War-Time Cookery to Save Fuel and Food Value

My blog is all about eating and cooking using the rations of World War 2, hopefully learning a few things along the way. However, this week what has really been on mind is the appalling behaviour of the rioters. Did Britain endure 10 years of rationing and a World War against fascism to be lumbered with a generation of vandalising thieves? I understand people get disenchanted, I get like that myself most weeks in a thankless job, but to go out and burn down people’s businesses and homes is really shameful.

Where did it go wrong, that caused this to happen? I may have a rose coloured, tinted glasses view of World War 2, but I thought people were meant to pull together in times of trouble and that we all had the Blitz Spirit. Unfortunately, this seems to have disappeared in the current climate, I just hope that these events do not become normalised and that we as a nation shun their thuggish actions and unite against them.

Moving onto the topic of this blog, I found this great little leaflet over the weekend, issued by the National Food Campaign Exhibition in 1940 held in Manchester, titled: War-Time Cookery to save fuel and food value. Here are some of its top tips, some of which I hadn’t thought of and really shows how all food can be stretched that little bit further.

1. Keep a vegetable stock-pot with water from celery, leeks, onions, carrots, potatoes, greens and other vegetables. Never throw these liquids away; they contain valuable minerals and vitamins, and partly help to make up deficiency in rationed foods.
2. Use the liquid from boiled vegetables to dilute tinned soups.
3. When serving soup and vegetables at the same meal, cook the vegetables in the soup.
4. Steam root vegetables
5. Cook potatoes in their jackets.
6. Save all fat from cooking meat; refine it and use it for other cooking purposes.
7. Cook meals as far as possible with one unit of heat e.g. in one large steamer on a low fire or single gas-ring you may cook: a meat roll, steamed jacket potatoes, boiled or steamed suet pudding; or in one over you may cook: baked meat, casserole of mixed vegetables, fruit pie or pastry, scones.

The leaflet has some really interesting recipes, which are of interest. Powdered egg will resume shortly….