Day Three - Jam, Soup, Chip Shop Chips, Scallops and YouTube

 

I had weetabix written on my menu plan for this morning, but I just didn't fancy it, so I made myself a slice of toast.  To save on rations I had half with butter and the other with jam.  I have never really had butter and jam on toast together it's a bit of a weird combination in my mind, so it's always one or the other.  Although thinking about it I do have butter and jam together on scones occasionally ... and I used to love clotted cream piled high on top.

I'm a strange one ... and always happily the first to admit it. 😄

Lunch was almost as per the menu, but I just decided on bread instead of toast to go along with my vegetable soup.  I think I have another three portions of this in the fridge.

As well as two bowlfuls of soup in the fridge.  I froze it this way so I would have an exact portion size ...

.. and still free up my dishes for immediate use.

Now my evening meal was to have been Carrot Croquettes, but as we were really tired after a horrendous journey in heavy rain to visit Mum in hospital, neither of us felt like cooking so we called to the chip shop on the way home.

Sadly, our chips weren't wrapped in newspaper the way they used to be, but at least the chippy has moved away from polystyrene trays to a much more environmentally friendly cardboard tray.

Who remembers chips all piled high on a piece of greaseproof paper and then wrapped in layers of newspaper.  And if you took a pile of nice clean newspapers to the chip shop where we lived when I was small, children would get a free scallop.

Not the fish sort, but a good old Northern slice of potato dipped in batter and deep fried ... and usually 2d each to buy.

And now for your Sunday entertainment here is a brilliant little YouTube film.  It's an American made and narrated film and is a brilliant description of rationing in the UK.

https://youtu.be/o9wNJ78S2GY

Hope you having a good weekend.

Sue xx

Dip Butties ... and Memories

 

This challenge is throwing up all sorts of memories for me. 

 Although I was born in 1960 and a few years after rationing in the UK had ended completely, meat had only come off the ration as late as 1954 and sweets the year before that, times were still hard for lots of folks my parents included.

We lived in the downstairs of my Nana's house paying her rent for the three rooms of the semi-detached house in Old Trafford, Manchester that she had bought  in 1958 just before my parents married.  What would have been the front room was my parents bedroom, the 'dining room' was mine and my brothers shared bedroom and the kitchen was everything else ... a table and chairs, two armchairs, the television on it's 1960's spindly legs and once the fitted cupboards in the alcove of the kitchen were ripped out in the mid-sixties, a 'modern' 1960s Kitchen Cabinet was stood in the alcove beside the fireplace.  We had a little pantry room off it which held the large Belfast sink, the old 1950's gas cooker, and from the mid-sixties onwards our gas refrigerator lived under the draining board.

Hot water came from a new fangled instant hot water boiler and the supplies and vegetables were stored in the shopping bags we brought them home from the shops in under the stairs, which was open to the 'pantry' as we called this little much filled room.

Anyway all those memories came to mind when I made myself a 'bacon butty' (bacon sandwich for all you non-UK-ians out there).  After buttering one of my slices of bread with my spread I had a brainwave, why not dip the other slice in the small amount of fat left in the pan after cooked my smoky flavoured vegan Quorn slices, it would make my butter ration go further.  Half bacon butty, half dip butty.

Dip butties are so called because after my Dad had had his bacon butty I used to pester my mum to lay or dip a slice of bread in the fat which after a couple of minutes it would be lifted out topped with a dry slice and enjoyed by me.  

All the delicious flavour of the old fashioned bacon and none of that awful chewiness that I hated as a child.  I have never enjoyed meat and being told to clear my plate as a child only set in place even more intense hatred of certain foods, most of which I have since gotten over ... but never the meat side.

So Dip Butties were born, and my gosh they were a treat!!

And they have now been resurrected during this Year of Modern Rationing.

And yes even though the 'bacon' wasn't real ... the flavour was 😃

Sue xx

Banger and Mash

 

Things are starting a bit slow here at the moment, but rest assured I am mostly on rations, even if a few extra 'things leftover from Christmas' have passed my lips as I prepare to move from the smallholding here in Wales back to my flat in Lancashire.   I would much rather eat them than waste them, which if you know me at all you will well understand.  So it all feels a bit topsy turvy temporarily but normal service should soon resume ... or maybe just start properly  😀😄

The top photo is my tea last night, Banger and Mash ... so called because I used only one of my two sausages cut into four bite sized pieces once it was cooked and then further cut up as I ate them with the mash and Bisto gravy.  I wanted to save my other sausage for something else later in the week ... it would have been way to extravagant to just eat them both at once.  Alan had his mash with a pack of Pigs in Blankets left over from the Christmas shop ... you can guess who the dogs sat closest too while we ate!!

Yesterdays post and the comments threw up some lovely memories for some of my readers and talk was of happy Sunday teatimes with bread and butter followed by jelly and cream.

Someone who still does this today is Michelle Clare, formerly of the blog Remembering the Old Ways (on my sidebar) and now of Instagram.  Every weekend and on special occasions she shares photos of the family table laden with lovely food about to be enjoyed in her lovely old cottage.

Here's a link if you want to go and drool over her gorgeous photos:  

Remembering the Old Ways

This morning after taking the dogs for a long run on the beach, even little Puggy legs were excited to be running on soft sand, we called to Tesco for some cleaning products we needed and I picked up the rest of this weeks MR £2.96 spend.  That's all but 3p of my money spent and I will not be carrying over any money as each weeks meat allowance had to be spent in that week as far as I can find out.

Rest assured I am trying whenever possible to only buy British and in-season fruits and vegetables so I was delighted to find UK grown Gala apples at six for £1.60 which left me with 46p to spend  The only other UK apples that I could spy loose were Bramleys, perfect I thought but they were HUGE so I played a weighing game until I managed to find one at 43p.   

 I see the makings of a nice apple pie there  😋

Sue xx

A Thoroughly Modern Breakfast

 

A cross between a wartime breakfast and a thoroughly modern one ... and one that is perfect for a vegan.  One thing most vegan foods lack is a complete protein, but combining a grain with a nut rectifies this instantly.  So wholewheat bread with peanut butter is nice and easy ... and a very very tasty and healthy way to start the day.  I also had one slice of  toast with just spread to see how little I could get away with using and it still be tasty.

If I ate toast like this every day I would soon run out of my spread as I only have 4oz for the week, but luckily when I have jam or marmalade I don't usually add any spread first.

I need to sit down and write out a menu plan for the week ahead, and indeed I really should start doing this for the start of every week and get into the habit, so that I can make best use of my weekly and monthly rations, but I have been so busy that I just haven't done this yet.

Today's breakfast was a bit different ... I had bacon butties.

It's funny as I was buttering the bread my Dad's voice came to mind when he taught me how to do this as a child.  Once I had been taught the technique of  'first do the edges and the middle will take care of itself', it was usually my job to butter the bread that we had with every meal while Mum cooked the food and Dad laid the table.  Usually it was just one slice for each of us cut in half ... my parents, me and my younger brother.  It could be used to make a chip butty or two, or simply to mop up the gravy on the plate.  So that there was nothing wasted and it provided a bit of extra filling for hungry tummies.

You can just about see the difference in the two slices of bread, the one on top was buttered using Dad's technique by going all around the edges and then pulling in the spread to the middle with just a little more added to the knife, and the one underneath as I do it now, just loading the knife and spreading.  

I will be reverting as the old way did indeed use less of the spread.

The vegan bacon I used was this, it's the most genuine tasting I have found and even the dogs were drawn to the kitchen with smell of it frying.  Half a pack weighs in at just 2oz so I think that this is the amount I will add to my rations most weeks, maybe for a bacon butty treat on Saturday or Sunday.

It might not look much but  with a cup of coffee it has kept me nicely filled all morning.

I think I need to go and sit down and write myself a menu plan for the rest of the week now, it's time to get organised.

Sue xx