Jam to-morrow

Well, actually, jam to-day, jam to-morrow and jam yesterday.  Lots and lots of jam.

A good chum at work was kind enough to bring me in a huge bag of foraged damsons and so I decided to have my first try at jam making, as a good way to use my every increasing pile of sugar ration.  Damson jam is the easiest jam to make as the fruit contains a lot of pectin and so it was the perfect choice for my first foray into preserving.

So, what I've learnt is that jam is all about ratios, with damson jam you need an equal amount of fruit to sugar and just enough water to cover the fruit.

The recipe I used is linked below. 

Jammin'

It really was ridiculously easy, if messy, and I now have enough delicious jam to last me, well, forever. 


A pictorial history of my first jam experiment:

Just the damsons and the water.  Look at my shiny new jam pan.

Damsons boiling away.  Look at my messy kitchen

  

So pink!

Getting the stones out was the most bothersome bit.

Jam. 

Rationing, week 3: corned beef!

Well, I had a naughty weekend, as the chap took me out for dinner and I had mussels and delicious boeuf bourgignon, so I'm entering this week with renewed Wartime zeal and starting my week with corned beef rissoles.  Yuk you may say, but I actually love corned beef so I'm very happy.

Corned beef was rationed, it formed a part of the meat ration and was part of my initial weeks shopping that went unused.

The recipe is pretty flexible, you just smoosh up a tin of corned beef with an equal amount of mashed potato (you can add any left over cooked veg too), some herbs and spices, Worcestershire sauce and some breadcrumbs to bind.  Shape the mixture into sausage shapes, roll in remaining breadcrumbs and bake in a hot oven for 15-20 minutes until crisp and hot through.

 They ain't pretty but they sure as hell are tasty.

I'm serving mine with baked beans.  These weren't rationed and were a great source of protein.

No comments about lack of vegetables, I had at least 6 portions of veg in today's lunchtime salad.  Salad was a wartime staple.  Leaves with everything.

Look at the glory of this though...basic, but reminiscent of the dinners of my youth.

Omnomnomnomnom.

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!