Glorious pink soup

Day three in the 1942 kitchen and we now have bread! Which is lucky as today's menu mostly involves bread.

Living where we do (in the country with a big garden) it is pretty much guaranteed that we would be keeping hens during the war, if not before. You could actually exchange your egg ration for enough feed to keep one hen, so I'm sure we would have at least two, if not more fed on scraps as well. The hens I know are currently laying one egg on most days, so we would have plenty. Which means that this morning's cooked breakfast was... scrambled egg. Not especially exciting and it doesn't contain the required potatoes, but I'm sure a 1940s housewife would be pleased to serve scrambled egg when she could. We had 3 eggs to share between us, with some of the homemade toast.

Lunch, according to the BR menu, was meant to be liver. Well of course you wouldn't be able to change the menu so what they have is what you get, but what if you don't like liver? Perhaps then you just have the soup? That's what we went with, the wonderfully pink beetroot and celery soup that I made on Monday, served with national bread and butter (I know, butter!) and followed by a sponge pudding and custard, which I didn't make. Because I'm lazy sometimes.

Lastly we had a lamb (because I couldn't get mutton) stew with potato dumplings. Being keen to save on fuel, and out at work during the day, my 40s self would have used a haybox. Basically a big box full of hay, or anything else insulating, with a hollow in the center. You bring a pot to the boil for a few minutes then tuck it into the hay, cover it up with more hay and leave it to cook away. Basically a fueless slow cooker. I have a thermal cooker, (one of these) the modern version which is a bit less bulky, and it did a great job. The dumplings were good, despite replacing half of the suet with mashed potato,  although the wholemeal flour does make everything look a slightly unappealing dull brown. Luckily the vegetables added a bit of colour!

Lunch for tomorrow made, it's time for bed.