Thursday 9 February 2012

Struggling with rations - Extras and obstacles

Something thats creeped into our menu pages on the last two days have been 'Extras' its been difficult to know how to handle these whilst sticking to the rules!

1. Coffee at friends - On Tuesday I was invited to a friends for coffee. Now I'm sure people were invited to friends houses for a hot drink during rationing, so of course I went, and I did actually have coffee (In rationing i'm sure I may have been offered ersatz coffee!) Before the visit, I had decided that I would decline any biscuits and cake offered, BUT my friend said hearing I was on rations instead of baking, she had gone out and specially bought coconut macaroons that she thought were a ww2 recipe. It was so kind of her, so when she offered I had one! (normally we'd get through a small packet between us or a few slices of cake!)

I hope that you agree this should be permissible? It wont happen again during the month.

2. Children Cooking elsewhere - Both children have baked either at school or Brownies this week, 2 x fairy cakes and 1 x biscuit.

I've let them eat both of these freely, replacing ration snacks i had planned.
Likelyhood is I'd have enough ingredients on ration to make these

3 Well meaning Friends & Family -

These include Suggestions that ...

"surely anything could be bought 'on the black market' so why don't I bend the rules"
uh nope I'm trying to do this as straight as possible!

"If you eat it at my house it doesn't count"
Generally if the goods are off ration, we'll eat them freely there (veg etc) but meat we would take off our ration. I'm not counting  cooking oil etc.


"As long as it existed in 1940 and wasnt rationed you should have whatever amount you want"
No, I will only buy what points will allow.


4. Freely available but hard to comeby foods

Lots of foods are listed as such, so I've set up a plan for this. I'm planning to only buy one of these things a week. eg 1 pack of sausages week 1, Fish in week 3 etc.

5. Things I would have had anyway

I live in the country, I bake my own bread, I preseve and make from scratch, so if I can make it i'm calling it allowable.
Eg I will make Soft cheese and yoghurt but will take the milk from my allowance.
I have chutneys and pickled onions in my store cupboard....so i can add them to meals.

As long as we don't abuse this i think this is fair.







3 comments:

  1. Wow that's really interesting. I like the idea of seeing what it's like living on rations and even thought about doing something similar to this. I am vegetarian though so I would just swap the meat allowance for the same of Quorn or tofu.
    Have you discovered any handy wartime recipes?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Wow good luck with this, its such a great idea but you need a hell of a lot of willpower! Looking forward to seeing how you get on! XxxX http://thesecondhandrose.blogspot.com/

    ReplyDelete
  3. Miss RB - that sounds sensible to replace quorn etc for meat. In period vegetarians were given 3oz extra cheese on their ratiuon instead of meat.
    SHR - Thanks! Yes it definitely takes will power, luckily i'm ok so far, its not too bad! If i'd planned better though I think I would have cleared out my cupboards rather than working around off-ration stuff and banned all tv food commercials!!

    ReplyDelete