Using Up and Storing Away

For the past couple of days as I have sorted through my cupboards here at the flat I have been using up some of the dregs from jars and opened packets.  This meal combined the last of the gluten free pasta in the large jar I needed for my 'ration pasta' with the last of an opened jar of red pesto from the fridge, and was then topped with a sprinkling of my 'ration cheese'.  

I'm sure this gives you an inkling of why I have been so confused over the past week.  A bit of this and a bit of that etc etc , but thinking about it I'm sure that's just how it would have been at the start of rationing as things were pulled from cupboards to make up meals that the family were used to.  At first 'normal' meals would have been on the table and then as rationing went on and the old larder stores dwindled it would have been time to buckle down and get inventive.

Hopefully soon I'll be doing just this and things will be so much more interesting for me ... and for you 😃 

To get some of the dried, tinned and jarred foods out of the large cupboard and be able to see what I have for 'shopping' in the weeks and months to come I bought a couple of storage crates and a lidded box from the discount shop along the street from my flat.

The lidded box is for the opened bags of dried goods that I had tipped out my large storage jars to make space for the rations.

And I have to say for just £3.99 it is a really good box and I managed to fit everything I needed to into it.  

The plastic crates are only cheap ones but are good enough to hold the tins and jars and be slid into the base cupboard in the corner and be used like drawers so I can access what I need while I am 'shopping' from home.

I had a few vegetable 'stock pots' so I have popped these into a jar and will allow myself to use them in soups and stews etc until they run out, then I will just stick with my Bisto and any vegetable stock that I make.

It feels good to be getting sorted at last, I think next week is going to be so much easier.

Sue xx

Good News, Bad News and Sorting Out the Stores

 

The good news is my little jam ration is super tasty and although I made it way back in October 2016, as you can see on the label ... it is still in perfect condition.

The bad news ... although not in an earth shattering way... is that my bread of choice for this year does not fit in my little toaster here at the flat.  No doubt this cheap little toaster is going to last for years and years and years just to annoy me 😄

One of my lovely readers noticed my little 'Aga tin' on the photo on Wednesdays post and asked what is in it now and will I be using the contents during the Challenge.  The answer is yes I will, now that I have looked through it and sorted it out.

So the above is what was left in it.  I had already worked my way through all the sachets of sauces and little pots of jam etc and this is the remains.

I spent a relaxing ten minutes or so snipping all the little sachets open and tipping them into the appropriate pepper pot, salt cellar, sugar jar and coffee jar.  Although I only put in the two Nescafe sachets and one of the Kenco coffee ones into the coffee jar as I am not as keen on Kenco, and any more I felt would upset my ration amount.

Now everything is neatly in it's right place.  I had to get out the large salt container as my salt cellar was already quite full before I started.

So now the inside of the tin looks like this, I will be using it to hold any other sachets I acquire and my weekly 3oz sweet ration.  I thought if they were out of sight rather than in a glass jar I might not be as tempted to eat them all at the start of the week.  The last remaining chocolate bar for this week was consumed yesterday, so I did quite well really.  The tin will live on the worktop along with the larger storage jars.

Sue xx

When Rationing Began ... and Me Trying to Get Organised

 On this day in 1940 rationing in the UK began.  

Most people understood what was going to happen and although not looking forward to being on such strict rations they could see that this was the fairest way of making sure that everyone got their fair share of available foods.

This Challenge has not started the way I intended it to at all and I feel as though I am just on the verge of starting rather than already through the first week.  The little freezer here at the flat was full to bursting when I arrived so yesterday I finally got round to sorting it out.

How such a little space could hold so much I have no idea, but I had to set about planning what to do with it.  Most of the things can be incorporated into my rations, the vegetables and sausages etc other things I will just grit my teeth and use up even though they do not fit in with what I am trying to achieve this year, which is to get back to eating simple real foods that my Nana would have recognized.

She wouldn't have recognised a Kiev that's for sure, so that was the first to go, served with some of the rice from my ration.  A simple meal but one of my favourites.

As it was in the biggest box too I thought 'well that's more space in the freezer for sure'.  (I double wrapped the remaining one for safe storage outside it's box.)

I obviously did not repack it as well as it was packed at first!!

With Alan heading here this weekend for a business meeting he can help me to eat through some of the foods that I want to use up and get out of the way, and in my head I have decided that I am going to begin the Challenge in earnest on Monday.  By begin I mean proper days food photographs, all three meals of everyday being made from rations with only minimal input from the food stores in the way that I had planned initially.

One thing I have been pleased about at the end of this week of rationing is that my coffee supply has held up remarkably well.  I have been making a point of drinking tap water when ever I have been thirsty and only having a coffee when I am sitting down to enjoy a break, either at the computer reading through blogs or watching television in the evening ... and of course that most important first coffee of the day after the icy cold doggy walk along the riverbank.  So I've just reweighed this and out of my ration of 2oz I still have half an ounce left ... phew!!

Over the course of the weekend I will be publishing photos of what else I have been up to during these  first few days of the Challenge, while I have been trying to make sense of the stores I already had and how they are going to fit in with the rationing at the start of this year.

Sue xx

I'll Be Shopping from Home ... For a Long Time!!

 

So I arrived back at the flat, unpacked my rations, decanted the flour into the jar I used to use for my Weetabix ... I won't be able to get any Weetabix for at least a month as cereals are on the Points system and I have spent all my points ... and the whole bag fits beautifully with just enough  over to half fill my little flour dredger.

I re-arranged this corner of the worktop to accommodate my things overnight as I just knew the cupboards were going to be pretty full.  You may notice an extra jar of something in amongst all the decanted lentils, rice, oats etc!

It's a jar of oatmeal that I found in the cupboard in Wales.  I was watching a short film clip of Marguerite Pattern and she said that oatmeal was never on the ration, sometimes hard to get hold of but not rationed, if that's good enough for Marguerite then it's good enough for me.  I also decanted my gravy granules into my lovely Bisto tin, it looks much more authentic even if the contents are not the same as the wartime gravy powders.

I have been having a ponder over the last couple of days, I realised after a couple of you brought it to my attention, that I was making myself start from scratch when that simply wouldn't have been the case in wartime.  Everyone would have started off with a larder of  food of some description and would have used it up as and when they needed to alongside their rations to complete their meals .  Indeed in the few weeks before rationing began, the government had actually advised people to build their larders up slightly to accommodate two or three weeks worth of dried and tinned foods, if they could afford to do so.

So on the drive back to the flat I decided that whatever was in the 'dried foods cupboard' would be my pre-war larder and the main store of food would become the food that I shopped from until it ran out.

I couldn't remember exactly what was in it but when I arrived this is what I found, a bit of a hotch-potch but then this is what most larders of basics are like.  So this is now my only larder cupboard and will be used for all the food that I will be eating over the course of this Challenge, along with the worktop area underneath it for all the larger storage jars ... oats, flour, pasta and rice etc.

Today's main job is to sort through the fridge and freezer.  Here at the flat they are both tiny, and with the food that I had left behind before getting stuck in Wales and the new foods  that are part of my rations that I had brought with me, you can see clearly that they are full to bursting.

From the fridge I can remove the chocolate straight away, it doesn't need to be in there and will be used as my 3oz of allowable sweets a week until it runs out.  I will be able to see what is tucked away at the back when I begin sorting and see if I can remove anything else.

The freezer!!

At first glance there are a few things that I can incorporate into the rations straightaway, for instance I know that at the back there are some frozen mixed vegetables and some spinach pellets both of which fall into the modern rationing arena quite nicely.  The sausages will be available at two a week and any sauces can be used with my pasta.

I'll see what I have properly after I have taken Suky for a walk, now that the weak morning sunshine is taking the edge off the bitter cold I feel she will enjoy it a bit more.

The other cupboard ... the foods of which will be sorted out into categories and stored until I am allowed armed with my coupons and points to shop from ... well that's going to take some sorting out.  Maybe that's a job for tomorrow, with lockdown now in full force there really is no rush!!

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

A Year of Modern Rationing - Week One - The Food

 

It seems to have taken me ages to get my head around the various component parts of my rations.  But here in photos they are.

The Weekly Rations

4oz Bacon Substitute 

4oz Dairy Free Spread

4oz Oil 

1 Carton Almond Milk

3oz Cheese

8oz Sugar

2oz Coffee

2oz Flaxseeds

2 Vegan Sausages

3oz Sweets

There are some replacements for this first weeks foods, and while I use up the supplies of things in my own cupboards this may continue for a while.  For instance I had no Trex or vegan suet so I simply doubled the weight of oil.  I did not have enough in weight of the bacon substitute (which by the way is delicious and will most likely stay on my shopping list) so I added 1oz of split yellow peas.

I have no egg replacer yet ... although I have now found a source ... so I started this month off with some Flax seeds, which work very well in baking and as a binder.  I also had no white sugar so I just used some Demerara sugar from a jar in the cupboard.

A bit bitty but it should all  work.

Off the Ration

The weekly non-rationed foods were a bit easier.  I picked these up yesterday when we called into Tesco after walking the dogs.

Just LOOK at the size of that leek!!

All this, plus the three items below for just a smidge over £7 ... I'm very impressed 😀

I'm hoping I will be able to get at least my carrots and potatoes not wrapped in plastic bags next week, but for this week I couldn't as the available unwrapped ones were really not a pretty sight. I am also only buying foods grown in the UK wherever possible.

MR £2.96

A total of 90p worth of foods from my allowable 'meat replacement' spend of £2.96.  Leaving me another £2.06 for more fruit or healthy foods for the rest of the week.

 Sanity Saver

 2/3 jar of Peanut Butter from the cupboard.

My Monthly Points Shop

1 tin of Tomatoes - 6 points

1lb Oats - 2 points

2lb Red Lentils - 8 points

1lb Pasta - 2 points

and 

1lb Rice - 2 points

= 20 Points

I think I'm already slightly regretting the tin of tomatoes for 6 points as I have just read that a tin of baked beans would only have been 2 points.  Three tins of baked beans would have made a lot more meals, but I will just have to see how it goes this month and maybe change around a bit for next.

I was quite surprised that this is it for a month.  I'm thinking one pasta meal a week and one rice meal a week, and I sat and calculated that I only have enough for approximately nine porridge breakfasts for the month, that's just over two a week.

It would seem that points are spent more quickly than cash!!

My Monthly Rations

4oz Coffee

1 Carton of Almond Milk

1/2 lb Onions

Dried Egg Replacer to be added here.

My Bi-Monthly Rations

4oz Jam

4oz Marmalade

1 Jar of Cocoa Powder

It's going to be very interesting to see how this all works out, it might take me a week or so to get into the swing of it, but I'm hopeful that this is going to be a healthy and pretty cheap year of good food and clever meal making.  

Thank you to all those of you who have signed up already to be Followers of this new blog, it's been amazing to see the numbers go up so quickly.

And now it's time to make some porridge I think  🥣 

Sue xx