Ration roundup
18 June 2022 12:18 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
igenlodeI have now completed a week 'on rations', which as I predicted really doesn't make all that much difference -- save that, according to 1940s dietary calculations, I ought to be eating less fat (unsurprising), more meat (which I rather suspected) and a good deal more sugar!
I really am a bit puzzled by that -- I've seen in several places people blogging in a superior fashion about how they adopted 'the WW2 diet' but of course it contained *far* too much sugar while they never touch the stuff, and always wrote it off as (a) health freaks and (b) people who don't bake not realising how much sugar is in the products that they eat on a day to day basis (baked and tinned goods). But I have been having dessert with every meal as per normal and cooking my own cakes and puddings, and even so I've only used about half the ration quantity (eight ounces).
Partly it may be that I have got so used to 'rationing' sugar, in the sense of having had a limited quantity in store with no prospect in sight of being able to get any more ever, that my *normal* repertoire consists of low sugar recipes. I think that in fact it has far more to do with the restrictions on fat, because when you have very little fat or egg available it is quite hard to do the sort of baking that involves a lot of sugar; they tend to go together! But we know that in the Second World War people *were* scraping together every last scrap of sugar and having to resort to using carrot and beetroot as dessert sweeteners, so where on earth was it going to in their case, if not in puddings and baked goods? Endless cups of tea (also rationed)?
(This week I have made an raspberry swirl loaf -- which is basically slightly-enriched white bread dough, so very little fat -- potato farls, which are mostly just mashed potato, rhubarb crumble, which required sugar both for the fruit and the topping, rhubarb and blancmange ditto, buttered apricots, which used only a teaspoon or so,and several servings of berries-with-melted-chocolate from my 'sweets' ration which used no additional sugar at all. So I probably could have ended up making more puddings involving sugar in the case of a different menu, particularly in winter...)
I resorted to making some fake salad cream mid-week because I thought I was going to run out of oil to make vinaigrette and I was eating a lot of salad; given that I don't like mustard or salad cream and that it smelt pretty pungent while I was boiling it, it has proved amazingly successful and actually does make good-tasting salads! The main defect is the fact that it not only has the consistency of wallpaper paste but sets like wallpaper paste in the fridge after a few hours, so you have to try to squish it into the chopped vegetables rather than pouring it over them ;-p I suspect that it was never intended to be kept but to be used all at once....
Half quantities (still quite a lot for one person!)
I really am a bit puzzled by that -- I've seen in several places people blogging in a superior fashion about how they adopted 'the WW2 diet' but of course it contained *far* too much sugar while they never touch the stuff, and always wrote it off as (a) health freaks and (b) people who don't bake not realising how much sugar is in the products that they eat on a day to day basis (baked and tinned goods). But I have been having dessert with every meal as per normal and cooking my own cakes and puddings, and even so I've only used about half the ration quantity (eight ounces).
Partly it may be that I have got so used to 'rationing' sugar, in the sense of having had a limited quantity in store with no prospect in sight of being able to get any more ever, that my *normal* repertoire consists of low sugar recipes. I think that in fact it has far more to do with the restrictions on fat, because when you have very little fat or egg available it is quite hard to do the sort of baking that involves a lot of sugar; they tend to go together! But we know that in the Second World War people *were* scraping together every last scrap of sugar and having to resort to using carrot and beetroot as dessert sweeteners, so where on earth was it going to in their case, if not in puddings and baked goods? Endless cups of tea (also rationed)?
(This week I have made an raspberry swirl loaf -- which is basically slightly-enriched white bread dough, so very little fat -- potato farls, which are mostly just mashed potato, rhubarb crumble, which required sugar both for the fruit and the topping, rhubarb and blancmange ditto, buttered apricots, which used only a teaspoon or so,and several servings of berries-with-melted-chocolate from my 'sweets' ration which used no additional sugar at all. So I probably could have ended up making more puddings involving sugar in the case of a different menu, particularly in winter...)
I resorted to making some fake salad cream mid-week because I thought I was going to run out of oil to make vinaigrette and I was eating a lot of salad; given that I don't like mustard or salad cream and that it smelt pretty pungent while I was boiling it, it has proved amazingly successful and actually does make good-tasting salads! The main defect is the fact that it not only has the consistency of wallpaper paste but sets like wallpaper paste in the fridge after a few hours, so you have to try to squish it into the chopped vegetables rather than pouring it over them ;-p I suspect that it was never intended to be kept but to be used all at once....
Half quantities (still quite a lot for one person!)
Ingredients (original recipe)
½ pint of household milk 2 tablespoons of vinegar ⅛ teaspoon of pepper 1 teaspoons of salt 1 teaspoons of mustard ¼ tablespoon of sugar 1oz of flour Method:
Mix the dry ingredients together.
Add in some of the milk and mix into a smooth paste. Boil the rest of the milk and pour in to the blended flour paste mix. Return to the pan and stir till boiling and boil for 5 minutes. At the end of cooking whisk in the vinegar.