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

My Weekly Rations - Week Four

 

Here are my weekly rations for this week.

 I don't really know if it's worth photographing them every week as the only thing changing at the moment seems to be the sweet ration.  But I guess it holds me accountable to myself, and I at least get to see what I have over from the previous week as I top up jars and dig things out from the cupboard, fridge and freezer.

So perhaps it is.

My usual sugar canister was too full for me to be able add this weeks 8oz to it, so I gave the sugar ration another jar as I topped it up from the bag of sugar in the cupboard.

The cheese was easy, it was the other half of last weeks Violife Extra Mature block.  This week I grated it rather than just leaving it as a block and it looks a lot more that way doesn't it.

There was a little smidge over as the scales reached the magical number ... so I just popped it into my mouth.  It wasn't big enough to save and there were no dogs to bee seen, so it was all mine. 😉

I weighed out this weeks combined butter/margarine ration straight into the butter dish.

The spread that was left over from last week and which was still in the tub, weighed in at exactly 4oz.  I think I will use this up today and make some scones and some pastry.  It feels like it's been ages since I've had a pie or pasty!

This weeks 2oz of olive oil that I am taking in place of lard, only just fitted into the little jar that I have been using, and the other jar is still in the food cupboard.  So I am ahead with the oil too.  Maybe some more pastry will need to be made to use it up.  😃

My sweet ration this week is slightly over on the scales, but I'm hoping the extra 3/8oz will vanish when the things are unwrapped, if not, well it doesn't really matter.  I would rather be using up what I already have in than going out buying little bits of sweets that will fit exactly into the right weights.

Talking of using up, this mornings breakfast was last week's egg ... it's like an action replay of last weeks happenings!! 

 It seems that one egg a week is just fine for me.  I might take away the extra half a dozen that I was going to allow myself to have each month in place of the dried egg ration and just buy half a dozen once a month, having one egg each week on the menu and the other two as spares, for baking or some other extra.

It's been really good over the last three full weeks of rationing.  I am slowly but surely getting used to having some limitations, while at the same time being quite amazed that I am not really touching too much of the things that were already in the cupboard and freezer from 'before rations'.  At this rate my supplies will be going down really slowly and there's nothing really to worry about.  👌

This week instead of reading recipe books and about the history of the wartime home front years, I decided to read the follow on to the television series Home Fires.

The first book in the set follows on exactly from where that second series so annoyingly left us, up in the air with so many loose ends just waiting to be tied off.  They never were, as despite the viewing figures being very impressive it just wasn't recommissioned for a third series.  I don't often read fiction but I am really enjoying this, and I managed to read over half of it while we were at the Welsh flat over the weekend.

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

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