Wartime Kitchen - Ration Book Cooking Friday 9th November

First let me show you tthe Parsnips with Cheese dish that I made for Thursday's supper

Parsnips with Cheese

Mash some boiled parsnips with a little margarine, and add grated cheese to your taste.  Grease a pie-dish, put in the parsnip puree, sprinkle with plenty of breadcrumbs mixed with grated cheese, and bwon quickly in the oven.  Little bits of cold meat, chopped, can be added to the parsnips for substance, if desired.

I didn't add any cold meat  to mine as I didn't have any in my ration.  This was a simple but tasty dish, I would recommend serving it with peas or beans.  In non-ration times this would be a really nice change from mashed potatoes.

I found some fantastic clips on the BBC History website where Giles Coren and Sue Perkins investigate what life was like for a housewife in World War Two, with the help of food writer and cook Allegra McEvedy.  I can really recommend  these short clips, they are funny and full of information.

Now on to Friday's menu, I've kind of run out of steam on my menu planning and am realising that I needed to be a lot more prepared.  One of the difficulties about these dishes is that they do take a bit longer to prepare, fine if you are working from home (as I would have been on the farm) but not when you have to go out to work.

However during WW2 most work places had canteens and the food was 'off ration', so I would probably have eaten there most lunch times and then had a light supper when I got home.  However, on Friday night I am going out to a Gala Dinner to represent the place where I work.  I wondered how I might include this in my ration challenge but like the canteens, restaurants were also 'off ration' so I can enjoy my dinner...as long as they do not charge me more than 5/- for my meal ;-)  You can find out more about British Restaurants from Karen at Lavender and Lovage.   Although I'm going out for this dinner,  my husband and mother-in-law will be home and they are going to have fish and chips.  Again this was not on ration, but fish was very difficult to get as most of the fishermen had been called up and the seas were an even more dangerous place to be than usual.

Friday's Ration Book Menu

Breakfast:  Porridge
Lunch: Jacket Potato filled with Vegetable Yeast Extract, parsely and salt and pepper
Gala Dinner!!!

What I've got left:

WW2 Rations 1940 for three people

Butter75g

Margarine: 280g

Cooking fat/lard: 190g lard 

Sugar:  650g 

Meat:  1350g (3lb)

Milk:  8 pints

Tea:  50g

Jam: 125g

Dried Eggs 3 packets  (36 eggs every four weeks)   9 eggs for one week

Sweets: 262g (3oz) per week.

I have found it really interesting to see what I do and don't eat, not much milk, sugar or cooking fat.  I've saved my meat ration for the weekend.