And here are the winners of the notebooks/journals! One copy of the journal will be sent to each winner so please drop a comment below and I’ll make contact with you, congratulations and thank you for entering everyone! C xxxx
I love Sunday mornings. I may live in a town but Sunday mornings seem quite peaceful. Christchurch bells are ringing and my garden backs on to the bushes surrounding the perimeter of Queens Park. Being a person who prefers rural life and solitude, not being boxed in by other houses at the bottom of my garden, really helps. I’m grateful.
I’m reflecting on the week past, my first week back to rationing. It wasn’t without it’s challenges.
The positives of this week were:
So what have I eaten this week?
Breakfasts: Mostly porridge but I did have toast on two mornings
Lunch: Oslo Meals but also fried veggies on toast, beans on toast and some salads
Dinners: Lentil & Veggie Stews, Sausage and Mash, Mince Slices, Vegetable and Oatmeal Goulash, Mince and Potatoes, Butternut squash, cabbage, broccoli.
Others: Cox’s Apples.
So what have I spent on food this week?
It’s probably easier for me to post my shopping list below. I haven’t had to buy anything else in addition so in answer to the question, I have spent considerably less! In fact, my weekly grocery bill before was 3 times as much!
Much love, C xxxx
This is such a quick, economical and tasty recipe. Even as a non meat eater I was able to create this using soya mince and it worked really well! I only used half the ingredients listed below and it made 6 slices so enough for dinner and enough for sandwiches tomorrow!
Ingredients
Method
Serves 4
What a busy day! My house is so messy, must deal with it tomorrow now I have the weekend off. I cooked a vegetable & oatmeal goulash for dinner this evening and was craving something sweet but didn’t want to put the oven on and bake something so did a 2 slice bread and butter pudding in the microwave and it hit the spot!
With the cost of energy and the cost of living, modern appliances and quick ways of doing things, are going to be embraced this year!
C xxxx
Day 4’s Thoughts below!
It’s late afternoon and I’ve just got out of bed. I had a nasty attack of vertigo around 11pm last night, such a horrible and scary feeling, and it continued to persist into the afternoon but its slowly calming down and I’ve just got out of bed with a soft neck brace on to make a sandwich on rations! I was HUNGRY!
Last night, before everything went spinny and I couldn’t stand up, I edited a video from my birthday with some thoughts on starting WW2 rationing for a full year and thought you might be interested. I will be sharing some factual rationing information throughout the year too as well as recipes, am really looking forward to that. There are some fantastic recreated recipes in our Facebook group too, some fantastic cooks sharing their rationing dishes! Our group is here..
Apologies too, I am a little behind answering any lovely messages or comments plus the draw for the journals but hopefully I can catch up with these soon but not today as I’m heading back to bed as my head is still a bit spinny if I don’t keep it absolutely still! I’ll probably do a bit of journaling and reading if I feel OK.
Hugs, C xxx
PS: Please don’t be concerned. I do know it’s a positional type of vertigo as it has been checked out in A & E before! I tend to get it maybe a couple of times a year, mostly it is something I can go to sleep on and it is Ok in the morning but occasionally it can be more severe where it lasts a few days and I literally can only sit in bed or in a chair and not move my head at all!
Victory! Only another 364 days to go but my first full day of rationing has been successfully completed. I’m not too hungry, and I’m on my 2nd flask of tea made out of 5 teaspoons of loose tea so I can’t complain at all. Ask me again in a few weeks….
I’ve kept it really simple today and I’ve decided going forward that during the week I will make quick recipes such as stew that I can throw into one pot and enjoy with bread and weekends will be for baking pies and puddings and trying out new recipes.
Today I had porridge made with water and oat milk for breakfast, I had two slices of bread with margarine, a tiny sprinkling of cheese, and some salad leaves made into a sandwich and had an apple and a carrot on the side for lunch. This evening I had a huge vegetable stew (two bowlfuls) with leek, onion, carrot, courgette, 1 large potato, celery, cauliflower, and some lentils and split peas. to this I added lots of seasoning and some dried herbs and thickened the stew with good old-fashioned Bisto powder. I also had a slice of bread with butter.
Breaking the ingredients down todays food cost me around about £1. Not bad…
Talking about cost, I started logging all my unbudgeted for expenses today. I carry around a simple expenses book with me now (which I put together myself and is available on Amazon – shameless plug there) and anything I spend above and beyond my monthly bills, direct debits and grocery allowance etc, I am now writing it down. Today for instance, because of the weight I have put on and the side effects of it right now, I had to drive to work and park which was £3.30. I’m hoping that in a week or two of rationing, my weight will begin to drop and my back pain will start to ease and I can start walking the mile to work and the mile back from work again. The pain is horrible, all my own doing of course. I’ve had enough.
This year “bare bones spending” and “making do and mending” are something I want to achieve so I may want to lose 100 lbs in a year but I also want to gain £100 a month and top up my emergency or “rainy day” fund again so I feel “safe”.
I’m not sure what I’m going to have tomorrow. The day will likely start off with porridge again and maybe even another salad sandwich with fruit and veg on the side for lunch but I’ve seen a WW2 recipe called “Lobscouse” that looks simple and fairly quick so I may try that out tomorrow night.
Much love and good luck to all, C xxxxx
Well here it is folks. In all my 299 lb (21st 3lbs) of glory. Determined and at last ready to give this another go. I bought this dress several years ago, it’s never fit me properly but it’s just stretched beyond belief in this video. I so want to wear it this a 40’s event of sorts but want to feel comfortable and it to fit properly.
Just thought I’d be brave and share the video.
Much love, C xxxx
With a day off work today it’s given me time to write down my shopping list and break down the cost for 1 week on WW2 rations starting next week. I am absolutely treating this as at the beginning of rationing so I can try and experience what it was like to eventually run out of foods I had stashed away (as people were encouraged to do in 1939, a little extra here and there in preparation for war). So to start with, rather than waste good food, I will continue to use my open “Heinz Salad Cream” and “Bag of Icing Sugar” but once they are gone, they are GONE!
Full article above can be found on the BBC website HERE
I’m still going to use modern conveniences of life such as the microwave and fridge but pretty much everything will be cooked from scratch. What about coffee? I’ve been reading through “The Peoples War” on the BBC website and prior to the war people had ground coffee and one particular memory was of a mother stashing away cans of ground coffee prior to rationing being implemented. Coffee was never rationed of course but it became very scarce. Coffee is like life to me, it’s bad enough I am having to give up my avocados and bananas SO I really do believe I would have done the same as this mother did! Instead I am going to not buy any more ground coffee, I think I have a couple of small bags and I also have a large bag of coffee beans. I guess what I’m trying to say is I may have one mug of coffee a day or instead have a “coffee day” on a Sunday until it runs out. I will have to be very careful with it indeed.
During the week I have decided that most of my meals will be quick and can be prepared in advance or prepared quickly after a day at work so lots of stews, potatoes and anything that keeps well and is easy to reheat. At weekends I will have meals that take me longer to prepare such as pies and puddings and also will be an opportunity to try 1940s ration book recipes that I have not tried before. I’ll be making Oat milk from my oats and sometimes buying it so when I do you will see that on my shopping list.
I’m really looking forward to reading about other people’s experiences. I have just looked in the comments section just now to read a very interesting comment from DJ which goes one step further and can’t wait to hear more about that. I may have done the same myself if I lived on my own, sounds fascinating!
Good Luck all xxxx C
It’s true. I’m actually a bit disappointed in myself. we have just been through two years of uncertainty and now it looks like 2023 will be the most uncertain year of all for the whole of Europe. If ever there was a good time to rein things in, tighten my belt (metaphorically, I always wear stretchy leggings!) and knuckle down and save more money, 2023 is it…
I just wish I’d done it with more effort, sooner.
Much love, C xxxx
PS: I’m also working on my ration book recipe books which will be a combination of some the authentic recipes I’ve already recreated on my blog, some new ones and some wartime tips to assist with the “Cost of Living”. I am HOPING the first volume will be ready in early spring and the 2nd volume late spring. They will of course be listed here on my blog and be on Amazon and listed on my Authors page HERE
I’m going to improve my writing so I don’t have to type it out but for now I will, or maybe I WILL type it out too. Regardless, I will share some of my diary entries throughout the coming year as I attempt once again, to live on wartime rations for a full year.
The reasoning for this is mostly twofold
My year of rationing and spending less begins on Monday January 9th
Good luck to everyone making similar changes. C xxx
Poised with a 5 pack of 3XL M&S knickers and a 44GG “boulder holder”, I made a promise to myself that 2023 would be the year that I spend little and eat little (or at least not as much as I have been doing for the last 30 years of my life).
My foray into a 1940’s life of ration book recipes and making do and mending starts on January 9th, a day after my birthday and a day after rationing started in the UK in 1940.
By the way it cost me £25 for the big knickers and bra but they were a very necessary spend prior to D-Day on January 9th. Literally all my bras are broken or ill fitting, and the less spoken about that state of my current knickers collection, the better!
C xxxx