Bacon...Mmm...Bacon

It was getting a bit late this evening when my husband and I decided that we were starting to feel some hunger pangs.  To cut down on cooking time, I wanted to make a vintage recipe that we both could eat.  He is an incredibly picky eater, though, and refuses to eat most vegetables or any form of beans.  Then it came to me – bacon turnovers.

There was quite a few recipes for bacon turnovers floating around in the 1940s because thy really stretched bacon rations.  The recipe I prepared extended bacon rations for one person for one week into four good size servings because it combined diced potatoes and cooked onions.  The end result was a very tasty and filling meal that any meat-eater would love.  I served my husband’s turnover with a bit of Bisto gravy and he raved about how good it was.  This is definitely a recipe I will be making again!

Bacon Turnovers

Serves 4

Ingredients

Pastry:

•         12-oz Plain flour
•         3 tsp baking powder
•         Pinch of salt
•         3-oz cooking fat, drippings or combination (I used 1-oz bacon drippings & 2-oz Crisco)
•         ½ cup water + 1/8 cup water

Filling:

•         4-oz fat bacon rashers
•         1 small onion - chopped
•         8-oz cooked potatoes – skin on, diced
•         1 – 2 tbsp chopped parsley (I used 1 tbsp dried parsley)
•        Season to taste

Directions:

1.       Preheat oven to 425°F.

2.       Sift the flour and salt then rub in the cooking fat.

3.       Bind with water.  (If it is too dry, add a bit more water.  If it is too wet, add a bit more flour.)

4.       Divide into 4 equal balls of dough.

5.       Roll dough out into rounds.

6.       Cook bacon, drain and chop into small pieces.

7.       Dice onion then cook in the remaining bacon drippings until golden.

8.       Dice and cook potatoes.  (I cheated & used the microwave for this.)

9.       Mix together bacon, onions, potatoes, parsley and seasoning.

10.   Place ¼ of bacon mixture in the middle of each dough round.  Wet edges of dough then press together, fold over and pinch edges in decorative fashion.

11.   Place a small cut in the top of each turnover.

12.   Bake in the middle of the hot oven until golden and crisp.

13.   Serve hot or cold!

What foods do your picky eaters avoid?

Mmm...Baked Beans!

I have to apologize for not posting in so many days.  It took me quite a while to work my way through the pot of chicken noodle soup.  By the time I ate the last of the soup, it was the weekend again and I try to turn my attention to my husband when we have the opportunity to spend time together.  This weekend was Valentine’s Day plus, W, my husband, had a three day weekend. 

I have reached the point in my life where I prefer the sentiment and time spent together more than gifts.  Instead of gifts, W and I exchange cards and try to do something fun together.  On Valentine’s day, we had breakfast out (at 5:30 a.m.!), stopped by our new honey supplier, went for a drive, spent a couple of hours wandering around a large antique shop, then made a stop at the grocery store on the way home. 

Somewhere in the neighborhood of 1 a.m. on Sunday, I decided to finally make my baked beans and bake my weekly bread.  I put a pound of dried beans in a pot to soak using the hot soak method.  I had intended to make the beans the day after I set them to soak but ended up leaving them to soak for a couple of days.  (If you have any questions about using dried beans in recipes, click here for information from the Bean Institute.)

I have to say right up front that I have never been a big fan of anything containing beans aside from an occasional bowl of chili on a cold winter day.  That is really saying something since the community where is grew up is smack dab in the middle of bean & corn country in Michigan.  Half the people I knew in my youth either grew beans or corn or a rotation of the two.  There was not a potluck or church picnic in the area that did not have at least one pot of baked beans on the table.  I can honestly say that I never once ate a single bean and my youth saw many a potluck. 

So why would I choose to make baked beans if I seemingly hate them so much?  Well, dried beans were a good source of protein in a time when there was little meat to go around.  The recipe I made stretched two weeks of bacon rations into 8 – 10 servings.  When I first tried the recipe, I panicked, thinking that I had wasted my bacon rations.  After sticking it in the refrigerator then rewarming the beans and adding a little extra salt, I found that they are actually quite good.  If I was feeding a family, this would be a very economical recipe.  It would fill hungry tummies and really stretch rations at the same time.

Baked Beans

Serves 8 – 10

 

Ingredients:

1 lb dried navy or pea beans (I used light red kidney beans)

½ pound salt pork (I used 8 oz of bacon)

1 large onion, coarsely chopped

6 cups water

2 teaspoons dry mustard

½ teaspoon salt

½ teaspoon cayenne pepper (ground red pepper)

½ cup molasses (I used Brer Rabbit Full Flavor)

¼ cup packed brown sugar

¼ cup ketchup

 

Directions:

1. Soak the beans according to your preferred method.
2. Drain and rinse beans and dry saucepan.
3. Sauté onion and salt pork over medium heat until they begin to brown.
4. Return beans to saucepan along with water, mustard powder, salt and cayenne pepper.  Bring to a boil, cover and simmer for 60 minutes or until tender.
5. Preheat oven to 350°F.
6. Add Molasses, brown sugar and ketchup to pot and mix well.
7. Transfer bean mixture to a 2-quart lidded casserole and bake for 30 – 35 minutes or until a crust forms on the top.
8. Serve and enjoy!

Note:  If you use bacon like I did, you will need to add extra salt to taste.

Was there a food item that you hated as a child?  Would you try eating it today?

 

Baked Beans and Grandma's Honey Wheat Bread

Maybe not the prettiest picture ever taken but very yummy!

The Arrival

Who doesn’t like getting a parcel in the mail?  Even if you ordered an item and were expecting its arrival, there is just something nice about opening up that package and pulling out whatever it is that you have been waiting for.  The excitement almost makes you feel like a kid for the briefest of moments.

Today, I received the Victory Cookbook:  Nostalgic Food and Facts from 1940 – 1954 (VC) by Marguerite Patten OBE which I ordered January 31.  I ordered an inexpensive, used copy on Amazon from a seller in England.  (I have an entire system of selecting sellers on Amazon that includes selling price, condition of item, distance from me and seller rating.)  Words cannot express how excited I am to get this book.  I immediately started flipping through and you can tell from the picture that I have already marked a few of the recipes that I am keen to try right away. 

Up until now, I have been working with recipes that I have located on the internet (which I have no way of verifying authenticity) as well as the Grandma’s Wartime books by Joanne Lamb Hayes.  While the Grandma’s Wartime books are wonderful resources, they don’t quite fit in with my project.  They were written taking into account American rations during WWII and my project uses the 1945 British rations.  Though food supplies were tight in the US during WWII, they were much scarcer in the UK during that time.  Therefore, using British wartime recipes to go with British rations is a much better fit.

Many of the recipes that I have already marked in the VC actually sound quite yummy.  My husband, who might be the world’s pickiest eater, even says that some of them sound good to him.  (Hmm.  I wonder if I can convince him to start eating a wartime ration diet?)  Once my pot of chicken noodle soup is gone, I will be making “Pigs in Clover” and “Scotch Shortbread” for sure!

The VC that I ordered is actually a compilation of three previous books by Marguerite Patten:  We’ll Eat Again, The Victory Cookbook and Post-War Kitchen.  This new edition was published in 2002 and not only includes loads of tips for the 1940s cook but also includes a bit of history for the WWII buff. 

I am looking forward to sticking with my ration diet project.  I have long had an interest in daily life on the British home front during WWII.  Week one went well but I was a bit lost without proper vintage recipes.  I am going to continue making bread using my current recipe because I feel like it fits in with other recipes of the era.

I still have two more cookbooks on the way that I ordered used off Amazon.  One is the 1943 edition of the Good Housekeeping Cook Book and the other is Wartime Recipes:  A Collection of Recipes from the War Years.  Unfortunately, both are coming from sellers in the NE, which is currently buried to their ears in snow, so shipping is very slow.

As I said earlier, once my pot of soup is gone, I will be digging into some vintage recipes and I will be sharing my adventures here!

 

If you were suddenly faced with rations, what would be the first type of recipe you would try to find?

Day 7 - One Week Down!

I know that in a previous post, I said that I did not purchase any candy because I normally do not eat any sweets.  Sometime mid-week, I did pick up a small bag of Lancaster Caramels.  While I have not come anywhere near consuming my weekly ration of sweets, I do find that it is a nice little treat once in a while. 

I wanted to recap my weekly rations.  There were two positive points in that arena:  (1) I did not go over on any of my rations for the week and (2) I also did not consume everything I was allotted so I have leftovers to put toward future use.

Item	1945 Ration Amount	Used	Remaining
Bacon or Ham	4 oz	0 oz	4 oz
Sugar	8 oz	0 oz	8 oz
Loose Tea	2 oz	0 oz	2 oz
Meat	1 lb 3 oz	1 lb	3 oz
Cheese	2 oz	.25 oz	1.75 oz
Preserves*	4 oz	2 oz	2 oz
Butter	2 oz	1 oz	1 oz
Margarine	4 oz	4 oz	0 oz
Lard	2 oz	0 oz	2 oz
Sweets*	3 oz	.25 oz	2.75 oz
Shell Egg	1	0	1

*In 1945 Preserves were rationed at an amount of 1 lb per month and sweet were rationed at an amount of 12 oz per month.  I took those amounts and divided by 4 to get my weekly ration amount.

In addition, 24 points were allotted every four weeks for tinned and dried food.  From what I have read, because Spam was not widely known in the UK in the 1940s, it went for about half the rate of other canned meats.  I have seen it listed as both 6 and 8 points so I went with the 8 points.  I have also read that dried beans went at a rate of about 2 points per pound.  Last week, I purchased one can of Spam and one 1-lb bag of dried beans so that would come out to about 10 points used for the month with 12 points remaining.

For next week, I used my entire meat ration on chicken.  Since I have been feeling a bit under the weather over the past few days, I have been desperate for some homemade chicken noodle soup.  Honestly, I have no idea if they ate chicken noodle soup in the UK in the 1940s (or if they even do it now).  My grandmother once told me that they had it in their house during the time my father was growing up so that is good enough for me.  A big pot of soup should hold me for the better part of a week. 

In addition to my chicken, I picked up some sausages because I read that they were not rationed in 1945.  It kind of felt like cheating a little bit, though, since I know that the sausages for sale in the latter part of the 1940s was not the quality of sausages sold in stores today.  Meat was incredibly scarce to sausages at that time used A LOT of fillers.  In fact, some people even said that sausages sometimes tasted more like bread than sausage because there was so much filler in them.  For that reason, I am going to limit the amount of sausages I consume and share the remaining portion with my husband.

 

Do you have a favorite food you like to eat when you aren’t feeling well?

It's All About the Meat

Somewhere in the neighborhood of midnight last night, I finally found myself feeling well enough to get off my duff and cook something.  I did not follow a special recipe.  I simply threw the stew meat I purchased for this week in a frying pan with my remaining mushrooms and browned them up with a bit of garlic.  I tossed a small amount of it on the top of a salad of red leaf lettuce and it tasted so good.

During the day today, I had another salad and topped it with a portion of the sausage roll which I had warmed up in the pan.  For dinner, I had a large baked potato with a tablespoon of margarine and piece of toast with one half table spoon of butter.  Later in the evening, I had a portion of oatmeal made with water and sweetened with raisins.

It is that special time of week again when I plan to go grocery shopping.  My list for this week is significantly smaller than last week.  As much as I hate to admit it, Spam is definitely on the list again.  I portioned it out a little at a time and it helped to stretch my meat ration for the week.  While it is not the healthiest food on my list, I have to believe that consuming it in small portions combined with fresh vegetables isn’t nearly so bad as living on frozen meals and take-out.

I saved my bacon ration for this week so I can combine it with the bacon ration for next week and use it to make a nice big pot of baked beans.  I don’t think I have ever had homemade baked beans so I hope they taste good.  I would hate to think that I have wasted two weeks of bacon rations on something that does not taste good!  There are several WWII era recipes for baked beans that are in the running.  The winning recipe will be posted here.

What is your favorite meat saving recipe?

Day 4 - Sticking With It

Did you ever have one of those days where you wake up feeling like you have been run over by a truck?  I had full intentions of cooking a new wartime recipe today.  Then I woke this morning feeling like squirrels had been hiding acorns in my throat.  My energy was zero and my will to get up and cook an actual meal matched that.  Fortunately, I was able to stick with my rations. 

 

I finished off the last slice of Spam today and sautéed some mushrooms in the same pan.  I also warmed up a piece of the sausage roll this afternoon and it almost tasted better today than it did yesterday.  My day ended with a bit of fish that my husband brought home.  Not super exciting but it worked.

 

Oh, what I wouldn’t do for a big pot of homemade chicken noodle soup right now!

 

What do you like to eat when you aren’t feeling well?  Could you make it work with rationing in the 1940s?

Day 3 - Sausage Roll

I am not really sure what I thought this was going to turn out like.  As I was making it, I couldn’t help but think how much it is like the meatloaf my family ate when I was growing up.  As far as I can tell, the only two differences in ingredients were:  1-In my family, we used oatmeal instead of bread crumbs and 2-We used an egg to bind instead of milk or stock.  (And we baked it instead of steaming it.)  

It is understandable why bread crumbs would have been used and it was bound with milk or stock.  Nothing went to waste during the ration years in England.  Simply, it was better to make use of the dried up remnants of a loaf of bread than throw them away.  Additionally, eggs were in such limited supply that people were only allowed one shell egg per week and one package of powdered eggs (which was equal to 12 eggs) per month.  Eggs would have been put to better use in baking than to bind a meatloaf.

My sausage roll was not exactly a roll.  The original Ministry of Food recipe instructed that the meat mixture be placed into a cocoa tin with a lid then steamed.  This would have made the finished product come out like a roll.  I did not have a cocoa tin or can.   A few years ago when I was rereading a lot of Charles Dickens, I decided to make plum pudding for Christmas.  I did not have a pudding tin so I used a Bundt pan covered in foil instead.  Since the method for steaming the sausage roll is essentially the same as when I made plum pudding, I went ahead and used my Bundt pan covered in foil again and it worked perfectly.

For anyone who has never steamed a pudding, or a sausage roll for that matter, it really is not difficult.  All you need is a large stock pot, a trivet or a scrunched up ring of foil that will fit inside your stock pot, a pudding tin, a cocoa tin or a Bundt pan, and a bit of foil if you are using a Bundt pan.  You place the trivet in the bottom of the stock pot and put enough water in the pot to go half way up the outside of your pudding tin or Bundt pan when it is set inside.  Make sure to use the trivet because you do not want the pan on the inside to rest on the bottom of the stock pan.  You do not want that pan on the direct heat source.  After that, all you have to do is let the water simmer for the amount of time indicated in the recipe.  Make sure to check it occasionally to make sure that there has not been too much water evaporation.  If you feel like the water level has dropped too much, add a little more.  Easy Peasy.

 

Sausage Roll

Serves 4

 

 

Ingredients:

8 oz sausage meat (I used ground beef)

2 tablespoons finely chopped onion or leek

1 tablespoon chopped pickle (I did not have any so I skipped this.)

1 -2 cloves fresh garlic, chopped or minced (not in original recipe but I had some on hand so I added it.)

3 oz bread crumbs

Pinch of mixed herbs

Pinch of pepper

1 ½ teaspoon salt

2 tablespoons stock or milk

 

Directions:

1. Mix all the ingredients together thoroughly.  (I find it is best to do this by hand.)
2. Turn into a greased tin and cover with lid.
3. Steam 1 ½ to 2 hours.
4. Drain drippings then turn out onto plate and serve.

 

 

Since I only used an 80/20 grade of ground beef, there were a lot of drippings when it was finished cooking.  I keep mine in a glass jar in the refrigerator for use in cooking and flavoring other recipes.  This was not uncommon practice in the 1940s as cooking fats were extremely limited.  If you do not intend to save your drippings, please make sure that you dispose of them properly.  Dumping them down the drain could cause a clog. 

 

The end result of this recipe may not have been the prettiest thing I have ever eaten but is smelled good cooking and the flavor was wonderful.  In addition, it stretched the ground beef I had on hand.  I only purchased 8 ounces of ground beef this week and this recipe stretched it to 4 servings.  I served mine with a salad of locally grown red leaf lettuce and spinach.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Have you ever used the steam method of cooking?  If not, what would entice you to try it?

 

Day 2 - Return of the Vegetable Turnover

Tea for two and two for tea!

OK.  First, I have to admit that I was incredibly hungry last night.  I generally keep rather odd hours and eat one of my meals very late at night so it came as no surprise to me that I found I was hungry somewhere in the neighborhood of 10 p.m.  I didn’t want to prepare anything that took a lot of effort.  I ended up grating a small potato and tossing it in a pan with the drippings left from the Spam I had for dinner last night.  It wasn’t a lot but it got me past that hunger.

The vegetable turnover recipe that I made yesterday made four turnovers.  I ended up having my second turnover for breakfast today and I have to say that I thought it tasted much better the second day than it did on the first day.  I am not going to lie, I ate around the parsnips.  This is something that a person in the 1940s probably never would have done.  I simply could not stomach them, though, and I did not want to waste the turnovers.  Fortunately, there was not a lot of parsnip in each turnover so I did not have to waste much.  And worry not, none of the parsnip went into the garbage.

My husband and I normally dine out once a week and even though I have decided to undertake my WWII rationing experiment, I did not want to put an end to that.  I know that in the US, during WWII, people were urged to eat fish and save other meat for.  I also know that in the United Kingdom, fish and chip shops were still open.  Therefore, when we went out for dinner tonight, I opted for a lovely order of fish and chips.  It was delicious and I felt like I was staying true to my experiment.

The following is a list of what I ate on day 2 of rationing.

Lunch:  Two slices of Spam browned in the pan, one vegetable turnover with a bit of leftover Bisto gravy and water to drink.

Snack:  Apple.

Dinner:  Dined out – Fish and chips with tea to drink.

Evening:  One slice of toast with a smear of jam.

Supper:  One potato shredded and browned in Spam drippings and water to drink.


After dining out tonight, my husband and I stopped by one of our local thrift shops.  Now I know that I said before that I do not like shopping in any way, shape or form.  I guess that was a little bit of a lie since I do like to make an occasional stop by the local thrift shop to see if I can get a good deal on a hidden treasure.  My mission tonight was to find a breadbox that I could clean up and refurbish but that was not to be.  What I did find was a couple of nice little teacups and saucers.  I don’t believe that they are worth anything but I thought they were pretty.

When my sisters got married, my mother bought them china as wedding gifts.  Some of them also ended up getting antique china which had been in the family for years.  I, on the other hand, never got any china – new or antique.  (Not a surprise since my mother and I have never been on good terms.)  For a long time, I was offended that my sisters got china as wedding gifts and I never did.  In recent years, however, I have changed my mind about that.  I am the kind of person who likes to color outside the likes.  I do not like things in perfect sets.  I would rather buy my china in ones and twos when pieces catch my eye and build a wonderfully eclectic set that is pure me than pick a boring matching set.  (Plus, it is much easier to find something that works with my china should I accidentally break a piece than it is for my sisters to find a perfect replacement piece if they break one of theirs.)

All in all, it was a lovely day.  At the end, I don’t find myself hungry and though I have eaten Spam and potatoes as well as fish and chips today, I feel like my homemade fare is better for me than if I was drinking soda and eating potato chips, fast food, frozen meals and Spaghetti-O’s.

Tomorrow I am going to try to make a steamed “sausage” roll.  I did not buy any sausage but I do have some ground beef so I will use that instead and I will just season it with some spices I already have in my cupboard. It should be interesting as I have never made or consumed any sort of steamed meat.  I did make plum pudding one Christmas, though, and the method can’t be too different from making that.  Wish me luck!


Are you a fan of your local thrift or antique shops?