Snackarama

Perhaps the biggest thing that has changed under rationing has been the elimination of snacking. If I get hungry, I might have a slice of dry bread, but otherwise I live entirely without snacks and feel virtuous about it.

I have always tried to not have snack foods in, on the basis that if you don't have crisps, chocolate and sweets in, you can't eat them. But they still manage to accrue. That tube of Pringles, that extra bag of Doritos, that "spare" packet of Redwood faux meat, lurking at the bag of a cupboard or fridge, waiting to catch me in a moment of weakness (ie a weekday; or at the weekend). I have no willpower at all, for anything. Ciggies, booze, junk food... once I'm on them, that's that.

But I'm simulating willpower very well with the rations. I've cut my booze consumption, even having a week with none (and not noticing it nor getting the DTs, so no fears of alcoholism here) and just haven't snacked at all. The ciggies haven't reduced, mind, but you can't have everything. Ahem.

So tonight's dinner, for which I'm alone (CJBS is back riding the rails - well, sitting in the booking office of our local station - on the late shift with spam sandwiches) is to be a form of snacking. I've got Ryvita, sliced tomatoes, lettuce, unrationed cottage cheese, hummus (a tad anachronistically) and cress. Yes, that's hardly snacking, I know. But it's like snacking in many ways, especially in the amount of salt I plan to add. And, like snacking, I'll be starving by midnight.

But it'll be worth it!

St David's Day

Image by CaterinaAnna | Creative Commons CC-BY-SA 2.0

As Dave pointed out in the comments yesterday, it's St David's Day today. Sadly, I've done nothing at all Welsh today: I couldn't get any daffodils in town, I don't like raw potato, I've had my complete fill of bloody leeks recently, and I don't have time to have four children from five different fathers in a remarkably short period. I'm also not in my twelfth year of unemployment. Nevertheless, at least I'm not English. Iechyd da everyone!

Everyone likes a sausage

After the binge of fried stuff and fats last weekend, we settled down into ration-style food again quite quickly. I made a large cream of mushroom soup, padded out with potato, oats and pearl barley that lasted several days. It had Boursin soft cheese in it, so drifted from rationing slightly, but was back on track in the wholesomeness stakes.

A large winter salad over two nights followed, again drifting because of the large amount of cheese and the Hungarian paprika dressing I made (where has Hungarian paprika been all my life? Thank you, Dave, thank you thank you thank you!)

Tonight it's a sausage pie that would work well in wartime, although, with rationing off until later this month, I've made it more to modern standards. At heart, this pie is actually a sausage casserole, becoming pie only at the last minute.

In a moment of weakness, I bought pre-made pastry rather than making my own, and if I make this during rationing, I'll do the potato pastry I liked so much last month. I peeled, diced and brought to the boil two potatoes, then lined the pie dishes with pastry. When the water boiled, I took the potatoes off the heat and left them in the water to one side.

I finely chopped one onion and roughly chopped another, then melted some margarine in a frying pan. From this point on, I was actually making one vegetarian version and one meat version, but the process is the same and I'll not boast about my amazing skills at multitasking.

I started the finely chopped onion in the melted fat, then added the sausages. These I cooked slowly, on the smallest gas ring, so I didn't need to prick the skins. When the sausages were browned, I removed them with tongs and added gravy powder (which is basically cornflour and onion powder) to soak up the remaining fat, then made a roux with some pureed tomato. I topped this up with more tomato until I had a good liquid base.

If I was making a sausage casserole, this would be the point to combine the sausages, the rough onion, the diced potato and the tomato base and put the lot in the oven. But I wasn't. So instead I chopped each of the sausages into three.

By adding some instant gravy to the tomato base, I caused it to thicken. In wartime, I'd've used some cornflour in water made up in a cup and added that for the same effect.  I drained the potatoes, then added them, the rough onion and the copped sausages to the tomato base, mixed well and put them into the pastry-lined pie dish. I then topped the pie off with puff pastry - a real indulgence in wartime - brushed the top with a little milk and then tried to find creative ways to make sure I had no wasted pastry off-cuts.

These can now sit until I'm ready to cook them - best in a slow to moderate oven for as long as possible. I'll serve with leftover new potatoes from the salad and, depending on how saucy the sauce is, perhaps some onion gravy.

Edit: and here it is cooked and partially eaten...

Oh, and another reason to go back on rations: it saves crushing disappointment. Earlier in the week, I bought some Morrison's cheese-topped garlic bread slices as a treat. If I'd still been on rations, I dare say the cheese would've been downright generous. But I wasn't, and it wasn't. For shame.

Camping it up

When I blogged about the living hell that is tea rations (2oz per person per week is simply inhuman) my friend Dave (the world's best graphic designer, btw) mentioned that a wartime staple was the (unrationed) chicory essence liquid with the heroically non-21st Century name "Camp".

This stuff, now marketed as a cooking ingredient rather than a coffee substitute, is a Victorian relic, as suggested by the (now fortunately politically-corrected) label. It had brief spells of popularity in the first war, in the second and, during an artificial shortage created by the coffee companies, in the late 1970s.

In that time, the purpose of the tar-like liquid has changed, as has, I'd think, the ingredients. Certainly the preparation instructions have altered from the early requirement of adding a teaspoon to boiling water and chucking in cream and sugar.

Indeed, adding sugar is the last thing you'd do now, since the ingredients, in order of greatest first, are sugar, water, chicory (24%) and coffee (4%). So 70% of this is sugar and water, and 51% at least of that is sugar alone. No wonder the bottle now says that it's ideal for making milkshakes, baking cakes and flavouring cream. The current jar doesn't mention how to make a beverage out of it at all, other than to suggest adding an unspecified amount to warm milk.

I tried two teaspoons in boiling water with a standard amount of milk. This was undrinkable. So I tried two more and yet more milk. This produced something that looked a bit like coffee and tasted a bit like coffee... is as much as it also tasted a bit like toffee and a bit like caramel and a bit like cheap chocolate but not really like any of those things.

So it isn't going to replace my morning coffee and it isn't going to stand in for my rationed tea. But as a bedtime drink, it's no worse than Horlicks or Ovaltine and better, in some ways, than some of the modern powders and potions available for the purpose. So I'll finish the bottle; I just might not buy any more.