Not rising to the occasion

Day one in the 1942 kitchen.

I hadn't done the shopping yet so this morning's breakfast was porridge. Perfectly satisfactory to my modern eyes but my 1940s self would definitely have considered it inadequate. Oh well, she will have to put up with it for today.

As I had a day off from paid work today I used the time to play housewife, plan the weeks menu, do the shopping and get a start on the cooking. I made some soup for later in the week (beetroot and celery, it tastes pretty good and is a glorious pink) and tried to make a loaf of bread. Now, I have made many loaves of bread in the past, and made all the national loaves last time round without any problem. But this one isn't rising. It's just sitting there looking heavy and very, very wholemeal. Maybe the yeast has died.

More successfully, I slow roasted some beef for tomorrow's lunch. As we will both be at work we would probably be eating at British restaurants or work canteens. I found a menu for a British restaurant, with information on their meat allowance, so we will be following that for lunches on work days. Some of the beef will be served as a straightforward "meat and two veg" tomorrow and some will be rissoles later in the week. Luckily we both have microwaves at work so the complete meals are boxed up ready to take in and zap at lunchtime.

Having done that I made a steamed vegetable pudding for this evening, using grated potato to replace half the suet in the pastry (suet isn't rationed in 1942 but probably difficult to get hold of) I filled it with potatoes, carrots, celery and gravy and served it with cabbage and fried liver. I thought long and hard about the liver. I know RAF man isn't fond of it, but it was unrationed and eaten a lot in the war. It turned up at least once if not twice a week on the British restaurant menus alone. If we are aiming to experience a wartime diet then it has to be the wartime diet, not just the parts we like the sound of. I decided we couldn't avoid liver altogether, so I served it on the side (that way it could be left!) and got it out of the way early in the week.

Of course, a main meal must have at least two courses and "something with custard" seems to have been the done thing. As apples and blackberries are both in season I made a crumble, but with oats as the topping to save the fat ration that would have been needed for a traditional crumble. It turned out surprisingly well, not a bad way to end the day at all.

Planning week two

Well RAF man suggested that it was about time we moved the rationing experiment on a bit and did part 2, which was a fair point since it's been a good six months since we did part 1. We decided to go with October 1942, since all our other re-enactments would be over by October and 1942 seemed like a good year! Then I got a job that meant I would be working evenings for most of October, so the end of September it is after all.

The research was more difficult this time. Finding out what rations were when they were first introduced was relatively easy, but for any particular point in the year it is very difficult. Different sources give conflicting information and most just give the rage for the whole war anyway. I had started to go through documents on the national archive website in the hope of piecing it together when, three days before week 2 was due to start, I stumbled across a list for June 1942. Phew! June is close enough to September to suit our purposes, although perhaps one day I'll research more.

The tricky thing is deciding how much access we should have to things that weren't rationed but might not have been easy to get, or which were on points so access wasn't guaranteed. For week one we had sausages so I thought we should probably avoid them this time round for the sake of fairness. As a country woman I would have lots of vegetables and eggs but where I would miss out would be food on points. Someone living in town could go straight to the shop when they heard something new was in, but I might make the trip only rarely and just take what was available. For the week I decided we would have a tin of spam (which wasn't popular when it was first introduced so might still be on the shelf!) and there is a spoonful or two of golden syrup in the tin if needed.

Menu planning was interesting to say the least. I discovered that toast was not considered a proper breakfast, it was actually classified as "a tea meal." For breakfast a hot dish was expected, bacon and eggs or something along those lines. If we wanted to experience the 40s diet then we would need to at least try to do the same. Equally, a main meal had at least two courses. Quite a lot by modern standards!

Eventually the plan was done, shopping bought and we were ready to begin. Now I just have to cook it all, and hope it tastes OK.