#ration recipes

[rationblogging]

Recipe #121 - Plum Charlotte from We'll Eat Again by Marguerite Patten

I recently ordered a fruit and veggie box and among the goodies were a bunch of plums. I'm not that keen on just eating plums as they are, and some were getting squishy, so I looked up a ration recipe for plums and found this. The recipe explains that you can really use any fruit you like. As the plums didn't make up the weight I added some apples that I'd previously cooked up with cinnamon and brown sugar.

This Charlotte is like a quick crumble. Instead of oats and/or flour with butter rubbed in, it just uses torn up bread (I used regular white bread, but I'm sure at the time you'd use your stale National Loaf). Even the fat (margarine or suet suggested in the recipe, I used Nuttelex), is optional, but I think all the sugar would just drop to the bottom instead of sticking to the bread without it.

Verdict - passable. Definitely needs the ice cream, it's a bit dry without it. I think I'll stick with more standard crumbles

[saraband]

In A Capital Union Agnes Thorne provides for herself and her new husband, Jeff, using only the rations that were allowed during World War Two. Rationing allowed for:

One Fresh Egg 4oz Margerine 4oz Bacon (about four rashers) 2oz Butter 2oz tea 1oz cheese 8oz sugar

This was the rations to serve one person, and therefore it was required to be quite savvy with money. Determined to provide for her husband Agnes sets traps for rabbits and grows vegetables in the garden for extra provisions.  Tinned food was also popular, leading to the success of SPAM and some very interesting recipes such as SPAM fritters  and SPAM hash. 

Although some of these recipes might not appeal to us today, there are many excellent blogs detailing rations recipes if you want to try, most notably 1940s experiment and Wartime Recipes