Although my main interest is in the food / home front side of things, we obviously have to try to look the part as well.
I have used a lot of different resources for my research and I thought that I’d share some of them with you.
Vintage Visage is a good source of reproduction patterns
Simplicity Retro patterns:
1692
8050
1587
1590 A
1777
and more….
Slightly cooler and calmer, but still a lovely day.
Liv’s had a great day being friends with Molly ‘next door’, playing and having fun.
We’ve made potato chocolate spread, mock banana, the favourite mock fish cakes, parsley honey and National.Loaf today – all were received well – mostly! A couple of the children today didn’t like the chocolate spread, but on the whole, it was good.
We were extremely lucky to get a lovely, low fly past by the glorious Lancaster bomber, which has just come back from repair. Such a beautiful sight x
We have been honoured to be part of such a lovely, friendly and well attended event and we are looking forward to coming back again next year x
Lovely day with some great visitors!
Olivia has been an absolute star, readily talking to people about rations and our recipes. So grown-up x
The parsely honey went down surprisingly well. It’s tastes quite honey like, but with a fresh, grass flavour!
The mock fish cakes always go down really well – people surprised that you can still buy jars of fish paste!
I also tried the eggless syrup cake – not great for a first try, but that was me and the caravan oven! Sank in the middle cos I was worried about it burning and opened the door – whoops!! Still tasty and would be great with custard!
I also tried out the Potato Chocolate Spread – recipe will be on the Potato leaflet page – the few children that tried it said that they wouldn’t have known it was potato! An older gentleman said that he remembers his mum making it, but that she used parsnip instead of potato – I will try this version later, as parsnip is naturally sweeter.
I tried the carrot fudge recipe from the carrot leaflet page, but this hasn’t been entirely successful so I’m not offering it around! I don’t think the carrot was sweet enough and as there is no added sugar in the recipe, it wasn’t very sweet and was actually quite bland – disappointing x
Although I didn’t manage to get my gas mask container finished for this show – I was extremely lucky to see one made up. One of the lovely ladies that came and spent some time with us had made it up using some lovely airplane fabric in two different colour – straps being a different colourway to the main body. It was encouraging to see one completed and has given me a renewed impetus to get mine finished!
I’ve just started the National Loaf for tomorrow’s show and will try to plan another couple of things to try as well. I’m probably going to do mock banana as we’ve talked about it quite a bit today, more fish cakes, and another attempt at the syrup eggless sponge.
We’ve had a really enjoyable day and think that a treat might be in order – so we’re off for chips!!
We’ve a small stand of retro goodies and vintage china for sale as well as our ration/food stand. Just getting the loaf out of the oven which has gone ballistic due to the humid weather. Hope it taste as good as it looks and smells!
Excited for the weekend!
The caravan is now in place at Thorpe Camp – awning up, all plugged in to get the fridge nice and cold – for drinks as well as food obviously!
Parsley Honey is made!
Play-dough is made – it’s too warm for some of the food stuffs that I need on the ration exhibit (butter, lard etc.) so making play-dough versions! I feel like a nursery teacher at the moment…
Going to make my first loaf and carrot fudge tonight, ready for the morning and then some of the rest is left until the morning – mock fish cakes, chocolate spread etc. The good thing about having the caravan there is that I can cook a little all the while, so the tasters are fresh and I can demonstrate how easy some of the recipes are…
Got to get all the food from home, collect darling daughter from school and then our weekend can begin in earnest!
We really hope that we’ll see some of you there, but will try and keep this updated through the weekend as well!
Display Table
Just a little reminder that it is Thorpe Camp 1940 Weekend, this coming weekend – we look forward to seeing all of you who can make it!
We are busy cleaning and airing out the caravan, getting our menus & food stuffs ready and the wardrobe filled with outfits, make-up and hair products!!
We are really looking forward to meeting lots of lovely new people and I’ll take loads of notes and will hopefully put some of the anecdotal tales onto here as we go along… so keep your eyes peeled…
Source: Zana Richardson, Imperial War Museum
This recipe is an approximation of what the National Loaf would have been like. A closer approximation would be to use 85% extraction flour, mixed with white flour in the proportions below.
For 1 loaf:
Wholemeal flour – 522gm
Potato Flour – 174gm
Fine sea sale – 14gm
Tap water – 474ml
Calcium – 0.6gm
Yeast – 5gm dried active or 21gm fresh
The National Loaf was a bread made from wholemeal flour with added calcium and vitamins, introduced in Britain during World War II.
Introduced in 1942, the loaf (similar to today’s brown bread) was made from wholemeal flour to combat wartime shortages of white flour. As less wheat could be imported, more flour was extracted from what grain there was. This method provided a wholemeal loaf, high in vitamin B1, but different from the white bread people were used to.
Many found the greyish colour off-putting but it was very nutritious and the high extraction rate of 85% meant that there was more bread to go round.
I had been warned not to bother with this, but in the spirit of authenticity decided to give it a go anyway and I was very surprised – it was tasty. The above recipe is for the loaf being produced with a baker’s oven, but having made bread previously, I just followed temperature and times for a normal loaf and did the usual tapping test to check that it was “done”. I also didn’t add the calcium.
I think our palettes are more used to wholemeals / granary etc. so don’t find it as much of a change as they would have done in the ’40s, have predominantly eaten white bread prior to the war.
Unfortunately, this year we are unable to attend the Metheringham Airfield Wartime Weekend.
Our next event is Thorpe Camp 1940s Weekend on 8th & 9th July 2017. Hope to see you there!
Metheringham Airfield Visitor Centre – Wartime Weekend 2016
It’s a shame that our caravan is too new (or old, but not old enough!), I will need to look for ways of camouflaging it a bit better, but there were a lot of visitors and we really enjoyed ourselves.
We had a lot of people stop and try our national loaf and other goodies.
Children were shocked at how little sweets a ration gave them!
We were also told some lovely stories of people remembering what rationing was like for them. Quite a few were fortunate, as living in the country, rationing does not seem to have been as hard, as it was padded out with catching game, keeping chickens, growing veggies etc.. There were also quite a few tales of neighbours helping each other out and doing “swaps” for rations that weren’t wanted or required.
wartimekitchen.wordpress.com 