Shopping for the New Month and the Reset

 

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

Crab Apples and Soup

 

Foraging was always encouraged during the war years and if you lived in the countryside you would have had lots of opportunity at this time of year.  I haven't done much at all this year, the blackberries passed me by as they were out much sooner than I expected and when I did spot them they already seemed to be massively over-picked by locals.  I am a firm believer in leaving lots for the wildlife, I do wonder though if I would have been so generous during the rationing years!

Anyway while I was in the park with the dogs yesterday I spotted lots of lovely little crab apples lying on the grass and decided to pick some of them up.  If nothing else they will make a good source of pectin for my next batch of compost heap jelly.  So once they are dry they will be going in the freezer until I have saved some more peels and cores to go with them.

Following on from Wednesdays post, I had one of my bowls of soup for lunch today, gosh it was nice.  The other three same sized portions went into the freezer.  That's three more ready meals for my collection.

Sue xx