Triumph and disaster

The Spam carbonara and the spinach and mushroom sauce respectively, that is. The carbonara was a simple roux made with some fat and a finely sliced whole small onion with plenty of flour added to make the sauce as thick as possible. Half a tin of Spam diced up and some chopped mushrooms, then a gentle heat whilst the pasta boiled.

The spinach and mushroom sauce was a simple roux made with some fat and a finely sliced whole onion and my 2oz of cheese for this week. Plenty of flour to make it thick, then the mushrooms and... the spinach. I should've known better. Fresh, raw spinach is excellent in everything. Lightly cooked fresh spinach is also good in many things. I didn't have either available. So I bought tinned.

My first experience of spinach was in the late 1970s. My dad had been in the States (or possibly Canada) with NATO and brought back booty. Mainly this was a big bag of potatoes: the British crop had failed (or been ploughed back into the land because the price wasn't high enough for the farmers) and a hundredweight sack in the hold of a Vulcan bomber came in useful. He also brought canned spinach. I can only have been about 4, but I vaguely remember the spinach being served, then taken away again by my mum, with a little polite retching. It was a long time before I had spinach again: possibly 15 years.

Thirty years later, lesson not learned. I stirred the tin of spinach into the sauce and ruined it. As CJBS gobbled his carbonara down without it apparently touching the sides of his throat, I picked at mine but each mouthful was like a spoonful of castor oil. So, for the first time in this project, I think, I've wasted food: it got thrown away. CJBS had seconds of his, whilst I filled up with garlic bread.

So tonight I'm treating myself. Sausage hot pot. I've fried off four faux sausages, a red onion and some mushrooms. I've roasted half a dozen tomatoes, then pureed them. I put the two together in a frying pan, and will now transfer the lot to an oven-proof dish. I'll layer sliced potato on top, then melt a spoonful of butter and brush the top with it. Finally, I'll cook in a medium oven for an hour and serve with some crusty brown bread on the side. There will, this time, be no waste.

By the way, for a funnier culinary disaster, read what happened to Michelle when the Rational Living household had lemon liver the other day. At least I got more than a mouthful of my disaster!

Ennui

That's yer actual French, that is.

At almost exactly the same point as in January, the rations are starting to bite. It's not that I haven't had great food. Even the potatoes last night were almost enjoyable and varied (the tomato version was the best, surprisingly; the stuffing one failed epically; the cottage cheese proved my forgotten point that cottage cheese actually isn't very nice).

But I'd really like something artificial and nasty. Plenty of E numbers, probably a vivid hue, salt, salt and more salt. And fat: hidden in the recipe, declared on the packet and slathered on later by me. I knew this was coming when, last night, I glanced at the Rational Living blog and saw that Michelle had enough points to get lots of olive oil. Olive oil! Oh, what I could do with olive oil!

So tonight it's the closest I can get to such a meal whilst sticking to rations. I'm having hot dogs. They're Redwood vegan ones, no cholesterol (although my cholesterol levels are now right down anyway) and I'm having them in a brown crusty bread roll with lettuce and tomato and "made mustard" (from powder), so it's not exactly a complete betrayal of principles.

 But CJBS is feeling the same thing. He set off to the wild reaches of Moreton with a "ditty bag" (no, me neither) full of spam sandwiches - requested, please note, Scott ;o) - but pointed out that tomorrow is his rest day, and, if he could request a cheat, he wanted a pasta dish with garlic bread. And this will actually work: I've got 2oz of cheese in, plus pasta I got on points in January and didn't use all of. There's half a tin of Spam in the fridge. So that's (almost) cheesy sauce for me and Spam carbonara for him tomorrow. With luck, I might even be able to get fresh spinach and spoil the dish entirely. And I'm ahead on butter; if I can get garlic, I can go a bit mad.

Well, more mad: I'm finding excuses to have garlic bread. What could be more mad than that?

Currying (dis)favour

For the first time in the week I've been running this experiment I felt it today. The shortages, the two-hour cooking times with endless stirring, the damn potato with every bloody meal...

I'd already decided to do a classic British fruit curry tonight. For that, I wanted some spinach and some tomatoes. The shops could not provide - the spinach, wilted and old, was flown in from Portugal; the soft tomatoes were worse, with a choice of lorry from Spain or airfreight from Israel. This are not included in our ration, as they did not exist as an option in 1940. So no spinach and no tomato for my curry. (I'll use unrationed tomato juice, as I'm loathe to spend my points on tinned tomatoes).

But the shortages set my mind going. I want a pizza, my brain said. I want crisps. I want pasta in a thick tomato sauce with garlic bread and brushetta. I want to pierce some plastic film and shove something in the microwave or take something out of a box and throw it in the oven for 20 minutes. I want cheese and biscuits to finish, with butter and sliced tomatoes.

And that's after a week of pretty easy rations. I can only imagine what the people of 1945 felt, after 5 years of ever-diminishing supplies coupled to hard war work and fuel (therefore heat) shortages. No wonder that people trudged through life, as even after the war ended, the destruction of our economy became apparent and rations continued to contract; then came the winter of 1947, where even the sea froze.^{[Wikipedia] [Gallery] [Feature]}

With that thought, I'll now make our potato-and-carrot curry and feel cheered at my lot.