Learning From History

Do you ever wonder what it was like for our mothers and grandmothers to keep their families going?  This is something I have thought a lot about in recent years.  There is an incredible abundance now and our society seems to think little of being wasteful.  It makes me a bit sad to think what my grandmother or a younger (saner) version of my mother might have to say about it.

I was born at the end of 1974 into a large family in a small town in the middle of lower Michigan.  I was child number five in a family that would eventually expand to six.  Some of my earliest memories were of shuffling along behind my mother as she pushed a shopping cart containing my baby sister and groceries for our large family.  Though we were quite a brood, and surely, feeding a group such as ours would have been expensive at the best of times, I never wanted for anything.

My mother was born in 1937 so, though she was quite young during WWII, she did have some memories of the war.  It was only on rare occasions that she ever spoke about it aside from an occasional memory of the end of the war.  For the most part, all I know of her experiences during the war are contained in a single story.  She would have been eight years old on May 8, 1945 and her memory of the day was of sitting on the front porch, banging on a cooking pot with a wooden spoon and of her mother and grandmother crying because downtown, the people were throwing soap flakes from the upper windows into the streets in celebration.  Soap flakes had been a rationed item and were in short supply.  While happy to hear of the Nazi surrender, they were upset at the wastefulness of throwing out the soap flakes.

Growing up, I spent a lot of time with my paternal grandparents and never once did I hear them talk about the past.  It was right there in front of me, though, in the way they lived each day.  They were thrifty in their shopping – when available and well-priced, they bought extra and froze it for later, whatever wild berries were in season were picked in abundance and froze by the bucket, my grandfather and uncle fished on a regular basis then cleaned and froze more bluegill than most people see in a lifetime.  Nothing went to waste.  Nothing.

When I was very young, every meal was made from fresh ingredients and we always ate at the dining room table.  My father was an avid gardener and he had a large garden planted with a variety of vegetables.  We ate fresh all summer and my parents canned or froze the excess to see us through the winter. 

As I got a bit older, I remember my older brother and I begging our mother for what we thought of as the extravagance of a frozen Swanson’s TV Dinner.  On rare occasions, or begging worked.  We were not only allowed to eat the meal which was served in the foil tray, we were allowed to eat it on TV trays in front of the television.  We thought is was wonderful and special.

As I grew older still, more changes were on the horizon.   While we did not dine out on a regular basis, three or four times a year, we were treated to a meal at McDonald’s or Burger King.  There was also the occasional family trip to the local pizza parlor for a birthday or other celebration.  Dining out at any type of establishment was rare, though.

Around the time I reached junior high, dining out had become more commonplace.  Fast food meals were consumed at least once a month, if not more.  While my father still maintained his garden and we enjoyed many fresh vegetables, meals cooked at home regularly included pre-packaged and convenience foods.  We regularly at "leftovers".  On occasion, some of those leftovers hung around beyond the point they were fit for consumption and had to be thrown away.

By the time I was in high school and old enough to drive, my friends and I ate fast food whenever we wanted.  We thought nothing of nutrition and consumed candy, soda, and snacks whenever we felt like it.   When I dined with my family, portions were bigger and they contained more processed foods.  

When I made it to college, all bets were off.  I spent my college years either eating fast food, nutritionless snacks, and pre-packaged foods or dining on creamed corn and ramen noodles – depending on my budget at the time.  In times of abundance, I never worried about the times when my budget would be tight.  So too were my eating habits.

Fast forward to present day.  I’m 40 years old now and married and I live in the great state of Washington, in the suburbs of Seattle. More often than not, my husband and I eat take-out or dine in restaurants and it shows.  Even on the occasions that we dine at home, we have been lulled into the convenience of eating garbage that is full of preservatives in ridiculous portions.

So what is a person to do?  Do I try out a trendy fad diet or look to the past?  I have spent more money on fad diets than I care to admit to at this point so that just leaves looking to the past as an option.   

Each time I have to throw a piece of rotted fruit or vegetable in the garbage, I feel guilty.  I know that my parents and grandparents would have used it long before it got to that state.  In addition, I hate thinking about the fact that I have paid good money for that fruit or vegetable and then turned around and thrown it away.  After all, I would never throw money in the garbage and just throwing out food that I have allowed to rot is basically doing just that.

That brings us to now.  I have been thinking about how wasteful I have become while simultaneously destroying my health by consuming garbage.  I began wondering how to change all of that in one fell swoop.  Then an idea came to me:  Give up the modern conveniences of fast food and pre-packaged items and eat like they did during the 1940s – arguably one of the leanest times in recent history. 

The biggest problem with this scheme is, I no longer have my parents or grandparents to ask.  My grandparents are all dead, many of my aunts and uncles are dead, my father has been gone for 16 years, and my mother has dementia.  Now that I want to know about what it was like for my parents and grandparents during those lean years of WWII when nothing was wasted, there is no one to ask.  That means turning to books and the internet.  I can do that.  My only problem is, rationing in the US was not quite as cut and dried as it was in other countries.  People were issued stamps in different colors that corresponded to different types of foods.  They spent allotted amounts of them each week as items were available.  They were encouraged to make do with less.  I get the basic idea of it all but I find it a bit confusing to figure out the amount of different items One was allowed to purchase each week.

Confusing problem solved!  I stumbled on an article on Wikipedia about rationing in the UK during WWII.  Food sources in the UK were much more limited than those in the US during that time period and therefore, they had a much more regimented ration system.  They had set amounts of rations during and after the war.  In addition to the information I have pulled from the internet, I have ordered one used book from Amazon and requested several others from the library on cooking during WWII. 

For at least a week, I am going to try to eat only what one person would have been rationed in a week in 1945 in the UK.  (After that, I will decide if I should continue on weekly rations or take a softer approach and just focus on cooking daily meals according to wartime recipes.)  I will supplement it with whatever fresh fruits and vegetables would have been readily available to a person at the time.  This translates into the following amounts of food for one week:

Food	Amount
Bacon and/or Ham	4 oz
Sugar	8 oz
Loose Tea	2 oz
Meat	1 lb 3 oz
Cheese	2 oz
*Preserves	4 oz
Butter	2 oz
Margarine	4 oz
Lard	2 oz
*Sweets	3 oz
Eggs	1
*Milk	1 pt

*In 1945, preserves were allocated at a rate of 1 pound per month, sweets were allocated at 12 ounces per month and milk was allocated in the form of on tin of milk powder (equivalent to 8 pints) every 8 weeks.  There were also 24 “Points” allocated to each person every 4 weeks which they could use to purchase canned (tinned) or dried food (some months there were less).  I will do my best to find exactly what that translated into as far as those types of items go.

Obviously, I cannot go out and purchase just one egg, two ounces of this or 4 ounces of that.  Therefore, any extras will be either refrigerated, frozen or fed to my husband who will not be participating in this little project.  The only bread I will consume will be homemade according to an authentic wartime recipe and ingredients will be subtracted from weekly rations.  In fact, all recipes will be made according to authentic 1940s recipes and using only what I either already have on hand or what would have been rationed.  (Hey, I am not going to waste the food I already have in my cupboard.  My grandmother would have used every last bit of what was available and so will I.)

My goal in all of this is to reduce wasted groceries and to be as thrifty as possible.  If it works out well for one week, I may plan to expand it to a longer period of time or, permanent.  We shall see.  I will likely pick up the library books I requested and go grocery shopping on Friday night.  After that, I’m off and running! 

For more information on the British rationing amounts I decided to go with, please check out the Wikipedia page on the subject or simply turn to Google.  Information on WWII rationing in the United Kingdom is readily available online.