! Actually, there turned out to be far more than I would have thought, largely owing to the amount of broth I ended up with. So, maybe not enough for 100 people, but several. Needless to say, I got numerous meals out of it. Soup was strongly encouraged, not only because it was easy and you could dump all your leftovers in, but because it was the easiest thing to heat up and eat for people running out to do shifts early in the morning or late at night.



Today's lunch was much more characteristic of the era and location: Fish paste sandwich (sardine). I can't think of a more revolting phrase than 'fish paste,' and it tasted dreadful on its own. I made a sandwich filler common of the time: two parts grated carrot to one part grated cabbage, bound by mustard. Other binding options I found were chutney and/or sweet pickle, neither of which I had. The filler was gross on its own as well, but all assembled together it was a pretty fine sandwich, although strictly speaking I don't like sardines--they're just way too salty. There's some left over for tomorrow's lunch.




(Above: sandwich filler and fish paste; Left: open-faced fish paste sandwich)










Some other things I'm hoping to try are Woolton Pie (named after the food minister, Lord Woolton--it was apparently a very unpopular dish though there remains a great deal of reference to it), carrot fudge, various cakes with weird supplements. I have a feeling I'll be sick of cabbage very soon. I keep expecting everything to be on the disgusting side, though the approximate five meals I've had so far have been fine and dandy--they're the sorts of things that sound worse than they taste--but maybe it's because I haven't reached SPAM recipes yet.

The real problem I'm having is rationing coffee, cigarettes and beer (I'm pretty much cutting out the latter altogether which, if you know me, is surprising). Although coffee wasn't rationed, it was quite expensive, which of course meant that it was rationed because of that fact. There are a lot of things that I can't find over here, like Camp coffee, a coffee substitute made, to my memory, from coffee, sugar and chicory (it's still sold today, by the by; it's been in production since 1885).

Also--and I fully realize that this is stupid of me--I'm embarrassed to go buy SPAM! I'd want to say to anyone who looks in my shopping basket, 'Look, I don't actually like SPAM, it's just that I'm pretending that there's nothing else to eat,' which of course would be ridiculous.

If anyone stumbles across this and has some suggestions for recipes, send them along!

On a note unrelated to culinary adventures, here's a news story I thought was cool.