I’ve just come across an excellent playlist on YouTube which includes 72 Wartime Rationing/Home-front/Make do and Mend videos including some more recent videos on the subject of the home-front during WW2.
A wonderful collection of social history snippets!
I had to share with you!
C xxxx
So at lunch I was experimenting in the kitchen. I wanted to come up with something I could make up and keep in the fridge for a few days to use in recipes as an alternative to animal mince meat. I looked at a few recipes on the web and decided to make my own only using simple, frugal wholefood ingredients that would have been around on the home front on a good shopping day!
To be honest I wasn’t expecting much with my first attempt but this came out incredibly well. Obviously it’s not a WW2 ration book recipe but I really had to share this because it is very healthy and VERY frugal.
I didn’t have my camera with me just my phone to take a snap shot but hope you can still see that the burger looked quite delicious!
Cost: The mixture makes 6 large burgers (or more smaller ones) and based on 6 big burgers the cost is about 5p per burger without mushrooms or about 13p per burger with mushrooms.
Calories: Each burger is about 150 cals and about 10g of protein and over 10% of daily iron requirement and 25% of daily fibre…high in potassium too!
Method
Today I have had bread rolls for lunch and bread rolls for dinner because these ‘oat topped bread rolls’ were so delicious that I couldn’t stop. I’d run out of bread at home and it was easy to knock up a small batch of rolls and cheap too!
Using the basic home-made bread recipe used on the home front during WW2 (fat free) it didn’t take long before 6 large bread rolls appeared out of the oven and filled my tummy.
Instead of using plain flour I used one of my favourite flours (which was open in the cupboard already) and that is Allinsons Country Grain Bread Flour which is so tasty, chewy and malty with whole grains in.
Total cost: I worked out the cost to be under 5p per roll using a store brand strong bread flour and it was under 10p per role using the ‘Allinsons Country Grain Bread Flour’.
175-200 cals per roll.
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For anyone that pops in to read my blog now and again, you’ll know that I set a goal to take control of my life economically in 2018 by living like our grandmothers did (no debt, save money for a rainy day and only buy something if you really need it otherwise mend and make do!).
I guess reaching the age of 52 in January, being in debt and having no savings (I’ve been through several very tough years) has made me panic. I want to be in control of my life, feel financially safe and feel proud of how I live. Being single I do not have a back-up if things go wrong.
I started planning for this year early on in 2017. I’ve always had to live quite frugally to make ends meet as I was spending between £250-£300 per month just commuting from Nottingham to Rotherham 5 days a week for my job. We made plans that when my youngest daughter left college we would move to a cheaper house that would be near my work place (so if my car ever broke down and I had to do without, I could walk). We found a smaller house with a little garden just 2 miles from my job. We had to snap it up because it was ideal and managed to negotiate the first months rent free with the landlord but this still meant we had a couple of months double rent to pay while we waited for my daughter to finish college. But it’s been worth it.
With all the extra expenses of moving and paying double rent (luckily my eldest daughter helped out) it took many months to catch up and get on top of things again but we got there and I’d still managed to put money by in a Christmas Savings Club and started to save an emergency fund.
So January has been all about being getting to grips with actually creating a written budget and sticking to it. My monthly budget runs from pay-day to pay-day (last Friday of every month) and although it has needed some effort, the written budget has REALLY helped me get things in order. This month I’ve paid all my bills, put money away in savings/emergency fund, put money away in my sinking funds and PAID OFF TWO DEBTS!!!!
It has been TOUGH though….I’ve not eaten out or bought anything from my cash food/household budget except for food and toilet paper. Every time I go into a supermarket I have to remind myself to “STICK TO MY LIST” and absolutely ONLY buy something if I NEED it! BUT by the end of the month I have underspent by £80.70p and I now have that sitting in my cash jar, an extra bit of safety. As a single person I don’t have a back-up!!!
And today I’ve completed February’s budget. Every £ is accounted for and I’m ready for another monthly challenge of working towards being debt free and having a proper rainy day fund just like our Grandmothers used to!
C xxxx
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It’s finally coming together and on March 1st I aim to have my first high quality full colour ‘Ration Book Recipes’ booklets for sale on my blog.
I’m doing every single bit of it myself which to be honest has been a bit of a dream of mine and there will be a series of them and all very affordable at £5 each. I hope they will compliment the blog and help to pay for it’s upkeep, fund some new equipment for photography or something or some vintage props.
Thought you’d like a sneak peak. I’d really like to use a strap line somewhere that says something like ‘Every meal for under £1’ but I will have to fully price up every recipe from scratch before I can use that!
Anyway – just thought I’d let you guys know and I’ll keep you updated!
Thanks 🙂
C xxxx
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Here is a nice tasty wartime flapjack recipe which I’ve made twice in the last two weeks as I had lots of oats to use up and some hard margarine. I divided the mixture up and added a handful of mixed dried fruit into the second half. You could anything you wanted like some chopped nuts or shredded coconut.
Flapjack (makes 8 large or 12 regular slices)
Method
Cost = 80p in ingredients.
So opening the door of my old under the stairs pantry this morning it was beginning to look like an episode of ‘hoarders’ so decided my goal today was to deal with it ASAP before it all got out of hand. To get it ship shape and an area I could use for food storage was important to assist in my drive to get my life, finances, diet and future in order. To tackle life one chore at a time….
So I’ve pulled everything out, recycled lots, threw away quite a bit, relocated some of the items I really needed to keep and labelled up my food storage buckets so it no longer is a guessing game in what buckets contain flour or pulses. I even found some Union Jack bunting in the back of the pantry so used some of that to add a bit of nostalgia.
This is just the first tidy through and I have plans to utilise the space more but thought you’d like to see what I’ve been up to. It’s definitely doing my brain good to tackle chores full on instead of putting them off…it’s quite satisfying. Yes it was 4 hours of my life to sort it all out but now I’m going to smile when I open the door instead of get frustrated and feel awful about it.
One more chore today, balance my budget book!
C xxxx
FREE LABELS!
PS: I downloaded FREE LABELS from HERE for my food storage buckets and stuck them on with a glue stick. I changed the font as you can see below but the labels also come with writing on so you can just print and stick.
Hey everyone,
I’m not sure if you were aware but I offer my services as a ‘Virtual Assistant Web Manager’ and I’m currently looking to take on a couple of clients this year.
My expertise is working with people to establish loyal communities and followers online via blogging, websites and social media, it’s what I have been doing for about 20 years now and I can offer my services in these areas at a very reasonable £20 an hour.
Here is an example of a digital business card I created
Here is a short video interview I created for Dale Carnegie Training.
Here is the employee app I created for PMS Diecasting.
It all started with a rural communities self-sufficiency style website called ‘A Country Life’ or ACL for short which grew into a community of tens of thousands and 1/2 million page views every month. I learned a lot during my time as owner and editor of the website about online communities and building useful, passionate content.
I think if I was to give one snippet of advice to anyone who would like to build a genuine, busy online community would be to make it about something you are REALLY PASSIONATE ABOUT, the thing you want to talk to everyone about EVERY SINGLE DAY! You don’t have to be an expert, just love it, live it, breathe it! If you are passionate about something you can’t help yourself!!..
Since then I have worked in Canada as a Web Manager for a newspaper in Nova Scotia, utilizing social media in it’s early days, building and maintaining digital newsletters to all newspaper subscribers as well as adding reported news, videos and special features to an every changing news website. I felt very honoured to be mentored in ‘Search Engine Optimization’ during this time by David Jonah.
In between I have always found time to be involved in promoting community activities such as festivals, groups and museums and interacting online and through media to raise awareness of these things.
I currently work full-time as a Digital Media Coordinator for a manufacturing company in Rotherham and my day job evolves around posting social content, updating websites, creating video media, creating brochures and signage. I’ve also designed and administer an employee app.
So week 3 cash budget comes to an end tomorrow so I’ve just sat down tonight and gone through the figures and after a very difficult week to stay within budget I’m happy to have made it through with still £3.12 left over to put in my cash savings jar!
This is my very first month of pretty much EVER doing a monthly budget where every single £ is accounted for. It’s not easy but I am so determined to change my life around economically in 2018 that accounting for every £ spent will be absolutely necessary to rid myself of past bad habits.
The reason this week was such a rollercoaster white knuckle ride financially was that £50 of my £57.50 weekly cash budget for food, car/petrol and household (entertainment, clothing, toiletries, other etc) was spent on petrol as I did a 500 mile round trip to move my daughter out of the University of Reading. The only other expense this week was £4.38 on food. I’m glad reset day is tomorrow and Week 4’s budget kicks in….phew!
That’s £59.22 I’ve saved in 3 weeks out of my weekly cash budget in addition to the £300 savings I had sent to TransaveUK Credit Union from payroll when I got paid! (but I’ve given up absolutely EVERYTHING to achieve that!!!!)
I’m pretty proud of myself for sticking with it! I can’t actually believe it!!!
As for eating healthily I don’t want to jinx it but for some reason the more I am taking control of my money the more I seem to be taking control of my eating. Is it because psychologically I’m feeling happier making positive changes and anxiety about money has had me comforting myself with food? Who knows! It’s just a theory right now and I’m going to see what happens.
Currently I’m eating well and eating somewhere between 1500-2000 calories a day with lots of vegetables and pulses/beans.
Today I had porridge oats for breakfast, a large leafy salad and 300g drained weight of kidney beans and some dressing for lunch, for dinner I had soup and bread and afterwards a single eggless pancake drizzled with a little golden syrup. If I’m still hungry tonight I will saute some white cabbage in a pan with some herbs and spices.
I hope everyone is doing well with their budgets. I’m rather liking this “make do and mend” malarky!
C xxxxx
It’s two days now that I’ve been on track and haven’t succumbed to the devilish temptation of crap food! I’m using up food that I have in my larder that is on or coming up to it’s expiry date so for the last few days I seem to have eaten a LOT of rice crackers! I’m relieved that they have now gone…. There has been lots of healthy wholefoods though such as red split lentils, kidney beans, chickpeas and lots of vegetables from my small Riverford Organic Veggie Box (I’ve downsized to the small box every week to help with my budgeting)
Food-wise this week I’ve been eating oats for breakfast with some apple in it and a teaspoon of jam. Lunches have been rice crackers topped with raw veggies and salad and main dinner has been lentil and chard stew and then I made a really nice chickpea and swiss chard curry. I have plenty of potatoes to till use up and a butternut squash so these will be on the menu tomorrow night!
Budget-wise this week I’ve had to be EXTREMELY careful. I’ve had to do a round trip of almost 500 miles to move my daughter out of Uni and the petrol cost was £65 (gulp!!!). I put in £25 on Friday (out of last weeks budget) and then used £40 out of this weeks cash budget of £57.50 (which is £25 for food, £12.50 for petrol/car and £20 for entertainment/clothing/toiletries/toilet rolls etc) on Saturday to get us over to the University and finally back home again.
Luckily the only money I have spent out of my cash budget on food and household this week is £3. Tomorrow I will have to put £5 petrol in the car too. If my maths is correct I make that £9.50 left this week. I am determined to not spend anymore so I can add that £9.50 to my savings jar.
I’m really enjoying being so disciplined as it ‘is’ to achieve a goal but I’d be a liar if I said it was easy this week….it hasn’t been. It’s been tough.
The hardest thing is going shopping in the supermarket. Normally I will shop from a list but always add in extras that I fancy. Now I’m literally sticking rigidly to a prepared list and absolutely ONLY BUYING WHAT I NEED AND NOT WHAT I WANT!!!
It’s working though… but I’m not out of the woods yet. There are 4 birthdays this month (I’ve put my thinking cap on!).
C xxxxxx
