As my year of living on WW2 rations draws to a close in early January 2024, I really want my Christmas on wartime rations to be memorable and amazing but also as authentic as possible. From now until Christmas, I’m going to re-create and film several wartime recipes before deciding on which ones to use on the big day!

At precisely 5:22 a.m. this morning, I awoke abruptly with one thing on my mind…MURKEY (Mock Turkey). I had dreamt of it last night and knowing that I had all the very simple ingredients, I was in my kitchen a little after 7 am, brandishing my trusty wooden spoon and wearing my 40s pinny, to have a bash at making one!

Despite the severe shortages, I am sure people would have done their damned best during wartime to have a centrepiece to their Christmas table and if there was no turkey or goose available, or no money to buy one, then this delicious homemade stuffing, turkey-shaped creation would have helped bring a few smiles to the faces sat around the table? You would have tried to make the best of it I’m sure…

Mock Turkey Ingredients

I used half the ingredients below to make a small mock turkey but at Christmas, I will use the full measurements below!

• 1 lb of breadcrumbs
• 1 lb of sausage meat (I used vegan sausages)
• 2 onions
• 2 apples
• Fresh sage to your own taste (dry sage would work too!)
• lots of salt and pepper
• streaky bacon (or a carrot – see my video recipe above)
• two parsnips

Method

• Make breadcrumbs from the bread (I used a food processor) and chop up the sausage, apple, onions, and sage finely (you can grate too or use a food processor.)
• Mix all the ingredients together, they should stick quite well together, and on a greased baking tray, form them into a turkey shape.
• Trim the parsnips and place them into the mock turkey to form parsnip turkey legs.
• Glaze the turkey with a brown sauce and melted margarine mixture (optional). This will help hold it together.
• Add bacon rashers (or thinly sliced carrot) to the mock turkey and glaze again.
• Cover loosely with foil and place at 180 C in the oven for 30 minutes then remove foil and cook for a further 30 minutes or so until lightly browned.
• Remove from oven and stand for 10 minutes before serving.

Serves 12!

Much love, C xxxxx

Cutting my hair was going to be symbolic of losing 100 lbs this year BUT I have been hating my hair so much it has been painful to live with it. To me it is reminding me daily of emotional pain, I couldn’t deal with that for 1 day longer. The hot weather gave me the final shove and today I discarded that pain, 14 inches of it!

Out with the old, in with the new and today I’m 62 lbs down since January!

C xxxx

PS: This length hair will be a lot easier for 1940s hairstyles too!

THANK YOU to everyone! I just wanted to let you know that thanks to YOU, I’ve finally been able to to move my blog off a FREE WordPress platform (after over 10 years!!) to a proper WordPress business hosting platform.

The kind donations through PayPal that I have received via my blog over the past year have paid for nearly 50% of this new plan and this enabled me to convince myself to go for it!!!

What does this mean? Although you won’t notice any differences right now, it does mean that over the next few months I can completely move my blog over to a more up to date professional theme on a staging site and hopefully have the new look website go live at Christmas (when I next have some time off!). Also it will allow the website to have a LOT more functionality and look a lot nicer.

Special shout out to the following supporters who made this happen: Emma, Kim, Kaye, Gwyeth, Irene, Sue, Lisa and Shirley AND to everyone who reads my blog or watches my YouTube channel. You have all helped enormously!

And of course a lovely warm thank you to the wonderful group members over on Facebook for sharing such wonderful daily updates and 1940s recipes and all things 1940s! The group has grown to almost 4500 members in such a short time and truly is a wonderful area for escapism.

Thank you, C xxxx