IZAL Toilet Paper & Extra Shopping - Beans

We were chatting about IZAL toilet paper on the Facebook group the other day and it brought back all sorts of memories.  It was the only sort of toilet roll that we even knew existed as children, although I have just found out that soft paper was launched by St Andrew's Paper Mill (later to be known as Andrex) in England in 1942, so it was around ... gosh my Mum kept that quiet!!

I have just  found out that it was only in 1935 that toilet paper was advertised as being 'splinter free', gosh that must have been a relief.  😨

 As a child I thought the best use for IZAL was as tracing paper.  😄

This weeks only shopping has been the £1 that I spent on these two packs of Heinz baked beans, which I bought at Booths using the six pounds in vouchers that Heinz/Kraft sent me last week after my polite complaint about being short changed.

So my week six shopping bill was just £1.

I will be putting these in the lower food cupboard and 'buying' them with my Points spend each month.  Baked beans come in at 2 points per tin, so I can have at least two tins every month for the next four months.

Sue xx

One Full Month on Rations

 

It's been exactly four weeks since I started on my new rationing lifestyle, so I think it's time to have a little recap and check my figures.  Here's me just popping on my reading glasses.  😄

Each week up to now I have been able to take my ration foods from the stores of food that I already had in, so for the first month I have not had to buy any of the milk, cheese, fats, oil, sweets, sugar etc etc.  It was the same for the monthly, bi-monthly and points shopping.  All came from my food cupboard or fridge.  So the only spending I have had to do was on bread, vegetables, some washing up liquid ... oh and multipack of sanity-saving crisps.

My spending has been as follows:

Week One from Booths - £5.25

Week Two from Sainsbury's - £13.80

Week Three from Aldi - £1.15

Week Four from Booths - £3.59

So a total spend during this first month of rationing of just £23.79.

As I am allowing myself £10 a week at the moment ... it might change  further down the line if that proves too little ... that leaves me with £16.21 of my first months £40 in my royal mug.

Now officially, as I have been doing this for four weeks it should be time for me to have another twenty points to buy the next months Points shopping, but I have decided that doing this mid-month every month is just too complicated, so from now on I will get another twenty points on the first of each month.  Luckily I still have a lot of the foods I bought with my points available for me to be able to ride out these three weeks, although the three biscuits that I have left are not going to last me three weeks!!  😄

Now all I have to do is complete the rest of September on the foods that I already have in and the additional weekly rations that I should still be able to get together from the fridge and cupboard each Monday.   

I have also decided that I am going to try not to spend any of my money until the first of October.  If I have to then I have to, but my aim is to get to the end of the month with NO SHOPPING AT ALL.  If I use up the fresh vegetables that I have left in the fridge first and then work my way through the frozen ones in the freezer that I have had since before the Challenge began, this should be possible.

I am already out of bread, but after last weeks mouldy bread incident I think a couple of weeks without eating bread will be just fine.  I do have a couple of boxes of crackers in the pre-rationing food cupboard and once they run out ... Potato Pete will be my new best friend instead.

So in a way the last three weeks of September are to be a bit of a reset.

No, or very minimal shopping.

No points rations available.

Use up what I have in the freezer to make space.

Top up The Royal Cash Pot with as much as possible ready for future shopping.

Sue xx

Stew on Hot Day ... and Two Cooks and a Cabbage

Why did I think it was a good idea to make a big panful of stew last night, eating this bowlful brought me out in a sweat.  

Stew on a hot late Summers evening ... not a good idea!!  😳

But I have got two portions of soup, another huge portion of stew and a bowl of 'pie filling' for another day ... just not today.  I think it will be a salad sandwich for tea tonight.

I was cooking some cabbage the other night ... what is it with me and hot food at the moment ... and an old BFI Ministry of Information film sprang to mind.

I was using this tip from one of my books ... as was one of the girls in the following little gem of a film.

https://youtu.be/2evv45stEHw?si=XyqWFB4Co2BswOq_

I thought that was brilliant the first time I watched it and enjoyed it again just now.   I will have to have a watch of some more of these. 😃

Sue xx

Waste Not Want Not, and Make Do and Mend

 

Another colourful breakfast straight from the garden to my plate in less than 10 minutes.

Oh gosh that was tasty, although I need to remember that those yellow tomatoes cook so much faster than the red ones, they were on the point of dissolving.  Just two tomatoes, one large spring onion and a sprinkle of garlic granules on two of my 'tipped over' slices of bread toasted.

When our last tenant moved out of the Welsh flat he left a lot of kitchen bits in the wheelie bin and amongst them was this lovely old tin.  This is it after I gave it a good clean with a brillo pad.  It was in a bit of a state before.

I'm trying to make my mind up whether it's a genuine old Betty Crocker tin or a more modern replica.  It does feel like it has some age about it.  Whatever the answer is I have decided that I'm keeping it, just because I like it.

And because 'Waste Not Want Not' and 'Make Do and Mend' are the wartime mantras that I am living my life by.  

Sue xx

My Wartime Rationing Breakfasts and Lunches

 

I've not really been writing that much about my day to day meals, to be honest they are not really that interesting, although they are tasty in their own way and most definintely filling.

The go to breakfast for the first week and then a couple of days of the second week was porridge.

On the first day that I made porridge for breakfast I put my normal scoopful of oats into the pan on the scales to see what measurement I was used to.  It seemed a fair amount so I decided that I would continue to use this much.

Now with oats being on the Points System at 2 per pound, and me only getting 1lb of oats this month I know they are not going to last me all month.  I should get approximately 10 or 11 breakfasts of porridge this month.  I will perhaps buy 2lb of oats next month.

So to make the oats last longer, and of course to stop any monotony, I have been interspersing them on a couple of days with toast.  Sometimes with spread and sometimes with jam and sometimes with jam and spread ... but never with both on one slice of toast at the same time.  

Which is absolutely fine with me as that is the way I have always had my toast since being an adult. 😀

On the days that I have toast for breakfast I usually make my lunch potato based, in this case a baked potato ... or Jacket Potato as they were called in the UK during the war years ... with half of one of my tins of beans also bought with points.

On the porridge days I try and make my lunch bread based, on this day I used up my two veggie sausages with a part-baked roll I had in the freezer ... and very nice it was too.

Bread was never rationed during the war years, but everyone was asked to make good use of the homegrown potatoes whenever they could as they were in much greater supply.  Our wheat had to be supplemented with large amounts brought to the UK on ships by the Merchant Navy as we could not grow enough to feed our population.

Potato Pete was introduced as a friendly way to make people and children want to eat more potatoes.  He had a recipe book full of tips and ideas and appeared in many advertisements.

As the recommended amount of potatoes to eat in a day is 1lb I am going to weigh out what a pound looks like ... it sounds an awful lot.  I work much better with visuals, as you might be able to tell by all the photos that I share.  😁

Sue xx