From Aldi - £3.13
I went shopping the other day to get some of the things that I need for the start of the month and my rations reset. I am moving from the 'vegetarian rations' to the 'meat eaters rations'. Using meat replacements alongside one portion of fish each week in a bid to simplify things and keep them as healthy as possible.
I'll show you a photo of the wartime pamphlet that helped me make this decision on tomorrows post, alongside the way the rations will be for the foreseeable future. Hopefully this will help it make sense.
Anyway, I needed milk for next week and another milk for the monthly rations and I also needed bread. As you can see this is not my usual unsliced wholemeal loaf, I am going back to this Ancient Grains Aldi sliced bread for a couple of weeks so that I can assess if it has been the Sainsbury's bread giving me the side effects that I have been experiencing.
I am dairy intolerant but I can usually get away with eating the products that say 'may contain' or 'made in a factory that handles milk products', but just recently I have been having all the side-effects as though I have been eating things containing milk or milk products. So I need to do a bit of elimination from my diet and see if it's the bread or something else. I do know that I can't eat the custard doughnuts from Sainsbury's as they have a 'may contain' label ... I found out after eating some!!
From Aldi - £3.74
From 1st October I will have £3.50 to spend each week on a fish item, this is in place of having that amount to spend on meat. Back in 1942 the ration amount for meat was whatever you could buy with 1s 2d per person in your family, in today's money that correlates to £3.50. Housewives could buy whatever the butcher had available, maybe a nice but very small steak or a couple of chops or maybe the choice would be more of the cheaper cuts. At some times during rationing when meat was really scarce you would have to take some of this ration in the form of offal.
Gosh just imagine if this was the case now in the shops, and instead of being able to stack your trolley up with whatever you want you had to put back one of your packs of chicken and have a tray of tripe!!
I don't eat meat so I have decided to allow myself fish to this value instead, this I have decided can be any sort of fish, in this first instance I decided on a box of fishfingers which cost me £1.75 ... there's not a lot of fish products that you can get for under £3.50, but I will be searching out other sorts ... and YES I know fish fingers weren't around during 1942, but then neither was I. 😎
Once a month in lieu of the 3 eggs that I could have had a meat eater (according to my new info sheet) I have decided I will have one pack of a modern meat-free item, this first month's choice is 'No Chicken Kyivs'.
From Sainsbury's - £3.27
While I was out I had to nip into Sainsbury's for something pussycat related so I took the opportunity to do a little fruit and vegetable shop. Just look at the size of those British Bramleys, they weigh over half a kilo each. I should have plenty for a crumble and a pie, with the peels and cores left over to go into the fridge for the next lot of jelly.
My total spend for week seven was £10.14, I was really pleased with that.
Of the £70 available for the first 7 weeks of rationing I have £28.57 left.
Back tomorrow with the information that changed the way I am doing the rationing and my new planner to try to keep things simple.
Sue xx
Wow! You are doing so well - you should be proud of yourself 😃
ReplyDeleteI’m glad you’ve found a simpler way to calculate ration points, no brain frazzling!
Country Cook
I am happy that it's all working out okay and that I have been eating so well. xx
DeleteI am sure that, when they could, housewives cut small pieces of fish to egg and breadcrumb for their children. They might not have been called fish fingers but that's pretty much what they were.
ReplyDeleteYour changes and adaptations sound great and really very natural and sensible.
And, yes, those Bramleys look fab! xx
I might even have a go at making my own fish fingers, there was also some frozen fish in Aldi that came in at just under the £3.50 budget, but I didn't notice it until after i had bought the fish fingers. The Bramleys are huge . :-)
DeleteThe Bramleys look lovely. But aren't they expensive? I've just calculated that the ones I had from our neighbours freebie box would have cost almost £20 to buy (and I took less than 10‰ of what she'd left out)
ReplyDeleteThey really are expensive and that was just from Sainsbury's not a posh shop. If only there had been some freebie boxes around our town this year. :-(
DeleteI hope that switching the bread will help eliminate those side effects you've been experiencing. It sounds like you are doing a great job with managing with your weekly budget.
ReplyDeleteIt's worth a try, after a couple of days without the unsliced bread things are not improving much, I can't think what else it might be. :-(
DeleteFish and Chips from the chip shop would have been a regular thing as it was a really cheap meal. My Mum told me that they would go in and ask for 2 and 1 and batter bits. The 2 was a 2d piece of fish and the 1 was 1p worth of chips and the batter bits to fill them up. Although perhaps not so much fish available during the war.
ReplyDeleteSeems unbelievable now.
Yes, fish and chips was a popular treat during the war years, usually a Friday night staple with it being pay day for so many and the old 'fish on Friday' tradition, which is a big thing in parts of Manchester.
DeleteI remember buying a potato scallop on a Wednesday night to eat on the way home from Brownies, they were 2d each.
If I was peeling those bramleys I would eat the skin, love it . It seems entirely sensible and acceptable to adapt the rations to some modern day items ,after all you are sticking to the principals and who can resist a fish finger buttie x
ReplyDeleteI don't mind eating the peel if I'm eating an apple but I wouldn't eat just the peel on it's own, and it will be nice to start building a stash of peelings and cores again for another round of jelly.
DeleteIt's your fault that I had fish fingers on my mind! You commented a while back about making your sons a Fish Finger Pie with beans and mash on top of fish fingers, and I thought what a good idea for a real comfort meal. So that is the plan for a couple of them, and YES of course, a good old fish finger butty.
I need room in the freezer to buy 3 for £10 packs of plain, frozen fish fillets from the freezer shop, Iceland. Waitrose had tinned sardines in olive oil at 65p yesterday, and we got a yellow stickered bag of Wholemeal bread flour 1.5kg for 88p which will make nearly four 400g loaves.
ReplyDeleteSadly we don't have an Iceland anywhere near us, usually I could have gotten some similar fish fillets from Aldi, but this week the section was completely empty ... although the Christmas foods were out!! I think I will have to use tinned fish in this 'meat' section to make this reset work.
DeleteDon't forget to sign off with your name if you want to leave an Anonymous comment, I don't usually accept them.
Frozen cod sounds much nicer than salted cod.
ReplyDeleteIt really does doesn't it.
DeleteI was reading all about the salted cod just recently. Seemingly the fishmonger had to soak it for 24 hours before selling it, and then the housewife still had to soak it again before use to try and get more of the salt out.
I hope you can find out what is bringing on those side effects. Keeping my fingers crossed it is the bread.
ReplyDeleteGod bless.
It would be easier if it was to be my first elimination, but today I am doubting it's going to be that easy. :-(
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