Kitchen Garden Forum

We were just reminiscing about wartime food memories over our Lancashire Hotpot lunch. - first casserole of the autumn/winter season, and I recalled my one and only introduction to snoek as a very small child, which was so vile that it ended up in the dustbin, short of food as we were. Anybody remember it.? And do you have any other wartime memories of food which rarely makes an appearance on the lunch table today?

Had whale-meat sausages once during the war. Can't recall what they tasted like.

I lived on a poultry farm so never had dried egg, and we quite often swapped eggs for other foods, like bacon. But I do remember enjoying fried spam fritters. I think the shortage of sweets and sugar was beneficial to our health.

Yes, I a raw carrot stick was the equivalent to today's Mars bar. I call recall my mother handing out dolly mixtures one at at time as if they were precious gold sovereigns.

My surname is Snook and what was my wife and I served in a fish restaurant in Tampico,Mexico when he found that out?Yep-Snoek and it was very tasty(and free)!!

Dundry Nurseries near Cheltenham have a reproduction of the wartime recipe booklet by 'Potato Pete'. Turn up the sound and listen to his song.
Well worth the £1:50.

http://www.dundrynurseries.co.uk/pete.asp

John

This sort of thing is my earliest memory of wartime food. Fair to say my grandfather worked as chauffeur at the "big house" and there was always plenty of extra food, vegetables etc.

Yes, I recall those and my mother having to fumble with all kinds of little fiddly coupons in them evert tine she w net shopping. I remember some of the substitute tricks which were used when foods weren't available like using mashed up haricot beans with vanilla essence to make mock marzipan. I wonder how today's population would cope if rationing was ever introduced again because I recall you had to register with one particular shop to buy all your grocery requirements. Not sure how the self-service concept would work if rationing applied.
I think country dwellers probably fared better than those in towns during the war where wild rabbits and other game could sometimes supplement the measly meat ration.

My dad had a friend who farmed in Derbyshire and when we visited him we brought eggs home to Manchester and dipped them in Isinglass to preserve them.

Also do you remember "Junket".......how foul was that?

Regards, Gerry.

Ah yes, junket, And pink blancmange in those glass moulds with all the knobs on top! My young brother once got into trouble when he spooned off all the knobs off a blancmange ready for serving in the larder for one of my childhood birthday parties. My mum, ever resourceful, had to replace them with knobs of strawberry jam!

Sweets.... ....we made do with a stick of Rhubarb and a bit of sugar in a cup to dip it in!

Dear Weed,
my granny showed us the same trick but with cucumber instead of rhubarb. She said it was the nearest they ever got to a melon. I still do this sometimes. My Mum thought it was a dreadful ides as it made the sugar bowl icky and the tea taste strange.
Regards Sally Wright.

I now feel very young as I was born when the war was over! It's a while since that happened so thank you? I still remember pink blancmange though - ours was made in a rabbit shaped mould. Spam fritters also made it into school dinner days in the 60's

Worst memory! Eggs from our home flock stored in isinglass over the winter

Here's what I wrote years ago...
viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3287&p=31114#p31114

We kept rabbits to eat during the war and it was my job to feed them and clean the hutches, so they were really like my own pets. I could therefore never bring myself to eat the meat their time came. And, even now, I cannot bring myself to eat rabbit meat. My OH loves it and I very occasionally cook it for him, sort of holding my nose whilst cooking, because just the smell of the meat reminds me!

For us, the worst food shortages were after the war, and when we had potatoes, my mother used to dry the peelings and put them through an old coffee mill (you know the ones, wooden, with a drawer at the bottom) and used it like cornflower to thicken soups. Nothing was wasted.

I ate my first orange and banana when I came to the west at the age of 18! Luckily, until the end of the war, we had a large garden with vegetables and lots of fruit trees which kept us supplied with vitamin C.