Day 2

For the first half of the day paula was at work so only had to cook for myself.  It is important to note that many (or in fact most) people were fed luch at their workplace or school with no effect to their rations.  This means that rationing is tighter for me than it actually was in reality during the war.  In addition to free food at work people could also buy food at cafes, restaurants etc which also had no efect on their rations.  To prevent profitering by restaurants the government imposed strict rules on how much could be charged for a meal.

So where as the average person in the 1940s had to get 14 meals each a week from rations I have to make 21.

Breakfast

Porridge and tea again!

Lunch


Corned beef fritters, bread and a little marge.

It's begining to dawn on my that most of the wartime diet consists of brown discs.... Extremely tasty though.

Dinner

Steak and kidney pie with mash and cabbage.  Followed by leftover brown betty.

Basically this is the same as the traditional recipe.... but with more kidney than steak (just used half our diced beef) and with wartime recipe pastry.

A note on gravy....

We've had to cheat a little on the gravy.  As this is our first week we are starting out without many of the things that would be kept in a wartime kitchen, one of which is the juices saved from cooking meat.  This would be saved each week to cook the next week's gravey.  Bisto was popular during the war but as very different to the product we have today.  Wartime Bisto contained only dry stock (like oxo), seasoning and thickener.  This product (also known as gravy browning) has proved almost impossible to find today, modern Bisto contains mainy more ingredients including fat and can be used as gravy alone without having to mix it with meat juices.

So until we have enough stored stock, and preferably a source of traditional gravy browning we have to compromise.