A brief introduction

I’ve always been fascinated by WWII, but only recently found myself enamored with the British homefront. It’s a shame that I wasted so many years thinking of it as boring, when there were all kinds of things going on. Air raids, the uncertainty of if there would even be a future, and last but certainly not least, changes in cookery.

Every aspect of your life is connected to what you eat. It can make you sick or help your health, be an emotional crutch, or any number of other things. 

I’ve heard it said that the public hadn’t been so healthy before the rationing, or since. The history and being a writer of WWII era fiction is what brought the idea to mind, and questions of health made me really curious. What would happen if I followed the guidelines of those rations?

There are undoubtedly going to be a lot of changes due to modern appliances, availability of fruit and veg, and the internet being full of recipes from cuisines around the world. Ingredients have changed a great deal even down to the types and textures of flour available to the modern consumer. Not to mention my weakness for foods that weren’t available to the readers of Marguerite Patton, OBE, like taco shells and dragonfruit. 

Where there are similarities between foods (flour quesadillas and bread, for example) or those I can categorize (mochi as sweets) then I will. Some foods I’ve seen mentioned as being rationed at some point but not the amounts or any dates, like rice. I’ve done my best to guess and approximate in these cases.

I’m going to follow the timeline as closely as I can as to when things went on and off the ration. If I can’t find an exact date, then I’ll use the beginning of the indicated month. Or year, in the case of sausage. Yes, I’m expanding this over the course of the full fourteen years rationing lasted. (Or at least that’s the plan.)

Amounts would grow or shrink depending on variability so I’ve decided to use the amounts from April, 1945 as found on Wikipedia.

The first items on ration were bacon/ham, butter, and sugar. I wasn’t able to find reliable dates for the beginning of cooking fat, margarine, milk, or the points system, so I’ll assume that started right in the beginning. For me, that’ll be 10th July, 2018. Tomorrow.

I already know I’ll call myself crazy, others will call me crazy, and my husband will drive me up the fucking wall. But that’s alright. It’ll be worth it.

(This was copied from my Tumblr on 10th July, 2018.)