Eating for Victory

Myself and my other half are big fans of everything forties and fifties. After reading so many books and website pages that said Britons were a lot healthier during WW2 and the rationing years, we decided to start our own rationed based eating plan based on the Ministry of Foods rationing during the war.

This week I'm attempting to use up all the more modern foods while introducing more traditional items. Week to week meals should become more authentic as we phase the more modern items out.

The original rationing per adult person per week (April 1945):

Butter 2oz
Margarine 4oz
Cooking Fat (usually lard) 2oz
Bacon and ham 4oz
Sugar 8oz
Meat: To the value of 1s 2d
Milk 2-3 pints
Cheese 2oz
Loose Tea 2oz
Preserves 1lb per month
Eggs 1 fresh a week and a pack of dried egg every 4 weeks (pack makes up 12 eggs) per house.
Sweets 12oz per month

Our version per person per week:

Margarine 170g
Frylight for cooking fat.
Bacon and ham 113g
Sugar 227g
Meat: 2 small lamb chops (300g approx) or 350g mince beef (Chops were more expensive cuts, so you got less weight.)
Milk 3 pints
Cheese 57g
Loose Tea 57g or 22 tea bags (approx 3 tea bags a day.)
Preserves 113g per week
Eggs 2 fresh each
Sweets 85g per week

Offal and sausages were not on ration although the sausages had a high proportion of bread, as meat was scarce. We are going to replace normal sausages for extra lean sausages in order to keep the fat intake as low as possible. Sausages weren't used as often as we do today due to popularity and under-the-counter trading. Women often sacrificed their sweet coupons to give to shop assistants to buy these little tit-bits. On the weeks we have sausages I will give up that weeks sweet allowance.

Tinned meats, fish and beans, cereals, pulses, dried fruit, biscuits, suet, some types of preserves, table jellies, canned sweet puddings, syrup and treacle were bought on points. You got 24 points a month at this time, these items were popular and snapped up, so weren't always as easily available as other items.

Also as we buy our vegetables from Abel and cole, we get the occasional vegetable delivered that wasn't
available to our wartime counterparts. These I will be including as I want to try to include our 5 a day as often as I possibly can for added health and variety. (For those of you who don't know Abel & Cole supply organically grown seasonal vegetables, other groceries plus household cleaners etc.. at very reasonable prices, delivered weekly without fail. They even got to us when it snowed heavily!)

We will also be taking advice from a quote from the book "Keep Fit in War Time" by Dr Harry Roberts by taking a 30 minute brisk walk daily as well as gardening and growing our own vegetables to supplement the bought fruit and veg.

I'll post this weeks menu shortly.