Mince in the Hole and Potato Skin Mash

Day two in the 1943 kitchen began with porridge. Not only is porridge hot and filling, but oats are also cheap, nutritious and can be grown in England. They were unrationed and you were encouraged to eat them often. Having said that porridge wasn't the quick and easy meal it is now, when you can zap a bowl in the microwave in no time at all. A 1943 housewife in the country may well have been off the grid, which means no electric cooker. She may have still had a wood fired range which would need to be lit and built up first thing, taking a while to heat up. One way to save time in the morning, and save fuel too, would be to use a haybox. Essentially like a slowcooker the hay insulates the pan and keeps the porridge hot while it cooks away overnight. So a hot breakfast is waiting as soon as you wake up. Of course it probably wouldn't be cooked with milk, but the traditional Scottish way with water and a little salt then served with a little milk, which makes the milk ration stretch much further.

 

Lunch today was cream of vegetable soup with national loaf and a sponge pudding for dessert. I made the soup yesterday but when I came to pack it ready for RAF man to take to work it really didn't look like very much at all. So I gave him my portion as well. 

I had been thinking that I would make some more for me but I had that leftover vegetable cutlet with some home made pickled beetroot (from our vegetable garden too) and a couple of slices of toast. That filled me up and I totally forgot to eat my sponge pudding!

For tea we had "mince in the hole", basically toad in the hole but with meatballs instead of sausages. You could use either raw mince or minced leftovers and roll it into meatballs with seasoning and a few herbs, then cook with a Yorkshire pudding type batter. A really good way to make a little bit of leftover Sunday roast feed a lot of people! We actually used fresh mince and had lamb meatballs with a bit of mint from the garden, served with veg and mashed potatoes. Of course the potatoes were mashed with the skins still on, since nothing was to be peeled in the war against waste. Not really to my taste, but not bad at all. 

"Those who have the will to win,

Cook potatoes in their skin,

Knowing that the sight of peelings,

Deeply hurts Lord Woolton's feelings."