New Week, New Rations ... and Leftovers

 

After being away for the weekend, yes ... the rations came too ... I am struggling to get back to normal this morning.  So to get myself organised I decided to weigh out this weeks rationed foods.  I used last weeks milk but poured it into one of my litre sized bottles, with the idea that if I can see it properly I might use it up this week.  And this week's cheese is what's left in this 'cream cheese' tub, about two thirds.  It was already opened in the fridge and needs using up soon.

It was a case of topping some of the containers up as I didn't use all of last weeks rations, they've gone a lot further than I thought they would.  Thank goodness for modern scales that I can zero and not have to do maths first thing on a Monday morning.  😄

I was surprised at how much coffee I had left after last week, but I have been getting into the habit of making my coffee a little bit weaker by getting my usual spoonful from the jar and then knocking a little bit of the coffee back in.  I did well and had almost a full ounce left to add this weeks two ounces.

This week's sweet ration - two little bars of dark chocolate.

The leftovers from last week, photographed for posterity.

All of my milk ration, virtually all of my sugar ration, about half of the butter ration, almost half of the coffee ration, two thirds of the oil and even two of my three packs of 'sweets' from the sweetie ration.  I do need to try harder to use all the rations, because it was the combination of the foods on ration and the amount you got that made for healthy eating.

Although I guess being low on the sugar can only be a good thing!!

Oh, and I also had my two sausages left over, tucked away in the freezer. 

What has really helped stretch my rationed goods and the things in the fridge has been the regular little harvests from the garden.  I halved all this with Alan for our lunches.

And made myself what was going to be a one egg cheesy tomato omelette ...

But it slopped out of the pan in a gloriously tasty cheesy mess.

While it was out of the fridge I decided to use the last of the cheese up by making myself a nice 'sandwich spread' for later, with a couple more spring onions two chopped tomatoes and large splodge of the opened mayo from the fridge.

So it was a good first week, a bit disorganised with meals grabbed from the fridge on the spur of the moment rather than properly planned, but this week I intend to make a basic menu plan and follow a few more wartime recipes ... and not leave all my cheese until the last minute and eat it all at once.

Sue xx

Rhubarb, Rhubarb, Rhubarb ... and Garlic Kievs

I picked all the rhubarb from our little garden last week.  The one plant we have there was HUGE and was taking up far too much space, the amount of rhubarb it has given us is brilliant for it's first year in situ, this is the second harvest that we have had, the first one a little bit smaller.

Once washed and chopped I divided it between two bags so we could have half each.

Almost 3lbs each of lovely homegrown rhubarb from my little Victory Garden.  Now tucked safely in Alan's freezer as mine is full to capacity.  It means we will both have lovely homegrown fruit for Winter use. 

 (Yes, I know officially it's a vegetable. 😄) 

The reason my freezer had no room for the rhubarb!!

This is the inventory that I did last week and it has all these things on it.  When these things are used up gradually over time, more than half of them will not be replaced.  Although I might allow myself a sneaky Garlic Kiev every now and then. 😏

Sue xx

Bread, Vegetables, Porridge and Woolton Pie

 

My only shopping this week has been a brown unsliced loaf and a bottle of washing up liquid.  

Bread was never rationed during the war years and the brown National Loaf was the only sort available to buy in the shops as it was seen as too wasteful to mill white flour.  I will try to stick to this sort of bread as I think it is reasonably authentic ... even if lovely and soft, something the National Loaf really wasn't. 

 Household cleaners and soaps etc were on a points system of their own, but I think I'll get my head around that in a couple of weeks, but these were the only things that I needed for now.

I do all my washing of pots by hand in the sink, I have never had a dishwasher and indeed there wouldn't be room for one in my small home even if I did want one, so I am already quite authentic in the kitchen for pot washing.  Using just two bowls of soapy water and a drizzle of rinsing water each day means that I use much less water than a machine would as I am just mostly washing pots for one person.

Yesterday while my porridge cooked I chopped the vegetables to use for my lunch of stew, a couple of bowls of soup, a pasty filling ... and a Woolton Pie.

I made good use of that little pot of Flora that I had found in the fridge and spread it lavishly on the crust end of the loaf to have with my lunchtime vegetable stew.

I added some frozen peas to the pan and left it all on the hob to cool down slowly while I ate my lunch.

Then once I had finished my lunch I divided the pan contents into a large portion for a pasty, a smaller pie dish full for the Woolton Pie and whizzed the rest up into enough soup for two large bowls.  The one in the photo was going into the fridge and the other was already in the freezer.

And here you can see what I had decided to do with the ready rolled pastry from the fridge.  I had enough to make three lids for my little enamel dishes ... a perfect size for a Woolton Pie for one person ... and the rest I rolled out to make a pasty for my tea.

I had my pasty with some Bisto gravy and then put one lid and the enamel dish into the fridge for one Woolton Pie, and after wrapping them well I put the other two pastry lids into the freezer.  They should thaw out in the time it takes me to cook vegetables for future pies, a nice time saving little trick ... not one a wartime housewife would have been able to do with no freezer.

Sue xx

My Supplies at the Start of Rationing, Saving Me Money, Making Me Healthier

 

This is how my top food cupboard looked at the start of the week, it is a happy mixture of rationed foods, foods that I have bought on the Points System and the food that I am classing as in my cupboard at the start of my 'war on waste' ... mainly because it was!!  😄

I'll break it down for you.

This middle shelf holds my rations and points foods.

The weekly rationed ambient foods are on the right ... the cheese, margarine and egg are in the fridge.

Next to them are my monthly rations, the onion and the other half dozen eggs are in the fridge.

Then there's my bi-monthly rations.

And the left hand side of the shelf holds the food chosen with this months points.  Twenty points worth of dried and tinned foods and a packet of biscuits.

On the top shelf on the left-hand side are the foods I am classing as already having in my larder and available to use.

But on the right-hand side these are foods that I will use to make up my rations in future weeks or months, so these are out of bounds until it's time to weigh them out.

 Below all of this is the bottom shelf.

I am also allowing myself to dip into anything that is here as it's what I had in already and is mostly things that are added to fresh ingredients to make meals.  I will obviously continue to take my vitamins as I'm hoping that this rationing experiment/challenge is going to make me healthier not make me ill.

So alongside the bottom part of this cupboard that I showed on yesterday's post, you can see that I am starting this Challenge with a LOT of food in the house.  What I am going to try and do is to firstly plan my meals around the weekly rationed food and bring in some of what I have here and in the lower cupboard to round out those meals.  I want as few meals as possible to be made out of purely non-rationed foods, or it will be a huge shock to my system when those foods run out and I can't buy any more.

So I guess the first six or so months will be a bit of a transition period, based on rations but using modern foods that won't be replaced.  My shopping for the last week and from now on will be UK grown and in season vegetables and fruits, brown bread and things allowed on my rations to be weighed or counted out at home into the right quantities.  This part of the challenge is what I am hoping will save me money.

Does that all make sense, gosh I hope so ... my brain is fuddled!!  😵

Sue xx

The Foods I Already Had In

 

Of course at the start of rationing people had all sorts of food already available in their pantries, larders and cupboards, some wouldn't have had much and some, like me, would have started from a good place.

My fridge currently looks like this, well this is the neat shot for the header picture, it actually looks like this -

... still nice and neat and always clean, but a few more bits and pieces.  

The red blobs in the top drawer are two apples.  The bottom drawer has tomatoes, two onions, a homegrown courgette and cucumber, some peppers and a vacuum pack of beetroot.  All except the peppers are in-season and grown in the UK, so all except the peppers can be bought again.

I'm glad I sorted through the fridge and had a wipe out, because I found this, a handy little addition to this weeks margarine ration.

I also had all these.

At first I was going to eat one or two a day this week to use them up gradually, but after eating the first one I realised they were not that nice any more ... although Mavis thought they were, she loves mandarin oranges.  Instead I put them in a bag and popped them into the freezer, I will use them to make a batch of Compost Heap Jelly when I have enough of my sugar ration saved up.

I also realised that I had this roll of ready rolled pastry that needs using up.  

Last time I did a rationing challenge I used one of these instead of most of my weeks fat ration one week, but this time I decided on something completely different.  It's there so I can use it, but I want it to last me for a few weeks and not have to be eaten all at once ... so I have had a brainwave!!

I'll let you see just what that was when I do it.  😄

The door of the fridge is a motley mix of all sorts.

The sparkling orange juice cans on the top shelf are for Alan, I take him one can each week to Mum's to have with his lunch.  The bottom shelf mostly holds sparkling and still water, there's about half of last weeks milk left. (Pre-rationing.) And very happily I have half a bottle of wine and a couple of little cans of wine too.  Alcohol was available during the war years, but I think it was mostly beers and shorts and predominately sold in pubs ... wine will be my version of this, but I have to buy it within my £10 a week budget if I want to have any.  Or perhaps ask for some at Christmas again like I did last year.

The three drawer freezer is full, if your interested in it's contents I'll show you the inventory another day after I photograph it.

And the bottom part of my food cupboard is looking extremely healthy, mostly because during the Food Cupboard Challenge I was eating all the oldest foods that I had sorted into the top part of the cupboard.

 

So at least I know that everything in this lower cupboard should be well within date and able to be used as and when I need it.  I think that I mentioned the other week that it's as though all my previous Challenges have been leading me to this one.

The things in my cupboard will be available to eat alongside my weekly, monthly and bi-monthly rations only if they are not rationed items.  Anything that is rationed or on points, the rice and pasta for example will still need to be added as and when they are due or when I have my new months quota of points.  All the random items I will gradually use up as and when I need them.

I hope this little stocktake exercise has set you up to see where my starting point is as well as it has for me.  It's nice to know what's available, now I just have to make it last in a sensible way.  It would have been oh so easy to have eaten the two packets of biscuits that I found in one of my baskets ... but I reminded myself they are only available on points, so I have to wait until next month.

Back tomorrow with a look at the top cupboard which now holds all my rationed foods, some things that I already had and some more things that I can restock my rations from.

Sue xx