Memories, Old Photos and a Re-Jig

 

My posts on this blog seem to be bring out so many memories for so many people, myself included.  

I am just hoping that the majority of them are good, and that the bad ones at least make us realise just how far we have come in the past few years.  

Today I am just sharing a photo of the kitchen from The 1940s House. 

 I recently re-watched this and although I have the book I have never read right through it.  Perhaps I should as I do like to pore over photos like these, picking out the details remembering the versions of things that we had in our tiny little pantry-sized kitchen in my Nana's house growing up.

 I do have the large saucepan that is on the cooker and lots of other enamelware, which I absolutely love.  If I had more space in my tiny home I would love to get an original kitchen cabinet, my Nana had a beautiful cream coloured 1940's version, and then in the late sixties my Mum got one with a Formica worktop instead of the enamel as they used to be.

Now I need to go and weigh out next weeks rations.  

This will be the final week that I will be having these sort of rations before I have a re-jig the following week.  I have very luckily found a way to simplify things, well I think it will be simpler!!

It can't possibly get any more complicated ... can it?

Sue xx

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

The National Loaf, My Modern Version ... and Family Memories

 

The National Loaf was introduced in 1942, the year that I have chosen to be in for the duration of my rations, and as such I am going to be getting as close to that particular bread as I possibly can. 

The loaf that I have found that most closely fits the bill is the uncut Wholemeal loaf from Sainsbury's.  I will allow myself the occasional sliced brown loaf, as I have had to do this week, because our Sainsbury's is pretty small and doesn't always have a full quota of bread items.

What I am really pleased about is that my slicing is getting better, well sometimes.  Alan came in to cadge two slices of bread the other day, and laughed at the slantedness of the loaf in my breadbin.  He got it back to straight for me in a manner that my Great Uncle Harold would have been proud of.

Just seeing him in this photo makes so many happy memories of weekends spent with  him and my Aunty Ida both in their house and in their caravan.  

Now Uncle Harold would stand his uncut loaf on it's end and slice through the bread horizontally from right to left, the slices would be so thin you could see his hand through them as he passed your slice over to you to put on your plate.  Spreading butter without tearing a hole in the bread was an artform that I never quite mastered and he would smile at my little torn mound of 'buttered bread' and show me how to make a sandwich with a lettuce leaf instead and take a bite of my bread alongside it.  I tried to find a picture on Google Images of bread being sliced this way, but unfortunately there weren't any ... I'll have to have a go at it myself!!

The Ministry of Food supplied lots of information during the war years of how to get the most out of your bread, and how to waste absolutely none of it at all.  After all, although bread was not rationed until after the war a lot of the wheat for making it had to be shipped to the UK, endangering our Merchant Seamen, so to be seen to be wasting any was classed as being very unpatriotic.

This was one of my favourite tips and something that I now do every time I buy an uncut loaf, it really does work.  I love it because I am not a great fan of having the crust of the bread left to eat when all the other bread has gone.

The very end crusts of the bread when I do it this way still get whizzed up in my Nutribullet and then almost dry fried in a touch of oil with some garlic granules added, and then finished off in the hot Remoska after I have been cooking something else to use it's residual heat.

Once completely dried and cold they are added to a jar and kept in the cupboard if they are very dry or the fridge if I have made them a tad too oily.  So I am making sure that I don't waste a single crumb of bread.

My Uncle Harold and Aunty Ida would be very proud.  💖

Sue xx