Home gardening offers ways to trim grocery costs [Survival Today, an on going thread]

Americans finding soaring food prices hard to stomach can battle back by growing their own food. [Click image for a larger version] Dean Fosdick Dean Fosdick

Home vegetable gardens appear to be booming as a result of the twin movements to eat local and pinch pennies.

At the Southeastern Flower Show in Atlanta this winter, D. Landreth Seed Co. of New Freedom, Pa., sold three to four times more seed packets than last year, says Barb Melera, president. "This is the first time I've ever heard people say, 'I can grow this more cheaply than I can buy it in the supermarket.' That's a 180-degree turn from the norm."

Roger Doiron, a gardener and fresh-food advocate from Scarborough, Maine, said he turned $85 worth of seeds into more than six months of vegetables for his family of five.

A year later, he says, the family still had "several quarts of tomato sauce, bags of mixed vegetables and ice-cube trays of pesto in the freezer; 20 heads of garlic, a five-gallon crock of sauerkraut, more homegrown hot-pepper sauce than one family could comfortably eat in a year and three sorts of squash, which we make into soups, stews and bread."

She compares the current period of market uncertainty with that of the early- to mid-20th century when the concept of victory gardens became popular.

"A lot of companies during the world wars and the Great Depression era encouraged vegetable gardening as a way of addressing layoffs, reduced wages and such," she says. "Some companies, like U.S. Steel, made gardens available at the workplace. Railroads provided easements they'd rent to employees and others for gardening."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/ww2peopleswar/stories/31/a4538531.shtml

Some Wartime Recipes
by Leicestershire Library Services - Coalville Library
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Contributed by
Leicestershire Library Services - Coalville Library
Article ID:
A4538531
Contributed on:
25 July 2005

STEAMED CUSTARD

4 eggs
1 pint milk
1-2 level tablespoons sugar
Flavouring

METHOD- Beat teh eggs and sugar very thoroughly. Heat the milk and, when boiling, pour it very gradually on to the eggs, stirring well all the time. Add the flavouring and pour into a greased cup or mould. Steam in a saucepan until set.

COQUET PUDDING

1/2 lb potatoes
1 1/2 ozs margarine
1 1/2 ozs sugar
2 eggs (reconstituted or use dry)
1/2 pint household milk
1 tablespoon dried fruit or jam

Cook and mash potatoes with margarine. Add sugar and eggs, beating well. Mix in milk and fruit and pour into a greased pie dish. Bake in a moderate oven for 30 minutes (Sufficient for 4).

WHEATMEALIES

1/2 dozen slices national bread 3/4 in thick.

Cut into 1/4 in squares. Put on a baking sheet and bake in a slow oven till brown and crisp. Store in a tin.

BACON AND POTATO CAKES

8 ozs cooked mashed potato
2 ozs chopped grilled bacon
Seasoning

Mix together and form into cakes, roll in crumbs and either fry or bake in a hot oven.

LANCASHIRE HOTPOT

6 ozs scrag end mutton
12ozs sliced carrots and turnips
8 ozs sliced potatoes
Stock or vegetable water
Salt and pepper

Put the ingredients in layers in a casserole, finishing with the layers of potatoes. Add stock to come halfway up casserole. Cover with greased paper and bake 2 hours in a moderate oven.

‘WW2 People’s War is an online archive of wartime memories contributed by members of the public and gathered by the BBC. The archive can be found at bbc.co.uk/ww2peopleswar’

http://www.bbc.co.uk/ww2peopleswar/stories/92/a1110592.shtml

Strange Things on the Dinner Tableicon for Recommended story
by Researcher 234723
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Contributed by
Researcher 234723
People in story:
Anne Butcher
Background to story:
Civilian
Article ID:
A1110592
Contributed on:
15 July 2003

By Anne Addison (Fulwell Writers’ Circle)

Memory plays some strange tricks on us and, given long enough, it blurs the edges of the sad, unpleasant, or uncomfortable happenings in our lives. Hence the wave of nostalgia regarding everyday life during WW2. It is even difficult now to remember that going without all the good things in life was not really fun - we just made the best of a bad job since it was useless to grumble. Thus today we look back and laugh at what we endured.
Make do and mend

Clothes were severely rationed, so everyone improvised wherever possible and the slogan ‘Make do and mend’ was designed to encourage people to do just that. I remember my delight in coming across a dress which, the shop-owner assured me, required no coupons at all - although this was reflected in the price. It was only when I got it home I realised it was made from dyed hessian.

Shoes were made with wooden soles because that way they required fewer clothing coupons. There was quite an art in walking in them - a rocking step needed to be developed. Later, hinges were added, but these were unsuccessful as small stones became wedged in the hinge and the wearer was left having to hobble on the toe section until the offending object could be removed. The clatter they made was overcome by attaching an extra sole cut from an old bicycle tyre.

Barrage balloon material made good waterproof macs so when a damaged one came down it quickly went missing. Silk parachutes, which were constructed from triangles of material, could be unpicked, re-stitched into rectangles and re-cut to make luxurious underwear. Consequently, when an airman was seen to bail out there was frequently a race between the authorities and civilians to recover the parachute, while sometimes a portion could be bought on the black market.
When the elastic snaps…

Worst of all was the shortage of accessories for clothing and the especially vital elastic was very difficult to obtain. What problems this caused; yet what ingenuity and inventiveness it inspired! Tape, string, cord, or buttons and faith had to be relied upon to hold up garments. Nor was it any use depending upon a safety pin. These, too, were hard to come by, since all metal was needed for munitions. When a suspender gave way, a button or small coin twisted into the top of the stocking served as an emergency fastening, but most of the time girls went stockingless, painting their legs with make-up instead. This dried very powdery and rubbed off on the bedclothes, despite the constant pleas by mothers to their daughters to remove it before going to bed. (Not all houses had indoor plumbing and even if they did, bath water was restricted to a depth of five inches - try it!)

The greatest humiliation could come when the fastening on panties suddenly gave way, yet the resourceful girl soon learned to cope even with this. She had a choice of three courses of action. She could step neatly out and quickly pocket them; she could leave them lying and walk on calmly, pretending they weren’t hers; or, immediately she felt that PING she could clamp one hand in a vice-like grip on her waist, preferably in a pocket, and keep it there until she reached some suitable place of sanctuary.

I was running for a bus, with my boyfriend at the time, when I experienced this. Faltering for only a fraction of a second I thrust my hand into my pocket and managed to grab the offending garment. ‘Come on,’ he urged. ‘We’ll miss it. What’s wrong?’

‘Stitch,’ I muttered - which I suppose was true enough - and clung on like a limpet until we reached the cinema where I could retire modestly to the Ladies!
Strange things on the dinner table

Over-riding all these trifling discomforts was the non-stop foraging by the housewife to provide some variety in her family’s meals. I cannot recall ever being literally hungry, but the country had been reliant upon imports, which were now impossible because of the sea blockade. Everything was scrupulously rationed and we ate some strange things to supplement our diet.

Tea tablets were used to make the tea look stronger; babies’ dried milk or ‘National’ milk was added if it could be obtained; and saccharine was used as a sweetener. Some even resorted to using honey or jam. What a concoction - but we drank it. Bread was heavy and a dull grey colour, but it, too, was rationed - so we ate it.

Sweets were devised from a mixture of dried milk and peppermint essence with a little sugar or icing sugar if available. Grated carrots replaced fruit in a Christmas or birthday cake, while a substitute almond paste was made from ground rice or semolina mixed with a little icing sugar and almond essence. Dried egg powder was used as a raising agent, and this same dried egg could be reconstituted and fried, yielding a dull, yellow, rubbery-like apology for the light and fluffy real thing - but there was nothing else, so we ate it.

Bean pies and lentil rissoles provided protein to eke out our meagre meat ration, and the horse-meat shop, which previously had sold its products only for dogs, now bore a notice on some of its joints occasionally, ‘Fit for Human Consumption’. This horse-meat was not rationed, but it did have to be queued for and sure enough eventually it appeared on our table. It had to be cooked for a long time and even then it was still tough. Nevertheless, it did not get thrown out.

In complete contrast, one highlight for me was the coming of spam from America. It was an oasis in our desert of mediocrity; an elixir in our sea of austerity. It seems to me that it was meatier, juicier, and much tastier than it is now. (Tricks of memory again, no doubt.) We ate it in sandwiches; we ate it fried with chips; cold with salad; chopped in spam-and-egg pies, until, of course, it ceased to provide the variety we longed for, but I never tired of it.
Whale meat - completely inedible

The benefits of eating fish were widely proclaimed, but again it was very scarce. Fishing was a dangerous occupation in mine-laden waters and the pier was a prohibited area, so fresh fish was a novelty and a luxury.

The ultimate came, however, when the government hit on the bright idea of combining fish and meat and urged us to eat whale meat. Where, or how, the whales were caught and brought to England I do not know. There must be a limit to how much whale one ship can carry, and one whale alone would provide a lot of whale steaks, but newspapers and the wireless told us how to prepare and cook the stuff, and sure enough, in due course, it appeared in the shops. From there, inevitably, it found its way onto our table.

It had been soaked overnight, steam-cooked, and soaked again, then blanketed with a sauce, but still it tasted exactly what it sounds like - tough meat with a distinctly fishy flavour, ugh. Just this once the next-door’s cat ate it!

Yes, we laugh about it all now, yet after all these years I still cannot bear to see good food wasted or thrown away - but I think I could make an exception with whale meat.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/ww2peopleswar/stories/26/a2753426.shtml

FOOD for Thoughtsicon for Recommended story
by swallow
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Archive List > International Friendships

Archive List > British Army

Archive List > United Kingdom > Devon

Archive List > United Kingdom > Surrey

Contributed by
swallow
People in story:
Peter Faggetter and Peggy Faggetter
Location of story:
Chaldon, Surrey, Isle of Wight & Devon
Background to story:
Army
Article ID:
A2753426
Contributed on:
16 June 2004

Canadian soldiers were billetted in some requisitioned houses in our country village during 1940, and not only were they regarded as local defence troops - due to our regiments having gone to France - they were useful guarding eyes during the Battle of Britain and ‘blitz’ periods too. More importantly to my skinny little frame was that their lavish cook-house was a mere hundred yards away: here my sister and I would often get a nourishing man-sized feed for they were all good natured and generous chaps. (Thanks).
But regardless of how much I ate, meat was very reluctant to grow on my bones. Right from the earliest days I remained the weedy ‘chip’ of the four in our family. Unlike my sister and brothers, I looked half starved. This I’m sure influenced the likeable cook with the singing voice for on sighting Peg he instantly broke into his ‘Peggy O’Neal was the girl he could steal, etc.’, then fill our mess tins to overflowing with luscious rice pudding. Here was the all time ‘master’ of the paddy grains. First he would fast boil the dixie of rice as if working-up a steam locomotive, then added bags and bags of sugar, tins and tins of thick creamy milk, super custard powder and the fattest and biggest sultanas imaginable. A recipe for a double pot belly and no mistake: even Winston Churchill would have demanded a second helping.

At the age of 14 years I was given into slavery as odd job boy in a high class hotel. The live in job with ten shillings pay proved that - while being under-sized in all dimensions - I was willing, polite, clean, adaptable and respectful. These traits prompted an upgrading ticket to that of boy waiter, and, after some daring cutting and juggling of man-sized trousers and white jacket I was bow tie presentable for the dining room tables. But only just, for, without a lie, most of my entire body (?) could fit into one leg of the black trousers. However, plied in all clownish respects, a useful trade was in the making.

The ‘upper crust’ hotel was full of mainly elderly ladies whose lavish life-styles ad been shouldered aside for the military to commandeer their houses,hence there was much grumbling and discontent. Some saw no reason for food rationing purely because of a war; and why butter and marmalade of all things. So with their taste buds conditioned to fine foods, much of what the kitchen could come up with was rejected on sight. This meant that I could always eat well enough; and it was common for me to eat five herrings or kippers at a breakfast sitting, plus helpings of scrambled egg made from American powdered eggs. And of course they couldn’t eat working-class cod! ‘Cod’ in astonished tone; or Tripe! What’s that??’ Following my explanation a scream of shock then scattered the condiments. But the rationing was awful; minimal butter, cheese, sugar and jam - the list was endless, and there was little meat or bacon to dirty a plate not hosting an egg once a week. Fish wasn’t rationed; but to them fish meant trout or salmon (never saw one). But one day believe it or not I dip tasted some caviar! Gorgeous... The proprietor was prone to try anything, (being Jewish and rich) but the worst of all was eating the white sour milk cheese that had hung in a cloth bag for a week then placed in a china dish till it was crawling with maggots. Spread on toast, he relished the wriggling mess. Then there was the hare!!, then a pheasant on the move....

Still undersized I volunteered for the army when reaching 171/2 years. Sportingly they accepted my 8 stone with pitiful looks but no quibble and January 1945 saw my bones clad in khaki for parade ground bashing. By joining early one would avoid being called up to work in the ‘Bevan boys’ coal mines - a very daunting prospect in dirty Welsh hills. Besides I was wanting my share of the Big Show and wherever that might take me. I’d certainly get paid and fed with better than civvy rations and hopefully see my way into the incomparable sky.

Into April and May in the Isle of Wight our training took us frequently onto Brighstone downs. It was here that we learned that War with Germany was over, for instead of normal tea and sandwich picnic on dusty grass, the lorry turned up with bread and butter and boxes of sardines! I’ve never seen so many tins of sardines in oil, and we could help ourselves to all we wanted. Well, with tinned food rationed for many years - and rarely seeing the tasty sardines - I ate three tins and put four in my pack for later. I’d known all along that food was being hoarded in great dumps around England, and now as if to prove me right we can have our fill. There had even been a food ‘dump’ in a wood of our Surrey village early in the WAR: it was suddenly there as it were; a secret, see. But we got to know about it, and while everybody was half-starved of goodies the great piles grew and grew. The country could hve survived on the hoarded food for several years if Germany ad completely cut the sea supplies.
But now with the Continent liberated, and starving, the food had to be shared and stretched; so the rationing would have to continue. The long suffering people had to make do with shortages.

A few months after the sardines hand out our company was on live firing exercises on Dartmoor. It was a bit cool due to autumn November but I was one of a few who remained within the hutted camp for, due to my hotel waiter past, I and a cook operated the Officers mini Mess. So while they all played with guns and bullets and grenades out in the cold we were having it cushy indoors with spoons and forks and cooking food. Lovely life. Towards the end of our short Devon excursion our officer in charge took a pair of lorries and explosives to blow the doors off a Royal Navy food depot/dump they had found while training. He had plenty of supporters that I do know, and the lorries came back stacked out with boxs of tinned food for a great share out. Strangely enough the load consisted solely of Australian tinned peaches, and tinned pilchards of unknown origin. But what the hell, it was time to unload the lorries and get tucked into the luscious peaches. I know I had five tins of fruit and several of the fish, the first for many years.
The next day we heard the police knew the culprits of the moorlands felony and would be coming to retrieve. Some hope! I was already fully stuffed and feeling pot-bellied peeky, and like the rest, I was digging some in till the blue peril be departed. It was agreed that we’d collectively accept involvement and that we were sorry, and hand in a remaining tin to prove it. (Not me)

Duly the policeman sitting in a hut questioned each of us in turn as he wrote down our names and number in a long growing list. ‘And how many tins did you have, and how many still in your possession, he then asked. ‘None - look!!’ I said, lifting my shirt to show the peach pregnancy. Still smiling he wrote down something in what looked like four letters (Liar?), then dismissed me. Of course there was much laughter going on as you can imagine for we all knew that only our officers would get their knuckles rapped. Although perhaps a Courts Martial for the Major? Whatever, we never heard anything more of the business, and my sailors tucker resurfaced in due course to celebrate its deserved liberation from the Dartmoor prison.

end

http://www.bbc.co.uk/ww2peopleswar/stories/76/a2715176.shtml

Malnutrition Milkicon for Recommended story
by terencenunn
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Archive List > United Kingdom > South West Wales

Contributed by
terencenunn
People in story:
Terence Nunn and others
Location of story:
Glamorgan, South Wales
Background to story:
Civilian
Article ID:
A2715176
Contributed on:
07 June 2004

My second period of evacuation in a South Wales village during World War 2 was characterised by a perpetual gnawing hunger. Mrs. Pugh, our foster-mother, was a hypochondriac who evidently felt sincerely that she needed more than we evacuees did the eggs, butter, meat and cheese that our ration books provided. Our meagre diet consisted of watery stews, spam fritters covered in floury white sauce and cabbage that had been stewed into submission. What vitamins we consumed came from the vegetables we managed to steal from the local allotments and wolf down raw.

Though I had so far had few of the illnesses of childhood, I now fell prey to a number of distressing conditions. One afternoon while enthroned on the outside lavatory I was alarmed and disgusted to see a quantity of tiny white sinuous creatures slithering away from me across the wooden seat. I was infested with worms!

They were very small worms but I remembered the medicine man in the market of the nearby town, with his kerbside stall stacked with tall glass jars containing huge, unspeakable white things that he maintained were tapeworms removed by him personally from ailing patients unwise enough not to have taken regular doses of his panacea, price one shilling per bottle. Would I have to be cut open to have nameless horrors removed from my insides?
Fortunately, nothing so drastic was necessary; I was merely put on a course of worm-cakes. These masqueraded as sweets and were composed of chocolate of an unpleasant bitterness, covered with hundreds-and- thousands. I tried to give them away but found no takers, even at a time when the sweet-ration was virtually non-existent. The worms didn’t like them either, for they soon deserted me.

It was not long before they were replaced by a parasite at the other anatomical extreme: the head-louse or nit. All of us children caught them, even we boys with our close-cropped heads. The cure was several soakings in paraffin, interspersed with much painful combing by Mrs. Pugh’s elder daughters with a metal toothcomb which scraped the skull sore in an effort to remove the eggs which clung to individual hairs. The smell of the paraffin in your hair proclaimed to everyone with whom you came in contact your shame in being lousy.

There seemed no end to our troubles; it was like the plagues of Egypt. The next misfortune afflicted only my fellow-evacuee Brian and myself, and was a severely irritating rash. This itched unbearably, so that we scratched it continually, eventually breaking the skin and leaving it a mass of scabs. The excellent visiting school doctors diagnosed impetigo, and in due course we were both taken by bus to a clinic in a small town whose Welsh name was pronounced, appropriately, ‘Ponty-clean’.

There, two rather charming young nurses took us into a dank bathroom which smelled of steam and had cracked white tiles on the walls. They were lovely girls but they stood no nonsense.

‘Come along, then, boyo, let’s be ‘avin’ ewe!’ they said briskly, and without ceremony stripped us naked and plunged us together into a bath whose temperature, in contrast to our normal weekly tepid ablutions in a tin bath before the kitchen fire, seemed to be around boiling-point. Our embarrassment at having our nudity displayed to these young ladies was pushed from our minds by the agonising effect of the scalding hot water on just those parts that we would have preferred to have kept modestly hidden.

With professional callousness the young nurses pressed our burning, prickling bodies under the water till only our heads showed, then scrubbed us all over with bright scarlet carbolic soap. When we at last emerged from the bath our impetigo showed up as livid red patches, which our tormentors rubbed with a very smelly ointment. Within a few days of this treatment our skin began to clear up.

In spite of the war, the school medical services were comprehensive and efficient. Once a month or so, the white-coated doctors would visit Gwenerol Elementary School and we would all queue up, naked to the waist and shivering, to be measured and weighed and to have things like the flat wooden ice-cream spoons of happy memory shoved down our throats as we gagged an ‘Aaah!’.

On one such occasion the doctors spent more time than usual over a handful of children, including Brian and me. They squeezed our arms, poked our chests, tapped our backs and peered into our eyes and mouths. Finally they pronounced us to be suffering from something fearful-sounding called ‘malnutrition’. This, it turned out, was doctors’ language for not getting enough to eat.

By way of our schoolmates, this information was soon common knowledge the length of our road, to Mrs. Pugh’s mortification.

‘I’m sure they don’t want for nothin’,’ she would tell her acquaintances, as though the state of affairs was due to our own wilfulness. ‘I treat them exactly the same as my own daughters!’

Though this was not true, the siphoning off of our rations of eggs and butter was probably less the cause of our malnutrition than Mrs. Pugh’s almost complete ineptitude as a cook.
Our new ailment was not infectious and did not reflect on our personal cleanliness and so Brian and I were happy to enlarge on our interesting condition to any of Mrs. Pugh’s neighbours who might stop us in the street. They would shake their heads slowly in self-righteous censure and crocodile pity as we disloyally compared Mrs. Pugh’s cooking with the delicious smells which daily seeped into the school playground from the girls’ ‘domestic science’ classes.

The remedy for malnutrition was an unpleasant one, doubtless thought up by some mad scientist at the Ministry of Health. It was not, as might be imagined, more and better food, but a disgusting concoction known as ‘malnutrition milk’. I was never a lover of school milk, disliking the smelly crates of third-of-a-pint bottles of cold, white liquid for which we queued at school every morning. But malnutrition milk was much worse; not only was it sour and bitter, having been doctored with some kind of chemical additive which tasted like Epsom salts, but it came in huge pint bottles, one per boy, specially delivered to the school for our benefit in place of the normal school milk.

In our class there were only three or four of us who took malnutrition milk. We were the butts of our classmates, who took a sadistic pleasure in our grimaces as we tried to get the vile stuff down.

‘Drink it up, now!’ they would chirp gleefully, until we threatened to break the bottles over their heads. We soon found a way out; we would leave the bottles on the shelf above the classroom radiator, so that by the afternoon the heat would have made the milk undrinkable.

‘Can’t drink it, sir! It’s gone sour!’

Our form-master, perhaps secretly sympathising with us, appeared to turn a blind eye to the subterfuge. Every day the bottles were left on the shelf, as though to be drunk later; every day they would go sour and every day they would be thrown away. This happy modus vivendi might have gone on indefinitely had not Speccy, our headmaster, come into the classroom one afternoon and seen the short row of untouched milk-bottles on the shelf above the radiator. His glasses flashed in their busybody way.

‘What are those bottles doing on the shelf there?’

‘Mumble, mumble, sir.’

‘Speak up, boy, speak up!’

‘Malnutrition milk, sir.’

‘Mall-new-trish-un milk?’ The syllables rolled ominously off his tongue. ‘And what are bottles of mall-new-trish-un milk doing on the shelf at three in the afternoon? They should have been drunk at morning break!’

‘Mumble, mumble, sir.’

‘Sour? Gone sour, have they? Not surprising, is it? Stand up the boys to whom this milk belongs!’

We stood up guiltily, to the secret delight of the other boys.

‘This milk would not have gone sour if it had been drunk at the proper time! If you would not drink it this morning then you must drink it now!’ Speccy pointed at one of the standing boys.

‘You, boy! Get your bottle and drink it up!’

We looked on in horror as the wretched boy went white. It would be our turn soon. The lad took a bottle from the shelf, opened it and raised it to his lips. The stuff did not even go sour like ordinary milk but turned into a greyish, lumpy mess.

Desperately, the boy swallowed mouthful after mouthful of the disgusting slime, until he had drunk half the pint bottle. He lowered it from his mouth and, swaying slightly, looked straight ahead at Speccy for what seemed like a very long moment. Then, without warning, he vomited noisily and messily all over the boy sitting in front of him.

To our relief, that was the end of malnutrition milk; it was never supplied to us again. After that, we relied for our extra vitamins on the consumption at home of cod-liver oil, fishy and unpleasant out of a teaspoon, or cod-liver oil and malt, fishy, unpleasant and sweet out of a dessertspoon. Neither of them was half as bad as ‘malnutrition milk’.

The entire war is covered in stories at this site....granny

http://atschool.eduweb.co.uk/chatback/english/food/recipes.html

Mock Goose

Quantity 4 helpings

Ingredients
1 and a half lb Potatoes
2 large cooking apples
4 oz cheese
half a teaspoon dried sage
salt and pepper
three quarters of a pint vegetable stock
1 tablespoon flour

Cooking time 1 hour

Scrub and slice potatoes thinly, slice apples, grate cheese. Grease a fireproof dish, place a layer of potatoes on it, cover with apples and a little sage, season lightly and sprinkle with cheese, repeat layers leaving potat oes and cheese to cover. Pour in half a pint of the stock and cook in a moderate oven for three quarters of an hour. Blend flour with remainder of the stock, pour into dish and cook for another quarter hour. Serve as a main dish with a green vegetable.

Cheese Pudding

Cooking time 30 mins

Quantity 4 helpings

Ingredients Half a pint milk or household milk
2 eggs (2 level tblspns of dried egg mixed with 4 tablespoons water)
4 oz grated cheese
1 breakfastcup breadcrumbs
salt and pepper
quarter teaspoon dried mustard.

Add the milk to the egg mixture and stir in the other ingredients. Pour into a greased dish and cook for about 30 minutes in a moderately hot oven until brown and set.

Fish Paste

Ingredients

3 oz cooked fresh-salted cod
2 oz mashed potatoes
1 oz softened margarine
2 teaspoons Worcestershire sauce pepper

Flake the fish finely with a fork or put through the mincer and beat into the potato until the mixture is smooth and creamy. Then beat in the margarine and Worcestershire sauce and a little pepper. Use for sandwiches

Pea puree pancakes

Cooking time 25 minutes

Quantity 4 helpings

Ingredients 1 lb peas (fresh, dried or tinned)
half a teaspoon sugar
dab of margarine
1 desertspoon chopped mint
salt and pepper
pancakes or fried croutons
2 oz grated cheese

Cook the peas until tender. Add a little sugar to the water as this brings out the flavour of the peas. Drain and mash the peas and then mix in the margarine, mint and seasoning. When you’ve made the pancakes spread the puree between the two as though for a sandwich and serve with grated cheese. Alternatively you could serve the puree very hot in bowls like a soup adding croutons. The croutons are made by cutting bread into cubes and frying in very hot fat

Beetroot Pudding

Cooking time 35/40 minutes

Quantity 4 helpings

Ingredients 6 oz wheatmeal flour
half a teaspoon of baking powder
1 oz sugar
4 oz finely grated raw beetroot
half oz of margarine

Just the job to make your sugar ration go further! First mix flour and baking powder, rub in the margarine, then add sugar and grated beetroot.
Now mix all the ingredients to a soft cake consistency with 3 or 4 tablespoons of milk. Add a few drops of flavouring essence if you have it. Turn the mixture into a greased pie dish or tin and bake in a moderate oven for 35 minutes. This pudding tastes equally good hot or cold.

Grilled Pigeon

Cooking time 25/30 minutes

Quantity One per person

Ingredients Some lard or margarine
Chopped herbs (such as rosemary or thyme)

Pigeons for grilling must be very young, when they are often known as ‘squabs’.

Wash and dry the birds and split lengthways. Season, then brush the birds generously with melted fat.

Preheat the grill and place the birds with the skin side uppermost on the grill pan. Cook for 5 minutes. Turn them over and brush the underside with more fat. Continue cooking for a further 5 minutes, then turn the birds over once more and cook until tender.

To give more flavour to the flesh a few chopped herbs can be mixed with the melted fat. Serve the pigeons with redcurrent or apple jelly.

Khasha and Fish soup

Ingredients A fish or two
Water
Whatever else you can get

In 1939 Poland was attacked by Germany and Russia simultaneously. At the age of 14 Felix Chustecki was deported with his family from their home in Poland to a Russian slave labour camp. Here he describes their food rations.

“We were a month in the cattle truck while we were travelling east towards Siberia. Food was very poor quality and sometimes non-existent - just water. Sometimes a soldier might give us a few fish or potatoes and we could make a soup.

We finally arrived in a settlement camp - but with hard labour attached to it because my father fought against the Russians in the 1930s.

Work was terrible, because your conditions and rations depended on how hard you worked. We each had 1 pound of bread every day, usually only half-baked, but if you could scrape together some kopeks you could buy extra food from a shop, but only stuff called khasha - a sort of oatmeal - to make porridge, and we could have one tea-spoon of sunflower oil for each plate of khasha we bought.

Even then in the forest the conditions were fairly good. When we were moved to the collective farms in Uzbekhstan conditions were terrible, and really there was virtually nothing to eat - not even for the Uzbekhs who lived there - they were starving to death to feed the Russian Army.

In the cotton fields you could sometimes find hedges that had edible grasses - the peasants (and us) would gather these and make a very thin soup, but so many died and especially the very young and the old.”

You will find further information on this and related subjects in the MEMORIES searchable archive.

Tom Holloway
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http://www.allthatwomenwant.com/wartimerecipes.htm

Frugal Recipes From Wartime Britain
by Colleen Moulding
These are some of the recipes my Grandmother used to feed her husband and seven children during the second world war in England. There was little fruit, scarcely any sugar, few eggs, and meat, butter and nearly all foods were rationed. Families were encouraged to Dig For Victory, grow as much food as possible themselves. Consequently many a flower garden found itself turned over to potatoes, carrots and onions in a desperate attempt to fill up the ever hungry children’s stomachs.

Women were told that food was their munition of war. The Ministry Of Food and women’s magazines of the day, gave basic nutritional advice and suggested substitutes such as mashed potato for flour, sour milk for cheese, grated vegetables for fruit and whipped margarine with vanilla instead of cream, but the housewife of the 1940’s had to be very creative with what little food they had queued for with ration books in hand. Here are some of the meals they cooked up.

This recipe was created by the Chef of the Savoy hotel and named after Lord Woolton, head of the Ministry Of Food.

Woolton Pie

Ingredients:
1lb diced potatoes
1lb cauliflower
1lb diced carrots
1lb diced swede
3 spring onions
1 teaspoon vegetable extract
1 tablespoon oatmeal
A little chopped parsley

Method:
Cook everything together with just enough water to cover, stirring often to prevent it sticking to the pan. Let the mixture cool.
Spoon into a pie dish, sprinkle with chopped parsley.
Cover with a crust of potatoes or wholemeal pastry.
Bake in a moderate oven until golden brown.
Serve hot with gravy.

Sausage and Sultana Casserole

Ingredients:
1lb sausages
1 large onion
2oz sultanas
1 sour apple
Pinch of mixed herbs
Stock
Salt

Method:
Chop up and fry the onion.
Fry the sausages.
Cover with stock.
Add sultanas, herbs, salt.
Place in oven and cook slowly for 35-40 minutes.

Carrot Fudge

Ingredients:
Carrots
Gelatine
Orange essence

Method:
Finely grate carrots and cook four tablespoons
full in just enough water to cover for 10 minutes.
Add flavouring with orange essence, grated orange rind or orange squash/cordial.
Melt a leaf of gelatine.
Add gelatine to mixture.
Cook quickly for a few minutes stirring all the time.
Spoon into a flat dish.
Leave to set.
Cut into cubes.

Vegetable Roll with Potato Pastry

Ingredients for pastry:
4oz mashed and sieved potato
1/2 teaspoon of salt
8oz plain flour
3oz fat
2 tablespoons of baking powder

Method:
Sieve dry ingredients together.
Rub fat into flour and gently mix in potato.
Add just enough water to make a fairly dry dough.
Knead well.

Ingredients for filling:

11/2 cups of any mixed boiled vegetables, diced
1 pint thick gravy
Salt and pepper
A little chopped parsley

Method:
Take 1/2lb of potato pastry and roll out on a floured board.
Moisten the vegetable mixture with a little of the gravy.
Spread vegetables on to pastry leaving 1 inch all the way round.
Season to taste with salt and pepper.
Roll up and seal well at the edges so that gravy cannot seep out.
Place on a well greased baking tin with the seal underneath.
Brush with milk.
Bake in a moderately hot oven for 35-45 minutes.

Health Bread

Ingredients:
11/2lb self-raising flour
1 teacup sugar
1 breakfast cup syrup
1 egg
1 breakfast cup of raisins with stones removed.
1 breakfast cup of milk.
Pinch of salt.

Method:
Mix together the sugar, flour, salt and raisins.
Beat the egg and add it to the milk and syrup.
Mix all the ingredients together. Bake in two well greased loaf tins in a moderate oven for approx. 11/2 hours.
Slice thinly after a couple of days and serve with butter or margarine.
Will keep for a month in a tin.

Sugarless Apple Dessert

Ingredients:
Cooking apples
Condensed milk
Orange juice
Nuts or grated chocolate

Method:
Grate raw cooking apple.
Whip together with the condensed milk.
Add a little orange juice.
Arrange in dishes with nuts or grated chocolate on top.

Sausage Pancakes

Ingredients:
1lb small sausages
4oz flour
1/2 pint milk
1/2 oz custard powder
Salt and pepper

Method:
Mix together the custard powder and the flour
then mix with some of the milk to a smooth batter.
Beat well for five minutes, stir in the rest of the milk.
Season with salt and pepper and leave to one side.
Fry the sausages, remove from pan and keep hot.
Pour off some of the fat and save, leaving enough in the pan to fry the first pancake.
Brown the pancake lightly on both sides and roll up with the sausage inside.
Keep warm.
Add some of the saved fat to the frying pan and add more batter for a second pancake.
Continue until all the batter is gone.
Serve very hot with fried tomatoes.

Honey Cakes

Ingredients:
1 teaspoon sugar
21/2 ounces margarine
2 teaspoons honey
6oz self raising flour
1 level teaspoon cinnamon#

Method:
Beat sugar and margarine until a soft cream consistency.
Sieve flour and cinnamon then add to mixture.
Mix with a wooden spoon until it binds together, then knead with your fingers until you have a soft dough.
Break off a piece of the dough and roll it between your floured palms into a ball.
Place on to a lightly greased baking tray.
Flatten slightly.
Repeat until you have used up all the dough, when you should have about sixteen delicious honey cakes.

Moderate oven, bake 15 minutes.

http://credit.goodmoral.com/archive/1/2008-11

5 Tips for Looking Good on a Budget
Written by Kate First published 07/11
With the economy on the slide, and prices going up, beauty products may seem like an unnecessary expense. However, don’t worry that you have to ditch them altogether - perish the thought! - there are plenty of cost effective ways to look good without spending a fortune. Here are my top five, but stay tuned for more.

1) Don’t feel pressured into buying expensive brands of moisturiser in the belief that they will make you look twenty years younger, the chances are they won’t. Cheaper, own brand makes may not look as good, but will be just as effective. You could even try baby lotion which has the advantage of being formulated for delicate skin, so is less likely to cause a adverse reaction.

2) That old tip about cucumber slices as eye compresses actually works. And there are numerous other beauty treatments that can be made using products found in your kitchen. Banana makes a good face-pack, and oatmeal a great exfoliant. A quick search of your favourite search engine will turn up plenty of sites featuring recipes for home-made beauty products.

3) Vaseline may have a slightly unsavoury reputation, but it should be a permanent fixture in your make-up kit. Use it to shape eyebrows, mix it with lipstick to create lipgloss, or dab on as a night cream. Buy the version made for babies, if you find the regular stuff too greasy.

4) Shaving gels have become popular in recent years, which is no surprise, because lathering up with soap and water frequently lead to dry skin. However, hair conditioner makes a much cheaper alternative, and leaves your skin feeling silky smooth.

5) Back to the baby products - you could spend a tidy sum on a make-up removal cream or pads, or you could use wet wipes, which are just as effective, but kinder on the skin.

[There are tidbits of info here..]

What would Christmas be like without cookies?
From 1 to 90 we all love cookies.

Suggestion 1

Suggestion 2

cookie mix
decorations; ribbon, bows, twine,
recipe card
decorative jars
oven gloves
apron
cookie sheet

decorations
glue gun
basket
recipe card
decorative jar or tin
cookie mix
pretty serving platter
cookie cutters

Instructions

Mix the cookie dough, recipe below, and place in the decorative jar.
Print or type instructions on a tag, punch a hole in the top of the card and thread the Christmas ribbon, or Christmas twine through and tie around neck of jar. Place lid on and make sure it's very tight, place Made by: label on top jar and sign your name.
Place all articles inside basket or Christmas box.
Decorate the basket there is two ways you can do this
1. Take Christmas ribbon and wrap the handle of the basket with it. Place a dot of hot glue at one end and keep wrapping the ribbon around the handle, until you reach the other end of the handle, and place another dot of hot glue to secure ribbon. Put a big bow either in the middle of the handle or where the handle starts on the side of the basket.
2. After placing all the articles in the basket, completely cover the basket with Christmas cellophane, gather together at the top, tie with Christmas twine and place a big bow.
Both are very pretty.

If using a Christmas box, make sure it's a pretty one with a lid, and tie a wide ribbon around it and a big bow in the middle.
You can mix and match from both suggestions.

Cookie Mix 1

Cookie Mix 2

3 cups cake flour
1 1/3 cups semisweet chocolate chips
1 cup packed light brown sugar
1/2 cup white sugar
1 teaspoon baking powder
3/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
20 red candy melts
20 green candy melts

Combine flour, chips, brown sugar, white sugar, baking powder, slat and soda; transfer to decorative jar. Place candy melts in small gift bags; attach to jar with the following recipe for making cookies: Place mixture in large bowl, breaking up any lumps. Combine 3/4 cup melted, cooled butter, 2 eggs and 1 tablespoon extract; stir into flour mixture until just combined. Let stand 5 minutes. Drop dough by 2 teaspoonfuls 2 inch apart onto ungreased baking sheets. Bake 11 - 12 minutes or until lightly golden. Cool on rack 1 minutes. Remove from pan; cool completely on rack. Place each color candy melts into separate 1 quart plastic storage bags; microwave on medium until melted, 50 seconds. Snip corner of each bag; drizzle over cookies. Makes 28 cookies

2 3/4 cups all purpose flour
1 tablespoon ground ginger
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
1 1/2 cups Quaker oats (quick or old fashioned, uncooked)

Combine flour, ginger, cinnamon, baking soda, salt, cloves and nutmeg; mix well. Add oats; mix well. Transfer to decorative jar with lid or other airtight container; attach recipe to jar with the following instructions: In a large bowl beat 1/2 pound butter and 3/4 cup honey with electric mixer until creamy. Add 1 large egg and beat well. Add half of cookie mix; beat well. Add remaining cookie mix, beat well. Divide dough into thirds; place each on a piece of plastic wrap and flatten to 1/2 inch thickness. Wrap tightly; chill at least 4 hours. Heat oven to 350 f. Remove one portion of dough from refrigerator. Shape dough into 1 inch balls. Place 2 inches apart on ungreased cookie sheets. Flatten with bottom of glass dipped in white sugar. Bake 5 - 7 minutes, just until centers are set.

Recipe 3

Make the basic cookie mix and give to friends or family along with the recipes for making different cookies using the basic mix
Make a basket with a jar of cookie mix and recipes. Add small containers each with a different ingredient such as chocolate chips, pecans, granola, peanut butter and raisins. A great gift to last through the holidays

Basic Cookie Mix

2 cups white sugar
1 1/2 cups nonfat dry milk
1 tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 cups shortening
4 1/2 cups flour

In a very large bowl, combine first 5 ingredients. Using a pastry blender or 2 knives, cut in shortening until mixture resembles coarse meal. Store in airtight container in refrigerator. Mix may be stored in freezer for up to 6 months.

This will make 11 1/2 cups cookie starter

Place mix in jar and add a small container with 1 cup granola cereal and 1/2 cup raisins with the following instructions: Granola Cookies: Preheat oven to 350 F. In a large bowl, mix together 1 cup cookie mix, 1 cup granola cereal and 1 1/2 teaspoons cinnamon. Add 1 egg and 1 teaspoon vanilla, stir until smooth. Fold in raisins. Drop by teaspoons onto a greased baking sheet. Bake 10 to 12 minutes. Yield 2 1/2 dozen cookies

Peanut Butter Cookies add a small container with 1 cup crunch peanut butter.
Preheat oven to 375 F. Combine 1 cup peanut butter, 1 egg, 1 tablespoon water, 1 teaspoon vanilla and 1 1/2 cups cookie mix, stir until soft dough forms. Drop by teaspoonfuls on a greased cookie sheet. Bake 10 to 12 minutes. Yield: about 3 dozen cookies

Chocolate Chip Cookies add a samll container with 1 cup chocolate chips, and 1/2 cup chopped pecans. Preheat oven to 350 F. Beat 1/2 cup softened butter or margarine until fluffy; add 1 egg and 1 teaspoon vanilla; beat until smooth. Add 3 cups cookie mix; stir until a soft dough forms. Fold in chocolate chips and pecans. Drop by teaspoonfuls on a greaed baking sheet. Bake 8 - 10 minutes. Yield about 3 dozen cookeies.

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Bill was special and many people depended on him.

A man who you knew would take care of the problem, in a slow and solid way.

A man with a healing touch, who should have been given an education and allowed to help other people.

He didn’t think about herbs, he, LOL, when sick would ask me to fix that nasty tea, one that I found in Back to Eden, by Kloss.

A man who also inherited, his family’s loss of mind in later years and had to spend them in an veterans home.

Not senility, they say, but close to it.

Life is not always fair, 3 years in a German POW camp and out at 18/19 years old, alive enough to know when Sgt. Green pulled his dog tags and declared him dead and left him in the battle field, but God still needed him and that bullet missed his heart and went all the way through and he lived.

We planned a large family when we married, and we had full intentions to create a life of peace, without wine, women and bars.

LOL, so we created our own world, imagine the women’s libbers, upset, every time he called me his squaw, or I called him Mr., but he was worthy of being a Mister and I am 3/4 Cherokee.

We agreed to not ever play mind games, in the era that people were learning them from the tv.

He had a boss, with the mind game queen for a wife.

She would tell me to tell Bill this and that and then he would do as the game called for.........so I would, and he would say,
“OK, now what is it I am supposed to say?”

He did the many things I asked for, “If it suited him to do so”, when he said no, then give it up, as he was not a man to change his mind.

Take him to any function, no matter how classy and the next thing you knew, a baby was wanting to go to him, and the kids mother was looking at his blue eyes and wanting to kill for those long eye lashes, that he could hold still enough for the parrot to come in and preen for him in the morning.

A man who could do fine detailed work, but never put in the effort to be an exceptional crafts person.

He could build a pen to hold a raging bull, come in and polish a stone for a ring to go on my finger.

A fine person.

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