I just had to post about this and remind you to watch TV tonight, Channel 4 at 9 pm for a new TV series called “Benefits Britain 1949”. This new Channel 4 TV Series challenges those on benefits to live on 1949 handouts.
During the hour-long documentary, father-of-one and widower Melvyn is seen trying to live for one week by the benefit rules of 1949 – the first year the system was up and running – to find out how his income would change
Following the “Beveridge report” in 1942, the Labour Party government in 1945, following the defeat of Winston Churchill’s Conservative government, announced it would introduce a welfare state and the National Health Service was announced in 1948 and social security was implemented.
The report in 1942 by economist William Beveridge, recommended that the government should find ways of fighting the five ‘Giant Evils’ of ‘Want, Disease, Ignorance, Squalor and Idleness’..
And the underlying message from the experiment? The 1949 system worked best for those who wanted to work. The system now works best for those who don’t. Until we turn that basic premise around, we will never transform the dependency culture of Benefits Britain 2013.
Thank you to my Facebook friend Kayleen, who tagged me in a post this morning as she had found a volume of wartime recipe books in a Manchester Photographic Archive on Flickr. This is exciting! I can almost smell the pages!
A volume of recipes dating to World War Two. The folder contains manuscript, typescript, and printed recipes, and booklets of recipes published by Birds, Good Housekeeping, Ministry of Food, Van den Bergh & Jergens Limited and the Women’s Gas Council.
Forms part of the Garner family of Manchester’s collection in the Documentary Photographic Archive. Donated by Doris Henderson of Australia, 1997.
This was a popular wartime recipe using sausages and batter and was very filling when served with vegetables, potato and gravy. I used vegan sausages, soy milk and omitted the egg (and added a teaspoon of vinegar and a level teaspoon of baking powder) to make the dish “vegan friendly”. It tasted good but the batter was heavy and didn’t rise much.
Here is the original wartime recipe..
Toad in the Hole
1 oz of margarine/butter or dripping
1 lb sausages
5 oz plain flour
pinch salt
1 tablespoon dried egg powder
2 tablespoons water
1/2 pint of milk or milk and water
Method
Pre-heat the oven to 200 C (400 F) or Gas Mark 6.
Put the cooking fat into a Yorkshire pudding tin and place in oven for 5 minutes, add the sausages and toss in fat and cook for a further 5 minutes or so.
Raise the temp to 220 C (425 F) or Gas Mark 7
Blend the ingredients for the batter together (dry ingredients first and then slowly mix in the water/milk)
Pour the batter over the piping hot sausages and bake for 30 minutes until well risen and golden brown
During the war, with lack of money and luxury goods and with many items and materials being in short supply, the home front family would have made many of their gifts for family and friends at Christmas.
I’ve decided that it’s never too early to start making gifts for Christmas and no better way to source free materials then from my own garden. I have a couple of lavender bushes and when I came across a picture of a Lavender wand on Etsy, and found out that these wands (or sometimes known as Lavender bottles) had been made by ladies since Elizabethan times, I knew these would make wonderful historical and fabulous gifts.
They are EASY to make!
To make one wand you will need
20 long stalks with a lavender flower/buds on the end
some string
ribbon to decorate
Method
Line up 20 stalks so the bottoms of the flowers all line up at the same level
Tie string tightly immediately below
Turn upside down and start pulling stalks downwards around the flowers to form a cage by joining stalks back together again and tying off again so the flowers are contained inside
Push any flowers popping out back in carefully and adjust the stalks so they are evenly spread around
Strip any leaves from the lower stalks (set aside and you can place these in muslin bags with any buds/flowers that have fallen off and scent your drawers!)
Trim the ends of the stalks so they are even and to the desired length
Tie off at bottom with string or ribbon
The cage and the stem of the wand can be decorated with ribbon threaded through it or you can go for the rustic wand look and just leave it undecorated
Here is what a Lavender wand will look like threaded with ribbon (photo from Etsy) I have ordered some purple ribbon for the ones I am making (several being made)
I’m eating way more than I’m burning off (despite all the daily walking) and coupled with enjoying several bottles of ale a week, when I jumped on the scales yesterday, although shocked, I wasn’t surprised to see the needle where it was.
Everything has been feeling tighter, my joints are aching again and I’m feeling tired.
I’ve put on 27 lbs since I last weighed myself back in Nova Scotia before the weighing scales broke!
I’m back up to 270 lbs
I know I have to give myself time to grieve, but life has been so full of immediate challenges these past few months that it is hard to sit and take time to make sense of things. All I know is that we need to move forward, get jobs, build a home, feel safe.
I get moments where the grief pushes through as I think of many things. I’ll have a little weep and move on to the next chore. It’s all part of life.
I miss my life in Nova Scotia and my friends. I miss my dog.. (oh but he has landed on his feet and has just spent a week on the beach on Prince Edward Island)
Trams in Nottingham the other day..
BUT let me tell you that those feelings are counter-balanced by my exciting new life here in Nottingham. I love my new home, I’ve got some awesome friends who have helped me a lot (thank you Ben and Bertie) and I have a bit of a social life too! I can hop on the bus to the city and enjoy wandering around the town and soaking in the vibe. It’s rather an exciting one…
I’ve started meeting people and going places and enjoy weekly pottery sessions with my friend Bertie and have just joined “Nottingham Hackspace” which I’m really excited about.
My small container garden is growing well and soon I will have tomatoes and zucchini. I’ve harvested my rhubarb (to make a wartime rhubarb wine recipe) and soon I will be cutting and drying my herbs. It looks like I have a crab apple tree and very soon I will have elderberries and rose-hips and my cupboards are full of jam and chutney jars waiting for harvest time. From now until the spring I will be clearing the back area of the garden to put in a proper Victory Garden and I’m really excited about that.
Em Hobbit now has a school. She’ll be attending Colonel Frank Seely School in a neighbouring village called Calverton which specializes in Maths and Computing. She already has her school tie and blazer badge and it’s going to seem strange seeing her in school uniform.
Last week much of the Midlands had flash flooding after weeks of no rain. Just a few houses down from us our local community centre’s retaining wall collapsed under the pressure. See the video I filmed below..
Over 10,000 views in 2 days.. I guess a collapsing wall is big news!!
Yesterday I sent out my CV and reference letter’s to the Editor of the Nottingham Post, Mike Sassi. I enjoyed my time working for Lighthouse Media Group in Nova Scotia and I’d love to continue my career in this area so I’ve asked him to keep my details on file.
I started back to eating 1940s today and weekly weigh-ins will resume. As tempting as it is to just keep eating and comforting myself in this way I need to be fit and healthy and mobile and happy. I have a wonderful opportunity to build my life again and a challenging but exciting future.
I won’t let that slip through my fingers, not this time…
C xxxxx
PS Made an awesome malted loaf yesterday- recipe to follow!
