Friday, 29 January 2010

All good things...

And so the experiment starts to draw to a close. Tonight's meal - leftover oatmeal sausages from yesterday, served as hot dogs - is the last proper cooking I'll do on the ration.

Tomorrow morning I'm off to that London, to see Enron and then have a meat-free meal (at a fish restaurant that does vegetarian options) with our friend peezedtee. We'll be back late on Sunday, and I've got toast (well, bagels, anachronistic as that may be) for our snack supper. Sunday breakfast will be mostly bread - the joy of Le Pain Quotidien on the Southbank - and I'll be full until late night.

I'll do a totting-up post on Sunday or early next week, but I can say already that I made it to the end of the month with spare points for butter, margarine, cheese, bacon, sweets and sugar. I've only used a third of my cooking fat. There's still a week's worth of tea left. Let me say that again: there's still a week's worth of tea left.

Weightwise, and this is probably due to my thyroid rather than the cooking, I've lost less than a pound. However, my 38" waist is a svelt 34" (32" if I concentrate).

I've learned some useful cooking tricks - I'll add oats and pearl barley to all soups and stews in future and probably keep up putting a potato into soups too - that are worth keeping up in general. I've also become a smarter shopper, and I hope to keep that up too.

3 comments:

Scott Willison said...

Are you not tempted to just carry on indefinitely - or does the thought of more powdered egg just depress you?

Michelle said...

I am (selfishly) sad to see you ending your experiment, but so happy that you are finishing with a feeling of success!

Unknown said...

I've found your experiment to live on rations fascinating - particularly seeing how you managed as a vegetarian.

Congratulations to you and Chris for sticking with it, and particularly to you for performing the unnatural acts on corned beef.

My mother has one of Marguerite Patten's post war cookbooks - it was her main cookbook pre-Delia and she still uses it now. The cakes in it are delicious - her post-rationing recipes are delicious and wonderfully English (i.e. Chris would adore them as evocations of school dinners past - but I'm not sure you would be quite so appreciative).

And I've just noticed a bottle of Camp coffee on eBay...