Month: December 2021

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Pandemic Pantry Recipe Cards to Download

Dear all, I’m working as hard as I can on the FREE to download ‘Pandemic Pantry’ community cookbook and am now nearly half way through the re-do! I need about 3 more full days so am hopeful about having it available to download on January 1st, 2022! Thank you for everyone who has submitted recipes!

I am also creating a downloadable recipe card for each and every recipe so thought I’d give you a teaser of some of the recipes. Each one can we downloaded or printed.

Recipe Card No 1. Pandemic Stew: Download recipe card
Recipe Card No 2. Soda Bread + Sundried Tomatoes: Download recipe card
Recipe Card No 3. Skirlie + Corned Beef Stovies: Download recipe card

I am still open to receiving any simple, frugal or favourite recipes you have used during the pandemic and you are also welcome to send a sentence on your thoughts about your recipe, the pandemic, include a link to your website/blog or favourite charity and I will be sure to include this with your recipe.

Thank you once again for supporting this.

C xxxx

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Pandemic Pantry Sample Recipe Card

Dear all,

I wondered if you could help me. I’m busy working on what will be the FREE downloadable Pandemic Pantry community cookbook. I’m redoing it from scratch as I wasn’t happy with my first attempt but want to get it right and completed by January 1st. As well as the free downloadable cookbook (thank you for people for sending in their favourite recipes for inclusion) I also want to be able to offer FREE downloadable recipe cards like the one above too!

Obviously the image size above is too small to see clearly so I wondered if you could do the following..

FONT1: CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD A RECIPE CARD SAMPLE

FONT 2: CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD A RECIPE CARD SAMPLE

and give me feedback on the font that I have used. I love serif fonts with their little roundy tails but I just want to make sure that it can be read OK?

Thank you so much and I really appreciate your feedback.

C xxxx

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Gingerbread People – Recipe No. 197

It’s funny to think that the first documented instance of figure-shaped gingerbread biscuit was at the court of Elizabeth I of England. She had the gingerbread figures made and presented in the likeness of some of her important guests which brought the human shape of the gingerbread cookies into popularity. Read more here.

Christmas is never Christmas without gingerbread people or houses! I’ve come across several recipes for ‘Gingerbread Men’ from around the 1940s, some using Golden Syrup (UK), some using Molasses or Corn Syrup (North America). Some contain an egg, others don’t.

Below is my favourite recipe in which I make one adaption to improve the binding and holding together of the gingerbread. It tastes absolutely lovely, is firm enough to also make slabs for gingerbread houses, we may do that next year!

I’d like to take this opportunity to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year and really hope and wish that 2022 will be a year that sees you in good health and experience much happiness.

C xxxx

Ingredients

  • 350g plain flour
  • 140g of butter or margarine
  • 100g dark brown sugar
  • 3tbsp golden syrup (or molasses)
  • 1tbsp ground flaxseed (mix with 2.5 tablespoons of hot water, it helps hold the mixture together when baking)
  • 1 tbsp ground ginger
  • 2tsp ground cinnamon
  • 1tsp bicarbonate of soda
  • pinch of salt

Method

  • Mix the flaxseed with 2.5 tablespoons of hot water. Mix well and set aside to thicken.
  • Melt butter, sugar and golden syrup in a pan on a low heat stirring slowly until all runny and melted. Set this aside in a mixing bowl to cool down a bit.
  • Stir in the flaxseed mixture thoroughly.
  • Add in the sieved flour, bicarbonate of soda, pinch of salt and all the spices and mix until a smooth dough is formed.
  • Wrap or place in container and chill in fridge for 30 minutes.
  • Heat oven to 180C
  • Roll the dough out onto a lightly floured surface to about 0.5cm and start stamping out the gingerbread.
  • Place on parchment paper on a baking tray.
  • Cook for about 15 minutes (slightly more or less according to your oven)
  • Remove from oven when cooked. Leave on sheet to cool down for 15 minutes then transfer to a cooling rack. Once fully cold then you can keep in an airtight container for about a week or so.
  • Decorate with icing sugar when fully cold. If no icing sugar available dent the dough before cooking to form eyes, mouth and buttons! Or just decorate with anything you’ve got!

Makes about 12 large gingerbread people.

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The 1940’s Experiment on BBC World Service

What happens when you put a food writer, an author and a blogger in a virtual room with a BBC presenter and a BBC producer?

Karen Burns-Booth (Lavender & Lovage), Claud Fullwood (The Rations Challenge: Forty Days of Feasting in a Wartime Kitchen) and myself were invited by the BBC to be part of a discussion on the BBC World Service programme “The Food Chain” on our modern day experiences of living on wartime rations and the reasons behind why we undertook these ‘experiments’.

The episode has aired this morning and you can listen to it by clicking here. Karen and Claud are absolutely fascinating to listen too and we all got on so well so watch this space for future 1940’s collaborations in 2022.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/w3ct1rgr

The Food Chain: Why I chose to live on rations.

World War Two rationing imposed severe restrictions on food, so why would anyone voluntarily go back to it?

Ruth Alexander meets three women who chose to adopt the diet endured in 1940s and 1950s Britain, one of them for an entire year.

We hear how such scarcity inspired creativity, a reverence for the ingenuity of wartime cooks, and an enduring change of perspective on the responsibility of the 21st century food consumer.

If you would like to get in touch with the show please email thefoodchain@bbc.co.uk.

Presenter: Ruth Alexander Producer: Simon Tulett
Contributors:
Karen Burns-Booth, food writer – www.lavenderandlovage.com
Claud Fullwood, author of The Rations Challenge: Forty Days of Feasting in a Wartime Kitchen
Carolyn Ekins, blogger – www.the1940sExperiment.com

Just a heads up this is FINALLY launching on January 1st, 2022. A FREE download for all. I appreciate you bearing with me all this time. C xxxxx