Cravats Amore

Hello again lovely chums,

I think I'm finally getting my blogging groove back, and, having decided to worry less about writing informative educational type posts and spend more time having fun with this thing, I thought I'd treat you to a little outfit post.  When I say treat, its really just lots of pictures of me, so that all depends on how much you like looking at my big ugly mug really.

Anyway, Autumn is here.  Hurrah! Time to stash the cotton frocks in tissue paper and dig out the tweed.  To celebrate the start of the tweed and wool season I have spent most of this weekend finishing up a huge pile of knitting projects that have been building up over the Summer.  The jacket in the picture is one I've been waiting to finish for some time, I just had to sew on the collar and the buttons, but for some reason (read: sheer laziness) its been sitting on my dressmakers dummy for months.

The yarn is some vintage pure wool Aran I picked up from eBay and its terribly warm if just a bit prickly.  It is going to be perfect to see me through the coming season.  The collar looks a bit wonky in these pics but I think thats my posture rather than the garment.

I paired it with a 70s Viyella skirt and some Norwegian shoes picked up from a charity shop along with a  beret with an embroidered bumblebee (I keep thinking it must be an insignia of some kind but google isn't bringing anything up so perhaps it is just decorative) and a most delightful cravat sent to me by the kind chaps at Swagger and Swoon. 

It really is a lovely piece in pure silk, cotton backed.  Deep green with purple and gold paisley.  I'm quite in love with it and I think it adds the perfect 30s country "butch" style to my outfit.  I feel just like Honoria Glossop from the Jeeves and Wooster novels.  Never a bad thing in my book.  I may have to pick up a few more of them as they really set off an outfit.  

Anyway - that's all for now.  Off to pretend I'm clay pigeon shooting or something equally Honoria-like.

Toodle-pip!

Edit: totally reattaching that collar. I did it completely wrong. That's what happens when you lose your copy if the pattern between knitting and making up!

Gingerama.

Just a quick note to share my new ginger hair with you, its a totally unrealistic old lady rinse ginger. I love it. And all down to the sheer magic of Lucie at Rockalily. I'll do a proper blogette about it later as am currently on the train to sunny Walthamstow. Felt like showing off quickly now though, despite the pin curls.

Rationing: the first week (and a half)

Well, as mentioned in my Woolton Pie post, it hasn't been the strictest first week of rationing I could have done.  I took lunch to work twice in the first week though, which is good for me.  Whe problem was I had three nights out in a row, all nights involving food.  I know, I know, it is just dreadful being popular...

Anyway - here is my first weeks of shopping.  Beef, butter, sugar, corned beef, bread, jam and VEG.  Lots and lots of veg.

It was still an eventful week however, with lots of wartime recipes tested.  I tried potato floddies for breakfast.  Definitely a winner with a little bacon and a fried tomato.  they are literally just grated potato, what we now call a rosti, with a tiny amount of flour added to help bind it in the pan.  I just flattened them out and fried them on each side until crisp.

I also had a delicious steak hotpot which used almost all my meat ration.  It should have lasted four nights but The Badger came over for dinner and so he had a portion too.  Ooooerr.

You can also see how I badly misjudged the number of potatoes needed for the top.

The final recipe I tried was apple batter pudding.  Not such a winner this.  Really just a semi sweet batter poured over apples and baked.   It created a very filling suety style pudding, which I hated and The Badgery one adored.  I didn't take a picture as I was grumpy with it.

Over the week I found the fastest rations to go were my butter, meat and cheese.  I have lots of fat left and oodles of sugar.  I also had about a pint of milk that I didn't drink. This isn't just about getting used to small amounts of some foods, but about large amounts of others - it is a lot of carbs at least for a modern palate, and I'll have to get baking to get all that sugar used!

In other news: I saved all my veg peelings last week and used them to make a vegetable stock which I then used to make soup this week.  I also dried out the on the turn bread in a warm oven and made breadcrumbs from it for rissoles later this week.  Get me, eh!

Knitknats

Hello. I'm just testing this blogger app thing really, but while I'm here please cast-on eye over my new knitting pattern. Heh. See what I did there?

I've included an amusing pro smoking ad I found, along with an ad for rubber pants. 1934 - year of glamour.

"A turnip for the books", or "I clearly couldn't think of an original turnip gag"

Well, my first week or so of rationing has been a bit of a flop.  I've stuck to it religiously at home but with three evenings out last week I'm afraid I did end up eating dinner out far more than intended.  Still, I'm sure folk in the 40s took time to get in the swing of things too.  Ahem.

I'll post up a full update over the next few days but for now, I just wanted to share with you a few pics of tonight's dinner.  Probably the most commonly mentioned wartime meal, Woolton Pie.

This isn't something I've been looking forward to trying, I must admit but, after buying a cheap "stew bag" of vegetables at Tesco (£1 - bargain) and having some pastry ready and waiting in the freezer I decided it was time to give it a whirl.

For those who haven't delved into the world of wartime cookery - Woolton Pie was named after the Minister of Food, Lord Woolton, and was promoted by the Ministry as an example of a satisfying meat free main meal.  It is really just various vegetables cooked together with some vegetable extract and then topped with pastry and baked.  Not very exciting.  Not very exciting at all. 

It seems my wartime predecessors felt the same way, with the pie being very unpopular after its introduction in 1941.  In fact, Lord Woolton had to go to some lengths to "sell" this idea to the people; The Times commented:

"When Woolton pie was being forced on somewhat reluctant tables, Lord Woolton performed a valuable service by submitting to the flashlight camera at public luncheons while eating, with every sign of enjoyment, the dish named after him."

The official recipe is given below, though like all wartime recipes the exact ingredients were subject to availability.  Mine was mainly carrots, potato, parsnip, turnip and a little onion. Also, as I had a nugget of last weeks cheese hanging about and a little on the turn milk, I made a tiny bit of cheese sauce in an effort to add a bit of flavour.

(image from http://www.carrotmuseum.co.uk, currently my favourite website, its bloody brilliant)

All in all, served with gravy, it was perfectly edible, if bland.  Though my bloomin' turnips didn't cook.  In the name of thrift I've fished the wee blighters out and am reboiling them for mashing with a little butter as a side dish.  Yes, saintly I know.

Anyway, photos of the real thing:

I'm thoroughly stuffed, ready for bed and have enough of this....stuff to feed me for the rest of the week.  I have a feeling that I will make this again, if not often.  As it really is cheap on the pocket and filling for the belly.




I'm full of carbs and off for an early night now - toodle pip!

Cor, it's been a while...

Hello lovely readers - if there are any of you left that is, after such a long break.  I've decided to pop back for a bit to help document a project I'm working on.  A big thrift project to dig me out of some lingering debt.

I’ve recently been reassessing my financial situation and have had to make some tough decisions.  This means no new clothes until the end of the year (ouch), cutting back the wine consumption from the decent stuff to the cheap stuff – and much less of it (can you hear me weeping from where you are...), joining the library rather than spending so much on ebooks for my beloved kindle and...well...cutting the food shop down drastically. 

I spend a fortune on food, seriously.  Working full time I seem to have fallen into the picking up bits at the Tesco Metro on the way home trap.  Not the cheapest way to live.  I also throw a shocking amount of food away. I’ve decided then, that I’m going to give ration book shopping a go.  This means that my diet is going to be limited (roughly) to the amounts and products available to those living through WWII in the UK. 

For ration amounts I’m roughly going by Marguerite Patten’s recommendations in her fabulous book “Feeding the Nation” which I’ll discuss in a later post, tweaked a little to represent what was available in 1940.  

Here are the average weekly rations for a single person (numbers did change throughout the war)

• Bacon and ham - 100g/4oz (around 4 rashers)
• Meat (other) around 500g a week of minced beef or equivalent cost (according to mysupermarket at time of posting – around £4)
• Butter - 50g/2oz
• Cheese - 100g/4oz
• Margarine - 100g/4oz (I may swap this for butter as I feel margarine represents a health risk and apparently these items were interchangeable at some points during the war)
• Cooking fat - 100g/4oz
• Milk - 3pts/1800ml
• Sugar - 8oz/225g
• Tea -2oz/50g (around 15 bags a week)
• Eggs - one shell egg a week if available was typical but I’ll not be rationing eggs as they weren’t on ration until later and I’m aiming for a 1940 rationing system
• Sweets -12oz/350g a month

Items that were not generally rationed in 1940 but may have been hard to get hold of so I’ll be restricting consumption:

• Cereals
• Sausages!
• Canned / bottled items
• Fish
• Offal
• Vegetables (these I will try to eat seasonally)
• Jams and preserves (not rationed until 1941 – hurrah!)
• Fish and chips from the local chippy (never rationed)

Often, people who worked could use the tea, milk and sugar  available at their work place to see them through the days and also had a works canteen or went to a café for lunch and so I will occasionally be buying the odd sandwich when I haven’t had time to make something. 

I am going to try and recreate some recipes of the time but am not going to stick to them slavishly.  Don't get me wrong, I'm doing this far more from a need to teach myself to manage money than from an urge to immerse myself in history, and frankly I can’t imagine a life without the odd Thai curry.  I may even have a pizza occasionally providing I make my own dough and stick to my cheese ration…. but I’m going to try and eat as frugally as possible until the end of the year. 

I’ll be sharing recipes along the way. This week is my prep week, so I’m eating my way through the non-wartime things I have frozen and stockpiled (the aforementioned Thai green curry, chickpea dhal, marinara sauce) before getting ready for 1940 to begin on Sunday. 

The Ric Rac Club – Girls, Gin and Gunpowder.

Yes, it is that time again, myself and the rest of the Vintage Mafia are back with the Ric Rac Club.

After a hugely successful launch in September, here is our second instalment. The Ric Rac is a club aimed at vintage aficionados and newcomers alike, with the focus on socialising rather than partner dancing. You can expect the best tunes from the 1930s to the 1960s spread over two rooms, a creative drinks menu, a soon-to-be legendary free raffle and a fun, welcoming crowd of well-dressed guests.

Specially selected guest DJs this month are Johnny Chrome and Silver, who will be spinning 50s lounge music, and All Fringe, No Knickers who will be playing 60s and Northern Soul hits, accompanied by a Northern Soul dancing demonstration.

Gemma will serenade the guests with her ukulele – playing hits of the golden era and the 21st Century and Auntie Maureen will putting together a playlist of hits from the dawn of the dance band era.

This time we also have the fantabulosa Miss Honey Bare on hand to transform you into a vintage queen with her mobile hair and make-up salon (appointments can be pre booked at http://heydayhoney.com/contact/).

The Ric Rac club is sponsored by The King's Ginger liqueur, allowing us to provide a free cocktail for every guest. All attendees also receive a free raffle ticket, and with prizes ranging from vintage accessories, homewares, and fabulous garments from Love Ur Look and Yellow Bird Hats, booze, food and other assorted delights, no one goes home empty-handed... or at least not sober.

The Ric Rac Club – Girls, Gin and Gunpowder.

Saturday 5th November

•FREE Ginger Gunpowder cocktail on arrival!

•1930s dance band tunes to 1960s Northern Soul, spread over two floors!

•Semi-impromptu solo dancing demonstrations!

•DJs Johnny Chrome & Silver and 60s diva All Fringe, No Knickers! plus Auntie Maureen!

•Special set by ukulele lady Miss Gemma!

•Soon-to-be legendary FREE raffle with amazing prizes including food, booze and vintage!

•Smoking terrace, amazing atmospheric pub & a super time all guaranteed!



The Fox, 28 Paul Street, Shoreditch, London, EC2A



Tickets £10/£8 adv from http://www.thevintagemafia.com