Shopping, Fish and Re-workings

Shopping from Sainsbury's £6.50.

I didn't really need to go shopping this week, but as I had to call into Sainsbury's for something completely non-food related I thought I might as well pick up some bread while I was there and also some fish for when I am making up next weeks rations.

I decided at the end of last week that instead of my two eggs each week for the next few weeks at least, I will be taking the two meat-free sausages I have been having since rationing began instead of one of them and instead of the other I will take a single portion of fish.  So once opened this pack will be one portion for this week and the other will go into the freezer for next week.

I saw the potatoes were still on offer at just £1.25 for 2.5kg so I decided to buy a bag of those as well, not realising that I had 7 potatoes still in the fridge.  I don't usually store potatoes in the fridge, it was just during that very hot week recently they were all beginning to sprout in the bag in the kitchen, so I popped them in the fridge drawer right at the back and only discovered them when I went to put the fish away.

As soon as I got home I got the potatoes out of the plastic bag and left them out for an hour to dry off a bit while I had a coffee.  Then I put them into a Stayfresh bag and then into a cotton tote.  Hopefully now it's so much cooler they will last just fine while I work my way through the seven large potatoes in the fridge.

 

I also sat down and did a re-working of my ration plan yesterday to update my new no-egg rations.  Isn't it great having things saved on the computer so  that you can just adjust a few lines instead of starting from scratch.  

I do have to make this rationing malarkey work for me if I want to do it long term and if it takes playing around with things for a while at first I am quite willing to do that.  Sorry if it gets a bit confusing for you when you read the posts. 😌

Sue xx

Week Four's Shopping Went Mouldy!!

 

This week's shopping cost me £3.59 from Booths.

Just a loaf of unsliced bread and four nice large potatoes, I still have some spuds left from last week so I should have plenty for now.

I only bought the bread from Booths as Alan wanted to grab a coffee and cake after we picked his car up from the garage.   I actually prefer the more National Loaf style bread that I can get from Sainsbury's at less than half the price.   The car was only at the garage for an MOT and it passed, sailed through with flying colours once again ... perhaps we were celebrating!

Anyway that was late on Tuesday, yesterday morning ... Friday ... I went to cut myself a couple of slices to toast, and although the loaf was nice and soft when I turned it over to slice it, I noticed it was riddled with mould.  Not the little dots of green that you could pick off and turn a blind eye to, but more the cobwebby sort of mould you see lurking in the corners of a derelict house.   

Imagine that happening during the war years, you would be heartbroken.

I think mine was having a war all of it's own!!

It went straight into the bin and I went next door and stole two slices of bread from Alan's kitchen ... it's much too hot for porridge at the moment.

Sue xx

Making Proper Use of the Rations

 

 I really do need to make proper use of my rations.

Ration amounts were carefully worked out to give people the best nourishment possible during the times of shortage and as such they were designed to be used up in the time periods they were given for.  For example the weekly 4oz margarine and 2oz of butter, along with the 2oz of lard were deemed the right amount of fats to go alongside the weekly cheese, milk, egg, sugar and meat rations to provide the building blocks of a healthy diet, and all these were designed to go with the bread and vegetable rations that were recommended in the all Ministry of Food pamphlets.

So me having food from the rations left over at the end of each week is not necessarily a good thing.  This is what I am going to try and do something about over the next couple of weeks.  This week is my fourth week on rations and although I am not too bothered about having sugar store building up ... it will be used to make jam ... I have been noticing that I have had my fats and oil leftover every single week.

So to get on a level playing field again I decided that I would use up the fat left over from last week and make some scones and some pastry ... and also a little of my dried fruit bought with points and up until now not touched at all.

Scones are a brilliant use of ingredients for a wartime diet and my go to recipe is really simple.

8oz SR Flour

2oz Butter or Spread

Pinch of salt

1oz Sugar

1oz Dried Fruit

Milk

Rub the butter into the flour, add the salt and then add the sugar and dried fruit.

Bring together with just enough milk to make it into a ball and tip out onto a lightly floured surface.  Either roll out and cut with a cookie cutter or just shape into one large round and then cut into four quarters.

Place on a baking tray, brush with milk and cook in a hot oven for around 20 minutes.

(220/200fan, 425f or Gas 7)

Enjoy with butter and jam ... and of course a lovely cup of coffee.

I didn't eat them all myself, Alan was thrilled with his surprise snack to go with his afternoon coffee break.

While these were baking I weighed out what was left out of last weeks spread ration and used that with the correct ratio of flour to make a ball of pastry ... I had pies that needed to be made.  Now I am up to date with the fat ration and just need to make sure that this week I actually try and use it all up.

Sue xx

Potato Recipes - Colcannon

 

The other day when I was talking about potatoes Jayne mentioned Colcannon, and funnily enough it was something that I had been thinking of making.  

Colcannon is a traditional Irish dish, along the lines of our English Bubble and Squeak and is brilliant for using up leftovers, especially of mashed potatoes ... something that I now nearly always have in my fridge.

I looked for recipes of it online and found this great variation from Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall, I may try it this way next time.  

Mine, however was much simpler and I just mixed about half a pound of leftover mash with three shredded and then steamed Savoy cabbage leaves and a couple of finely sliced Spring Onions from the Victory Garden.  A splash of milk was added and stirred through and then it was all tipped into a slightly oiled pan and left to heat up slowly while I washed the pots and brought the washing in off the line.

It didn't look that pretty when I turned it out, but by gosh it tasted nice with the Bisto gravy.  

It did need the gravy as I don't think I had seasoned it enough ... I'll know better next time, and yes there will be a next time, this is another keeper to the wartime rationing repertoire.  I need to make a list of favourite meals in my rationing notebook.

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

This Week's Non-Ration Shopping ... and Scrumping

 

The fridge was looking pretty bare so I decided it was time to go to the supermarket and pick up my non-rationed foods.  There's also an invader in amongst all the almost authentic WWII goodies.

A banana!!  🍌

Alan wanted one, and it seemed a bit much to make the cashier do a single banana as a separate transaction so it's on my receipt and therefore in my photo.

The single potato as well as the bag of potatoes is there because I could get 60 extra Nectar points by buying loose potatoes ... so one was enough to qualify me for that.

I weighed all the potatoes together before putting them away and I have just under 7lbs of spuds.  Enough for me to be able to have the recommended 1lb a day.  It's a good job I like potatoes!!

And on the subject of potatoes, I have really been fancying some crisps this past week, so I thought what are the oldest crisps around, I'll buy those.     In the UK seemingly it was Smith's crisps, and by 1934 they were selling 200 million packets of crisps in Britain each year.

Smiths Potato Crisps, now owned by Walkers and called Salt & Shake.  

I remember getting these as a child and loving the little twist of salt in the blue paper.  Now it's a sealed packet of salt but back then it was just twisted closed.  The thrill of getting two, and the disappointment of not getting one at all, is still in my memory.

Here's my receipt ... and the apples that I scrumped from the park while I was walking the dogs on the way to the supermarket.   There were some lovely looking larger ones higher up the tree but even shaking the branches a bit couldn't dislodge them yet.  I'll have to go back with Alan and see if they're ready to fall off in a couple of days.

 Free food ... yes please.  😄

I know I went over my aimed for £10 per week spend this week, but as I was so far under it last week I thought I would let myself off with the overspend.  What took me over was buying the packet of fish portions.  

Fish was never on ration as it was regularly unavailable or only in the shops in small quantities.  So if you were near the front of one of the long snaking queues you might have been lucky.  I'll allow myself some sort of fish two or three times a month ... if I get in the queue in time.  😉

Sue xx