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?