Saturday 7 July 2012

And we think we are being frugal.....

In these times of being frugal, I thought I would let you see an extract from a Wartime Cookery Book collated by Ambrose Heath. The person sending in a handy hint, describes how she made her meat ration for one week, for 4 people, stretch over 3 days. This book was published in 1941 but it is not stated what week she was referring to but circumstances were quite obviously dire.


My entire family meat ration for the week was just 1lb of stewing steak (1s 4d in total – working out at 4d each for the week). I made this stretch to feed us all over 3 days.

Our first meal was a pasty each, using 1/3rd of the meat with turnip and potato added. This was served with sprouts and gravy. The second meal was a Beef Olive. The meat was hammered out to make a thin sheet before being stuffed with bread crumbs, parsley and herbs and rolled up. It was served with carrots, sprouts and suet dumplings. The final meat meal was Steak and Leek Pudding alternating the final 3rd of the meat in layers of leeks and sliced potatoes. Also served with sprouts”.

I presume for the other 4 days they had vegetarian based meals of which numerous ones were available to choose from.
Well done her is all I can say.
I was going to remove my war time diary and other information as I didn't think anyone was reading it. However, a few people have now started to comment so I shall carry on. Their comments have made me re-read my wartime cookery books (many original that took some hunting down!). I thought I might start to show you some when I make them in case any appeal to or are of use to you.

You will notice a new page at the top of my blog. I have linked to Bev at Happyowls to bring you some of her Pro Point Recipes.

12 comments:

  1. How fascinating. I've often wondered about how much meat was stretched during wartime and it's incredible to think how much we take it for granted. Thanks for sharing this - it has reinforced my mind to eat less meat and to make things stretch more.

    K xx

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  2. Please don't take your diary down, I've found it very interesting. I love old cookbooks..I used to look at 17th & 18th century ones they had in the library. There were certainly some weird and wonderful dishes.

    Mrs S.

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  3. I love reading the wartime recipes...for both ideas and nostalgia. Thank you for the time and trouble X

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  4. I am reading Nella Last's War at the moment and it certainly reminds you of just how frugal people had to be.
    Carol xx

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  5. Oh no, please don't remove your war time pages and diaries!! I only found you yesterday and spent some of last evening thoroughly enjoying reading your Year 1 & 2 pages

    In fact, I was telling my mum about your blog only half an hour ago or so - I am really enjoying reading your posts

    I've always felt that the war time rationed diet was so much more healthy than our diets today. And having read this post it really undermines my feeling that we ought to be ashamed about the amount of food we throw away

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  6. Thanks for your positive comments folks, am glad you are enjoying them. As well as the odd recipe being added to my new Pro Point page above, I am thinking of doing a Wartime one as well sometime in the future.

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  7. Please don't remove your pages. I re read them at regular intervals. In fact the more the merrier as far as I am concerned!! I so enjoy reading your blog, I'm looking forward to the new 'bits' now.

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  8. My mum and dad tell me all about the war rationing and one thing is for sure, the incidence of obesity was far less then!! Maybe they ought to bring back rationing again!

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  9. Actually her meals sound delicious!

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    1. The ones we have tried are very nice.

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  10. Please don't take your war time diaries down! I love reading (and re-reading) them! They give me inspiration and also ideas :). Thank you for sharing them with us all!

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    1. Glad you are enjoying them. Some entries are a lot shorter than others due to lack of paper in war time! Next bit due end of July.

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