Watch "Wartime Farm" gives you an idea of what is was like. "1940's house" is on YT in 4 parts as well. I love history like the Victorian Farm, Edwardian Farm, Tales from the Green Valley, Tudor Monastery Farm, the 1940's house. It's interesting "reality tv." These are on RUclips. Enjoy
This is so interesting! My grandma grew up in Scotland during WWII and she said she used to think that heaven was a place where you could eat an unlimited amount of peaches.
Green 1998 I know a fella who went to Afghanistan in 2008. The Afghan truck driver had asked if They could show some pictures of Denmark to his children, because he wanted to educate Them about Life in other countries. Afterwards, one of the kids Said: ‘now I know what heaven must look like.’ The soldiers assumed he was talking about the picture of the forest, the Beach or Perhaps even the castle. He was talking about the supermarket... He was not starving, but Afghan markers Are not clean Lines of food upon food, but rather a few Random items laying in a basket next to some goat dung.
Fun fact: A lot of superstores and restraunts would give out leftovers but had to stop because of law suits since one person would get food poisoning. (This isnt to lighten the situation but some places do try and someone ruins it for everyone)
Grackle--Everyone's wartime experience during WW II was a bit different, so don't apologize for the variations in what you found in your research. For instance (and I am discounting the black market here), those with a bit of land to grow what was called in the USA a "victory garden" allowed some to preserve summer fruits and vegetables, cutting down on what ration coupons they needed to use over the course of a year. My father served in WW II, so his experience on US warships was MUCH different than my mother's, who was raised on a poultry farm. The acreage provided them with all the fruits and vegetables they would need from one harvest to the next. Even into the 1960s, my grandmother "canned down" almost all the produce we'd eat over a year (my mother's dowry--yes, she had one, as did I--included a non-productive acre of the farm where our house was built "through the hedge" from my grandparent's farmhouse). The poultry--after what was sold to markets--provided them with meat and eggs. So, they had to purchase very little. The ration coupons were a great help; they needed only things like sugar, as they also grew enough wheat, rye, maize/corn, and oats to provide grain for themselves and the poultry. This continued to be true into the late 1960s, when my grandparents grew too old to continue farming; my mother had no interest in it and my father wasn't in the bloodline, so he wasn't even considered as an inheritor; and my siblings and I were either about to enter college, or still too young to be much help. In the 1990s, I found a WW II coupon book in a local antique shop and I snapped it up for my classroom. Most of the coupons were still intact in the leather "wallet". Yes, leather. I was surprised by that. Rationing in the USA didn't continue as long as it did in Britain, and the small local grocery outlet that was one of the outlets my grandparents used to sell their poultry in continued to send tins of canned food to my mother's UK high school pen pal for quite some time after the war.
@@nickyabrams--Talk to your grandparents, your aunts and uncles, and cousins who are older than you are. Check the attic and basement for the saved letters and other documents. You'll be surprised at what an incredible family history you have as well.
Their were a few other tricks that could be played with those ration books here in the US. For instance, my mom turned 13 during the War, she didn't drink coffee, but was entitled to her ration. Grandma didn't smoke, but likewise got her ration. These were usually traded to neighbors for other coupons. Sometimes, they would mail things to Czech friends in the old country. You couldn't send a pack of cigarettes overseas (unless it was for US Service men) so they would take a pack or two occasionally, light each smoke, take 1 drag and put it out to send to friends.
For people not on farms, my Grandma told me that wild foods were gathered. Wild herbs, from watercress to garlic, were gathered by the kids and wives. Dandelions had many uses, from salad greens to roasting the root for tea, to wine. Herbs were also grown in window pots and 'starters' were shared with family and neighbours. Rose petals were used for cosmetics/rose water and the rosehips for tea (excellent source of vitamin C). These are just a few examples I remember her telling me. I'm certain folks found a whole lot more in the woods and wild lands.
Aimee Louise Fit--Doesn't it? I saw an artisan bread for sale in my local chain supermarket that looked quite similar at--brace yourself--just under US $6.00 a loaf. OUCH.
The lard was much better quality I would think as it wasn't refined, did I miss the bacon, better watch it again, throughly enjoyed, we eat too big a portion now,just because we can,I think more veg was used as allotments were very productive
@@Grackle the thing was, that in the '40's people were eating predominantly white bread, so it came as somewhat of a shock to be eating brown bread. Interestingly, they soldiers were still being fed white bread.
I'm not sure about Britain, but in America, we all saved our meat drippings...bacon grease, sausage grease etc. We could whip up a tasty gravy easily with the drippings as our base. I'm enjoying this video!
The meat dripping was saved and could be used as a meal of dripping on toast. The jelly that stormed under the dripping fat was a good base for a soup.
@@walterwings2222 YES!!! That jelly!!! I frequently purchased "ends" of bacon - greatly reduced in price to pretty bacon! - and I put them in my crockpot on low for a few hours, stirring occasionally. When I pour off the liquid, I put it into a canning jar, and the fat turn solid white at the top, and at the very bottom, there's about 1/4" of jelly. This is the BEST flavoring for beans, for soups and stews and I love it!
They definitely had golden syrup! the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZACs) used to make biscuits from their rations which had golden syrup in them. We still make them every year for ANZAC day, they're delicious!
they had golden syrup in the uk and was a staple of ww2 recipes according to their own website. The factory was bombed 62 times and they still continued production seeing increased sales.
roasted cashews It kinda looks like Dark Rye bread. It is a type of fermented bread made from Rye and seeds. I live in Denmark and eat about 1-3 slices of This during a Day.
Even if you made errors and didn’t follow what they would have to a T, you put in the effort and educated yourself. That is much more than many would do! Good on ya 👌🏼
Sue Perkins & Giles Coren in The Supersizers Go Wartime, Eating the '40's, talked about people in London during the war eating in community restaurants that were originally set up to feed residents and the rescue workers. At these restaurants, you paid a minimal amount and the food didn't count toward your weekly rations. Because of this, a high percentage of folks ate there. So, your lunch counts, and was totally "legal"!
National flour was drier than modern whole wheat, and the bread that people bought (as opposed to making their own) was the equivalent of day old bakery bread, only made with poorer quality wheat....
I'm from the south my nana would have poured that out and been like "that weighs nothing" a cup of gravy weighs a pound here almost. In the south we use thick gravy
@@Jogjosmowwdkfs thought you meant the south of England for a sec and was like, "...do we?" Yeah, English gravy is fairly watery when its made from instant gravy granules.
You can find the recipe online but it's basically a plain wholemeal bread (not sourdough) like you'd find in a posh artisan bakery these days! It's denser than most modern bread but very tasty and filling. Lovely with butter and honey :)
I wouldn’t dream of coming for you, I think you did brilliantly well. It was so impressive that you carried your experiment through over 5 days. You thought about what you had, planned things, used what was available and generally made the best of things which is exactly how wartime cooking was done. I grew up in the 50s and 60s, but cooking methods and attitudes to food was still heavily influenced by the war. For example no waste, things like eggy bread or sugar toast for breakfast, and definitely no snacking. All things I tend do even now, so maybe the war diet is still around in a way. Anyhow, thank you for a fascinating video.
Watch "Wartime Farm" gives you an idea of what is was like. "1940's house" is on YT in 4 parts as well. I love history like the Victorian Farm, Edwardian Farm, Tales from the Green Valley, Tudor Monastery Farm, the 1940's house. It's interesting "reality tv." These are on RUclips. Enjoy
I thought the same thing! Found this page that has the original for 10 loaves and a single/double loaf adaptation!! :) www.google.com/amp/s/thedeadbeatssociety.wordpress.com/2016/03/01/wartime-world-part-one-the-national-loaf/amp/
The fairy toast was usually made with butter as well as sugar ! My granny used to make it for us when we where little and it tastes kind of like cake with butter icing if it's on cold white toast 😊
In Australia we have fairy bread which is sandwich bread with butter and hundreds and thousands sprinkles :) I wonder if it was first made during wartime?
Golden Syrup was definitely around during the war. They changed the 'tins' from metal to cardboard because of metal shortages, but the factory was still producing 2000 'tins' per day. There are a couple of rationing recipes that have golden syrup in them, too. The key thing to remember about golden syrup and wartime - the stuff lasts for ever. It doesn't go off. And it's so sweet that you don't need that much of it. My Nana used it to make toffee during the war, when she was a cook.
Lucy Clarke Hi, Modern day bread has the opposite of filler. It is made by the Chorley Wood Method which is dough with air pumped into it to enlarge it to make it rise and cook faster.
Well done, really enjoyed your video, I am 73 next month and can remember my mum talking about rationing. In fact, I was born in 1947, I can vaguely recall having my own ration book for sweeties!
Its been very interesting watching your 1950's vlog and then this one, I was born in the early 1950's and I think there is one main thing you need to be aware of as it makes a huge difference - men went to work and women were housewives. As far as I can remember all meals were home made, there was no refrigerator, no microwave, only a very basis electric or gas stove, if you were wealthier then mabe an AGA or Rayburn. The reason I mentioned the men / women situation is because the preparing and cooking of home made food took quite a but of time so it would have been pretty impossible for both men and women to work as there was not enough time in the day to do everything - remember there was no washing machines in those days so all the family washing was done by hand, and that took time as well. Also your food portions are far bigger than I remember, whereas we are always feeling full up today in those days we were nearly always hungry, not hungry starving, although some were in big city's, but just a feeling of hunger. Proper meat was only ever eaten on a Sunday and a chicken was a thing of fantasy and only eaten at Christmas. If we did have meat it would be cheap cuts like scrag-end, rolled shoulder and liver. Gravy was only ever made in the roasting tray using the left over meat juices and some flour to thicken, I don't remember anyone making gravy using Bovril, but it could have been done, it would need to be thickened or its just hot brown water. Its worth remembering nothing was instant in those days, it was all time consuming and hard work, that's why we were all thin and healthy.
That dense bread looked great! You’re a great “drama queen” on camera, honest, creative and inventive. The most interesting ration vid by far. Thanks for making it. Loved it!
Awww absolutely loved this!! I wish more people would do what you did out of curiosity, love how you really entered into the spirit of it and tracked your rations. Fabulous!!! C xxxx
Such a good idea for a video at this time of year! I remember having conversations with my great-grandma about her queuing up at 4am for rations. Had to laugh at your mum throwing serious shade 😂
This just showed up in my recommended videos. Well done! I’ve always been fascinated with WWII, but I felt guilty saying so because (unlike my guy friends) I was never any good at remembering battles and such. One day, I was looking at my collection of WWII books and realized that my interest was in the home fronts and how people lived. Those who have the will to win Eat potatoes in their skin. Knowing that the sight of peelings Deeply hurts Lord Woolton’s feelings.
Rationing in UK lasted well into 1951 or so... and the rations did slowly change over time. There were a few interesting flexibilities in the system... For one, cabbage was planted everywhere because it grows fast on little soil, for another people who kept bees received a ration of sugar to feed the bees over winter and those with several chickens had a grain ration to help feed them. (My grandparents had chickens and bees, meaning they had more access to sweet things than most people, and more eggs as well, so my mother's breakfast each day included a boiled egg. All extra eggs and most of the honey were surrendered to the rationing board in their locale.) I remember my mother telling me that apart from the sugar for the bees they only used honey as a sweetener and that toast and dripping was a favourite light meal. She also said that toast brought you a choice: you could have jam, or you could have butter/margarine, but never both on the same piece of toast. The rationing of fruit also depended on whether you grew it yourself or had it as a ration item, and bananas were only given to the elderly. Cabbage was in every main meal except breakfast, and as a result when rationing ended my mother refused to ever eat cabbage again. You did fairly well with what you produced, but you could have added more herbs, edible weeds and explained that ALL oranges were imported. Apples, pears, berries and stone fruit were grown locally, and sometimes were not rationed at all. Meat, most dairy and baking needs were heavily rationed as were tea, coffee, alcohol and ready made confectionery. Golden syrup, treacle and molasses were rationed, though molasses was often kept exclusively for supplementing animal feeds. Carrots, potatoes, parsnips and greens were often home grown along with the cabbage, but turnips and swede were stock foods. For my mother, her milk was raw since the dairy was literally down the road, and her mother made their butter. A lot of Brits used barter to expand their range of foods, so when my grandparents had extra honey or eggs, they were exchanged with the dairy for milk or cheese. Yogurt was not a common food item there. Schools taught their students how to grow cabbages, potatoes and other non-greenhouse vegetables, and thus supplemented their own rations (for some, school lunches contained all the meat they would see in a week)
My mother worked in a bank in a small country town during the war. Quite often local farmers would ‘pay’ off an overdraft with produce like eggs, cheese, bacon or meat. All very ‘under the counter’!
I always put Marmite in stew! I love these '5 days of' videos. I always wonder what a week of clean eating or doing food prep would be like.....then I'm like nope I'll just watch somebody else do it instead haha
Yeah, you do it if the recipe calls for something like a beef stock, and you realise you don't have any, so a glob of yeast extract is a valid substitute.
The carrot cookies are actually very good. In primary 7 we made them during our world war topic and I even made them at my own house after the topic was done
Bistro Gravy Powder was available in the war. It’s been around a long time. Apparently it came on the market in 1908. Love what you are doing with food.
For woolton pie, you can put mashed potatoes on top instead of the wheat pastry. Much tastier. Also I'm sure people ate meals at friends houses now and again, so your free lunch probably would have happened back then too. ;)
Over a year late to the party, I really loved this! My mum came through the depression in Western Canada and they really WERE hungry. 8 of them living in a grain shed, sometimes they had steamed onion for 3 days. (Her dad was Scottish though so they always had porridge for breakfast). My dad grew up in Scotland so the war hit him harder than it did mum, he liked to say that they were starving and didn't have anything...but they ran a restaurant. So they had chickens i.e. fresh egg, they had a cow i.e. fresh milk and they got triple rations that everyone did. Sorry dad, no tears.
This was such an enjoyable video! I admire your determination to plough on even when you weren't enjoying the food. And the interactions with your Mum were a treat to watch.
5 days and no crisps!?! Tell Mum that OXO cubes were on the market since 1910 and used extensively in WW1. Also, I'm sure a comely lass like yourself would have the American G.I.s cued up to share their rations with you! Well done - thumbs up!
Katrine Petersen we eat rye bread in the UK too. I don’t think it’s quite the same as the national loaf, but I guess on the same level as they both contain seeds/grain etc!
Hi, I recommend you watch Supersizers eat the '40's and Supersizers eat the '50's, to see Giles Coren and Sue Perkins and Mary Berry and another chef show the food during the war. You'll love it! You didn't actually stray off the ration diet. On Supersizers, they explain that restaurants opened during the Blitz, for rescuers and people bombed out. They were quite popular, and weren't part of the rations. I think you did a very good job!
This was such a good video idea I love that you mentioned that Brits were the healthiest during this time cause they had to fill up on a lot of vegetables/potatoes/grains from their gardens. Which busts the myth that carbs give you diabetes 😂 it's so interesting. I hope you do sth like this again. And maybe could you make a video for the bread recipe? 😀
Its being overweight from too many calorie dense foods & the effects of too much sugar that can cause diabetes. As fats & sugar were rationed people ate less calorie dense foods and had less ill effects from sugar. Also most people would have walked a lot more then and more people would have done fairly or very hard physical work. House cleaning & cooking would have involved a lot more labour than now too. So the calories people ate would be more easily burnt up.
Many women complained about weight gain on the rationing system. They even advertised diet methods to decrease the amount of weight gain during rationing, and they were specific in mentioning that weight gain on the ration was because it was an unbalanced way of eating high in "farinaceous food" (in modern terms that means starchy). At the end all high fat animal products were rationed severely, so much so that children growing up during those times were so used to powdered egg replacer that they did not like real eggs when they were off the ration years later. I find the claim that they were healthiest during the ration something that should be taken with a grain of salt. As for diabetes, the general consensus is that there is no one food that gives people diabetes. It's usually a combination of factors such as being overweight/obese, genetic predisposition, unbalanced/unhealthy diets and generally just overburdening the pancreas. Well, there is only one food that is even linked to weight gain and diabetes, and that's soda. On all other things the jury is still out. There's too many contradicting study results, the soda thing came through because that's the only one they didn't have contradictory studies on. Nutrition is a fickle field of study so the progress is really slow.
@@sarahstrong7174 Before cars and central heating people used a lot more calories to stay warm and get from A to B. It wasn't uncommon for a slender rich woman in the victorian times for example, who would have been relatively sedentary compared to others in that same time, to burn 3500 kcal or more in a day. As for WW2 and rationing, you're right most of them had to make do with a calorie decrease in their diet, on the other hand some people found themselves gaining weight because many starchy foods were not on the ration (and thus were unlimited if you had the means), and again on the other hand people in positions that allowed them to be sedentary pre WW2 were encouraged to contribute to the war effort and that generally meant they became more active. For example higher class women were encouraged to join help groups (voluntary services, such as providing food and tea to the needy, knitting items for soldiers and providing help to those who were homeless because of the bombings). Lower class women would be encouraged to join groups like the women's land army (basically means they helped farmers produce more food), or encouraged to do factory work to produce weapons and plane parts, or even join one of the military women's divisions. I think it's safe to assume that previously sedentary men were encouraged to take up extra or different work leading to more physical activity.
@@itsalwayshalloweenexceptwh5118 Of course & Im sure a lot of people who might have felt relatively isolated socially before felt better for being more involved in the local community. Shame it takes a war to bring people together.
No criticism, just a thought: what you describe as fairy bread seems a lot like cinnamon toast I grew up on. But the difference is you butter the untoasted bread, then sprinkle on sugar and cinnamon, then toast it. The sugar melts into a delicate crust and is very good. You toast it flat on a tray in the oven, of course, not in a toaster.
This is FASCINATING to me! My parents were young marrieds during WWII (in the US -- my dad was a Marine Captain on Okinawa). I've always been obsessed with this era!
Barbara Bavier My uncle married a Japanese woman right after WW2, he’s told me they got a LOT of stinkeye from people back home in Texas. He’s how I started my WW2/Japan obsession as he was stationed in Japan before the end of the war.
Love this! I’m a huge WWII buff and you did a great job on the ration diet. It sure was not easy on them in so many ways in those days and to feed a full family, especially the children who were probably used to sweets. That bread looks really good, like a hearty wheat! Thanks for sharing!
I'm not so sure they were used to sweets. My mother grew up during the Depression (in the US) and they only ate what they grew most of the time. If they had lived in town it might have been a little different, but I don't think it would have been very different for most people. We were late to WW II, and war spending saved A LOT of people in the US from starvation....
That's a fascinating video. Shows how times have changed, so much! My mum was housewife with 2 kids during WWII so although I was born after that, the economy and recipes were sort of part of my childhood (I'm a little over 60). It must have been much easier for those in the countryside, and considering that there was less spread out of cities too. You can get salads, fruits, have a chicken or 2, stuff like that, and barter your jam for example, for your neighbour's milk or whatever. Glad I live in the mountains, where there are wild plants you can pick up, and veg gardens etc. Well done.
I make alot of our breads,and I especially lov the denser kind.They do fill you up on less pieces for sure! When I buy them in store I try to find the denser breads also-I dont care for the factory commerical nothing but air bread!
My Mom has a recipe for WW2 bread. She lived thru WW2 as a young woman. I am 69, she is 99. Yikes! She can still remember rationing and we have some remains of ration books. My grandfather was a pork butcher with his own small business, so my Mom's family had a good amount of meat, not pork chops (which he sold at local markets) but his own sausage, bologna, scrapple (ingredients and flavor much like Scottish haggis), and EVERYONE had large vegetable gardens in their yards or any extra land; they plowed under the grass and planted victory gardens. Ladies in my kin would get together in late summer and bring lots of different vegetables and Mason jars and lids to one lady's kitchen. All the veggies were washed and cut up and cooked and then canned to make chow chow, a sort of pickled vegetable side dish that could be served all winter. They made pickles -- both dill and sweet -- as well. And relishes too. Everyone would go home with their jars all filled and sealed. American wives canned a lot of food. We also dried food. One good entree was dried green beans with ham and potatoes and an onion. Dried corn was another fave and I still buy John Cope's dried corn in vacuum bags and make casserole side dishes with it. Dried apples were also popular; we ate many apples during the winter and mother had all sorts of recipes for apple pies and dumplings. People also had fruit trees; in the 1950s we would collect up the fallen apples from my Grandma's five apple trees which were probably in their prime during WW2, and she would cut, core, remove brown spots and then cook, sieve and freeze applesauce. This would take sugar, but during war time homemade honey or golden syrup could have been used. After the war families got freezers and would freeze their garden produce. In the 1950s I remember shelling lima beans and peas. We had two sour cherry trees and we pitted the cherries and Mom froze them for use in winter fruit salads. I would often eat them right from the freezer box in winter -- what an icy treat full of cherry deliciousness. They also froze corn, green beans, etc. They would parboil most of the veggies, then pack them in plastic bags, and put the bags in little cardboard boxes. Into the chest freezer they'd go. She would also can pears, peaches, and make jams and jellies. We didn't have to buy canned veggies at the store until March -- our garden foods lasted all winter. Of course this was when most moms stayed home and did all this food preservation. Dad would come home from his office job, eat dinner and then work in the garden til nightfall, plowing, planting, weeding, watering when needed, and finally harvesting. We three kids helped with all this too. Thus we learned a LOT about growing food and fruit, and how to preserve it. Who needed video games? With all this activity plus school and play, we were busy and slept very well because we were bone tired by the end of the day, but in the best way possible!
where do you come up with these ideas?! you're awesome, amazing and inspirational and you're teaching me to love food and live life again after my eating disorder - i honestly wish i could find a way to thank you materially...do you have a PO box?
I love people recreating ration diets! When it was time for me to start losing weight I did a version of this for a MONTH. I didn't lose any weight that first month, but it did teach me how to be aware of my eating and keep track of my intake. It made it really easy to switch to calories counting. 45lbs down, 55 to go!
This was such a neat idea! When I was teaching third grade we did a project where we studied what George Washington (first US president) would have eaten for breakfast. One mooring the kids came to school in colonial grab and we ate George Washington's breakfast and drank tea (not a standard beverage for American kids.) It was really fun but not as cool as you week of British WWII rations. The bread and leek and barley soup looked good to me.
So happy to see young people take an interest in the past! I love watching all kinds of vids on the British Home Front. Well done, Grace! Also, could you point me in the direction of the recipe you used to make the War Time loaf? Thanks x 😊
Watch "Wartime Farm" gives you an idea of what is was like. "1940's house" is on YT in 4 parts as well. I love history like the Victorian Farm, Edwardian Farm, Tales from the Green Valley, Tudor Monastery Farm, the 1940's house. It's interesting "reality tv." These are on RUclips. Enjoy
Commenting a little too late maybe, but fun fact (??) about toast and sugar! I'm from Italy and my grandma was born in 1920, so she lived through WW2. When I was little she used to give me and my sister bread with sugar for pudding, but she made the bread wet with a little of water and then sprinkled the sugar on top (and i remember that we loved it!!) :) She always told us that that was she would usually have for pudding as a child, coming from a poor family, and that wasn't unusual! A variation of that, but for adults, was bread with wine (because we are from Tuscany, but I think that this might have been common in many other countryside places)
People here in Northumberland had allotments where they grew alsorts of veg and kept hens and pigs to help feed the family. I love this video by the way.
Fairy toast is great. Use a pestle and mortar to grind the sugar into a fine powder and sprinkle on the toast and put under the grill to melt the sugar. I used to do this when my daughter was little when we did a wartime ration month.
Probably the best and most interesting video you’ve done :) I’d love you to do another one as WW2 is also the war that i find most fascinating (in a non morbid way) Keep up the great work!
Almond milk has an alkaline composition which can help neutralize stomach acidity. However, only skim milk and very low-fat milk has the same effect, as high-fat milk actually increases the stomach acid production and therefore worsens any symptoms you could get from being very hungry like acid reflux and heartburn. Especially before laying down you should never drink high-fat milk as acid reflux is naturally happening because of your bodys position and because of the higher amount of acid can cause serious damage if you do that too often. eg. barett-oesophagus (a medical condition causing dysplasia in the endothelium of your oesophagus)
Interesting video and shows how different life was then. My friend’s grandmother always stored a ton of butter flavored crisco for “emergencies.” She was a young girl during the Great Depression and they only had plain crisco to use on food.
That was a great video. I also find ww2 fascinating from the view of the people at home. Rationing, food stamps, etc would have been very hard to get used to! Thank you for doing this video, it was fun to watch
Instant gravy was a thing, an excerpt from the grave website: "It wasn’t until World War II though, when imported gravy products were in short supply that Gravox became a household name."
I am thoroughly enjoying your videos! I really should get up and get something done around the house but I feel compelled to watch every RUclips video that you have posted. LOL! :)
I, too, am fascinated by WWII homefront history. You did very well. Golden syrup was available but not plentiful. I have used Marmite to make a decent "beef stock" for noodles and gravy. But you did not have to worry about bread. National loaf was not rationed. I'm not sure how well I would have done without butter, which i love or even marg, which is better than nothing. question:is Marmite expensive in Britain or just because imported to US?
How is it real food, people were starving and dying in the war so they didn't have anything, and this is actually very good compared to other countries, my native country, people would boil leather just to have something to eat
Are you serious? You didn't need to tell us whee you're from, it's painfully obvious you don't know anything about WWII rationing if you think this was "real food".
Another great video! My dad often talked about his dried egg and dried milk.and one square of chocolate per week. My mum used to make me a soft boiled egg chopped up in a cup with a slice of bread and butter and another blob of butter for good measure. Maybe that was a thing. I also had either syrup or treacle on bread as a snack or bread butter and sugar or jam. Mum often baked scones or fairy cakes. We had stovies, which was an onion browned and a couple of sausages to feed 5 in a pot, then add chopped potatoes and water and salt and pepper boiled down to almost dry with some tasty crusty bits on the edges. 😃 mince and potatoes was a big feature too. Loved it. My son’s favourite now. We were veggie then vegan for a few years but back to eating small amounts of meat with lots of veg. Just like the good old days. I’ve just batch cooked mince and tatties, with peas, carrots and cabbage, spaghetti bog, Mexican beef medley (mince with tomato soup, sweet corn peppers and onions, garlic and chilli for pasta) and stir fried rice and veg with one chicken leg between 4 meals. All my sons choice. He was born in Australia but says he feels much more Scottish than Australian.
Check out Tales from the green valley, wartime farm, Victorian farm, Edwardian farm, Tudor Monestery farm, the 1940’s house e1-e4, et all. All great content, almost 20 years old.
I am American. There have been times in my life where I had to be very tight in budget, and still manage to feed me and my children, and doing what you are doing is exactly the way to make sure everyone gets fed, with very little waste. You have to budget, exactly the way that you have been doing. So this sort of thing, i would think, is a good tutorial for you in case you REALLY need to close with your grocery budget. Good going there.
Egg in a nest!!! I still make them and was raised on them. I'm 34. It's delish! My weekend treat every weekend. I use two eggs, one per each toast. So 2 slices of toast 2 eggs in the nest and usually sausage LOL
I can't watch this because I have anorexia/in recovery from and I'm sure I already know off heart the effect of restrictive eating haha but fascinating vid idea! Well done on 12k, been here since the first few :)
Ahhh i am glad you know what won't be beneficial for you to watch. Thanks for the positive comment anyway, and my next video is a good old vlog with me and the fam, so you can def watch that one! I'll post it tomorrow if you like so you don't have to wait too long? :D
Also, what you say about using things up is really interesting. I do that without noticing (allowing for the odd fail when I'm busy). But I was brought up, and taught to cook by my Nana, who as I said in the other comment, was a cook in the 30s and 40s till she was called up for munitions work. So it was instilled in me from being tiny - if you're making a recipe, but something in the fridge is about to go off, chuck it in to avoid wasting it. I still feel guilty if we have a chicken and I don't boil the carcass for stock, like Nana did.
I had no idea that it was eaten at that time but I've had bread and sugar on top before and we used to add a little bit of water just sprinkled with your fingers over the sugar. My mom used to give me and my brother that when we were kids like 20 years ago 😀😀
We used to have sugar sandwiches when there wasnt anything else to go in our sandwiches for school lunch. There was usually a little marge to stick the sugar on with though.
We do cinnamon toast. My children love it. They want with no butter. But I have to have the butter. Product of the 80s put butt tons of sugar on everything I am.
I really like this video. I appreciate your dedication to making it as accurate as possible. My only criticism is that the information slides are really hard to consume fully in the time you give. I had to rewind several times in order to pause at the right time. If you could give it a few more seconds, pausing to read would be easier. I'd like to see more of these. Thanks for all the work.
as a German, i was very confused and I thought "this is def not what my grandma had" - so let me tell you, your menu would have been 5* compared to what they got here in germany, because everything was closed and shut down, and especially in Berlin, they were dependent on the Luftbrücke anyway. interesting experiment. cheers
My grandmother basically lived on war rations diet her whole life. She lived to 96with no ill health. Just got dementia in the end. No vegan, raw keto, nuffin.
Honey, they had feeding stations in UK during the war. It was the start of common restaurants. So your eating out would have been normal. Most people ate out at least once a week, sometimes more. It was off ration, but. Could have been anything because food was in short supply. You have done a great job trying this out. I enjoyed the 1950s diet one too. I think the great generation was so healthy because they physically worked so hard. I am American, but I love the UK. I would love to visit some day.
Hello, thank you for this. We're learning about food rationing in WW2 in homeschool and this gave us a much better idea of things were during that time. So interesting!
I've finally found it... The video that perfectly intersects all of my weird youtube niches
Same!!!! 😁
Watch "Wartime Farm" gives you an idea of what is was like. "1940's house" is on YT in 4 parts as well. I love history like the Victorian Farm, Edwardian Farm, Tales from the Green Valley, Tudor Monastery Farm, the 1940's house. It's interesting "reality tv." These are on RUclips. Enjoy
Mine too!
Can we be friends.
@@NothingToNoOneInParticular Love those series! Wish they made more!
This is so interesting! My grandma grew up in Scotland during WWII and she said she used to think that heaven was a place where you could eat an unlimited amount of peaches.
Green 1998 That is so sweet 💕
Missouri in the summertime then
Green 1998 my grandma was in Scotland as-well! She said one time she got a peach for Christmas and thought her parents were the richest people ever. 😂
Green 1998 I know a fella who went to Afghanistan in 2008. The Afghan truck driver had asked if They could show some pictures of Denmark to his children, because he wanted to educate Them about Life in other countries.
Afterwards, one of the kids Said: ‘now I know what heaven must look like.’ The soldiers assumed he was talking about the picture of the forest, the Beach or Perhaps even the castle.
He was talking about the supermarket... He was not starving, but Afghan markers Are not clean Lines of food upon food, but rather a few Random items laying in a basket next to some goat dung.
I agree. All the peaches.
As a historian I'd say you were incredibly accurate with a lot of your foods and mentality too.
Fun fact: the amount of food wasted in the US alone is enough to end world starvation
Mari OMG
I believe it!
I believe it I’ve worked in grocery stores and fast food it’s so much it hurts my heart
Fun fact: A lot of superstores and restraunts would give out leftovers but had to stop because of law suits since one person would get food poisoning. (This isnt to lighten the situation but some places do try and someone ruins it for everyone)
@@jasminetennis9855 Fortunately, food groups are able to buy up near-expired things to hand out to savvy consumers. My family is in one.
Grackle--Everyone's wartime experience during WW II was a bit different, so don't apologize for the variations in what you found in your research. For instance (and I am discounting the black market here), those with a bit of land to grow what was called in the USA a "victory garden" allowed some to preserve summer fruits and vegetables, cutting down on what ration coupons they needed to use over the course of a year. My father served in WW II, so his experience on US warships was MUCH different than my mother's, who was raised on a poultry farm. The acreage provided them with all the fruits and vegetables they would need from one harvest to the next. Even into the 1960s, my grandmother "canned down" almost all the produce we'd eat over a year (my mother's dowry--yes, she had one, as did I--included a non-productive acre of the farm where our house was built "through the hedge" from my grandparent's farmhouse). The poultry--after what was sold to markets--provided them with meat and eggs. So, they had to purchase very little. The ration coupons were a great help; they needed only things like sugar, as they also grew enough wheat, rye, maize/corn, and oats to provide grain for themselves and the poultry. This continued to be true into the late 1960s, when my grandparents grew too old to continue farming; my mother had no interest in it and my father wasn't in the bloodline, so he wasn't even considered as an inheritor; and my siblings and I were either about to enter college, or still too young to be much help. In the 1990s, I found a WW II coupon book in a local antique shop and I snapped it up for my classroom. Most of the coupons were still intact in the leather "wallet". Yes, leather. I was surprised by that. Rationing in the USA didn't continue as long as it did in Britain, and the small local grocery outlet that was one of the outlets my grandparents used to sell their poultry in continued to send tins of canned food to my mother's UK high school pen pal for quite some time after the war.
One MercilessMing this is incredible thank you for sharing. What an amazing family history!
@@nickyabrams--Talk to your grandparents, your aunts and uncles, and cousins who are older than you are. Check the attic and basement for the saved letters and other documents. You'll be surprised at what an incredible family history you have as well.
Their were a few other tricks that could be played with those ration books here in the US. For instance, my mom turned 13 during the War, she didn't drink coffee, but was entitled to her ration. Grandma didn't smoke, but likewise got her ration. These were usually traded to neighbors for other coupons.
Sometimes, they would mail things to Czech friends in the old country. You couldn't send a pack of cigarettes overseas (unless it was for US Service men) so they would take a pack or two occasionally, light each smoke, take 1 drag and put it out to send to friends.
For people not on farms, my Grandma told me that wild foods were gathered. Wild herbs, from watercress to garlic, were gathered by the kids and wives. Dandelions had many uses, from salad greens to roasting the root for tea, to wine. Herbs were also grown in window pots and 'starters' were shared with family and neighbours. Rose petals were used for cosmetics/rose water and the rosehips for tea (excellent source of vitamin C). These are just a few examples I remember her telling me. I'm certain folks found a whole lot more in the woods and wild lands.
I won't lie that ration bread looks actually nice
was LUSH
Aimee Louise Fit--Doesn't it? I saw an artisan bread for sale in my local chain supermarket that looked quite similar at--brace yourself--just under US $6.00 a loaf. OUCH.
The lard was much better quality I would think as it wasn't refined, did I miss the bacon, better watch it again, throughly enjoyed, we eat too big a portion now,just because we can,I think more veg was used as allotments were very productive
@@Grackle the thing was, that in the '40's people were eating predominantly white bread, so it came as somewhat of a shock to be eating brown bread. Interestingly, they soldiers were still being fed white bread.
@@janinecorwin9414 - I read somewhere that most of the fresh eggs went to soldiers too. Clearly not all!
I'm not sure about Britain, but in America, we all saved our meat drippings...bacon grease, sausage grease etc. We could whip up a tasty gravy easily with the drippings as our base. I'm enjoying this video!
I still save drippings for gravy.
@@ikreer9777 me too!
Me three
The meat dripping was saved and could be used as a meal of dripping on toast. The jelly that stormed under the dripping fat was a good base for a soup.
@@walterwings2222 YES!!! That jelly!!! I frequently purchased "ends" of bacon - greatly reduced in price to pretty bacon! - and I put them in my crockpot on low for a few hours, stirring occasionally. When I pour off the liquid, I put it into a canning jar, and the fat turn solid white at the top, and at the very bottom, there's about 1/4" of jelly. This is the BEST flavoring for beans, for soups and stews and I love it!
They definitely had golden syrup! the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZACs) used to make biscuits from their rations which had golden syrup in them. We still make them every year for ANZAC day, they're delicious!
But it may of been rationed or not available at all in the uk during that time.
they had golden syrup in the uk and was a staple of ww2 recipes according to their own website. The factory was bombed 62 times and they still continued production seeing increased sales.
Anzac biscuits are the best! My family loves them
@@ashleymomma6198 do you prefer your ANZACs chewy or crispy, that IS the question
Bethany DEAN the ingredients for ANZAC biccies were fairly easily sourced despite rationing, which was a bonus.
This video is incredibly original! And the idea is brilliant, loved how informative it was💛
ahhhhhhh thanks :)
Couldn't agree more!!
roasted cashews It kinda looks like Dark Rye bread. It is a type of fermented bread made from Rye and seeds. I live in Denmark and eat about 1-3 slices of This during a Day.
Check out the British series Supersize me.
Even if you made errors and didn’t follow what they would have to a T, you put in the effort and educated yourself. That is much more than many would do! Good on ya 👌🏼
Shannon Way amen! I definitely feel more educated and it’s definitely promoted my interest in trying some of this stuff so she’s done an awesome job!
Sue Perkins & Giles Coren in The Supersizers Go Wartime, Eating the '40's, talked about people in London during the war eating in community restaurants that were originally set up to feed residents and the rescue workers. At these restaurants, you paid a minimal amount and the food didn't count toward your weekly rations. Because of this, a high percentage of folks ate there. So, your lunch counts, and was totally "legal"!
Considering the quality of the average British loaf and the fact it has little fiber.. I'm not surprised the war loaf keeps you fuller
Yeah, but even when I make a homemade loaf I never get that full up, so interesting isnt it!
interesting.. now I want to give this a go. Which recipe did you use for your loaf? Can you share?
@@Grackle Grace, what kind of flour did you use?
National flour was drier than modern whole wheat, and the bread that people bought (as opposed to making their own) was the equivalent of day old bakery bread, only made with poorer quality wheat....
Good content, but the wateryness of your gravy gives me anxiety 😂
I'm from the south my nana would have poured that out and been like "that weighs nothing" a cup of gravy weighs a pound here almost. In the south we use thick gravy
@@Jogjosmowwdkfs thought you meant the south of England for a sec and was like, "...do we?"
Yeah, English gravy is fairly watery when its made from instant gravy granules.
@@Jogjosmowwdkfs unless you did mean the south of England in which case I'm still confused :P
@@ikathiggs13 I meant the united States lol. We're a wild bunch, Isobel
@@ikathiggs13 that nonsense we use gravy granules and it's thick you just add more granules
You should drop the recipe for that bread
Anabella flour and yeast and stuff
@@rupaulqueen9730 what is anabella flour ? that looks so dense and dark
Wyld Librarian they were replying to anabella and didn't put a coma. they just meant flour and yeast
You can find the recipe online but it's basically a plain wholemeal bread (not sourdough) like you'd find in a posh artisan bakery these days! It's denser than most modern bread but very tasty and filling. Lovely with butter and honey :)
GRACE! You have so much original talent, please keep inspirinh the rest of RUclips to be as individual and creative as you are x
ahhhhhh stop that, such a lovely comment :) xxx
I wouldn’t dream of coming for you, I think you did brilliantly well. It was so impressive that you carried your experiment through over 5 days. You thought about what you had, planned things, used what was available and generally made the best of things which is exactly how wartime cooking was done. I grew up in the 50s and 60s, but cooking methods and attitudes to food was still heavily influenced by the war. For example no waste, things like eggy bread or sugar toast for breakfast, and definitely no snacking. All things I tend do even now, so maybe the war diet is still around in a way. Anyhow, thank you for a fascinating video.
I swear you’re the only lactose intolerant person who actually avoids dairy 😉
No, she isn't. :-)
I think she's intolerant to the protein
I know I dont
Cheeese
I think she's dairy free not lactose intolerant. There is a difference between the too.
@@sarahtonin_p7869 she puts it on the screen at 0:45 that she's lactose intolerant
This level of content originality...queen of the never seen before kingdom omg
Watch "Wartime Farm" gives you an idea of what is was like. "1940's house" is on YT in 4 parts as well. I love history like the Victorian Farm, Edwardian Farm, Tales from the Green Valley, Tudor Monastery Farm, the 1940's house. It's interesting "reality tv." These are on RUclips. Enjoy
Is it weird to ask for the recipe for the national bread or whatever it’s called kinda intrigued to try it haha x
The recipe is all over the internet however its for 10 loaves and not for a bread machine. Would live to have the bread machine recipe.
The recipe is to me a completely normal bread really.. (I live in Norway where we hardly eat any white bread)
@@oregonwanderer if you just scale it down to one loaf, it should work. As she says, the bread machine couldn't really knead it, it was too heavy.
Same!
I thought the same thing! Found this page that has the original for 10 loaves and a single/double loaf adaptation!! :)
www.google.com/amp/s/thedeadbeatssociety.wordpress.com/2016/03/01/wartime-world-part-one-the-national-loaf/amp/
Eggy bread is called French toast in Canada, at first I had no idea what you were talking about haha! Love this vid :)
In Northern parts of the UK especially in North Lincolnshire its called "Gypsy Toast". 😊
@@andrewsowerby5498 As a Yorkshireman living in the North East I don't know how I feel about Lincolnshire being described as northern.
@@zyoeru in North Lincolnshire we are further north than South Yorkshire so I'm a northerner. Just try me. I bleed gravy 😂
Oh well so you are!
It's « pain perdu », or lost bread, in France.
The fairy toast was usually made with butter as well as sugar ! My granny used to make it for us when we where little and it tastes kind of like cake with butter icing if it's on cold white toast 😊
Zella Morrow my mom made something similar when I was growing up. Toast butter and a mix of cinnamon and sugar. So tasty.
True - but she was out of butter. In American terms, the ration was half of one stick a WEEK.
Zella Morrow what’s fairy toast? I’m not English
In Australia we have fairy bread which is sandwich bread with butter and hundreds and thousands sprinkles :) I wonder if it was first made during wartime?
@@kitdubhran2968 omg same
Golden Syrup was definitely around during the war. They changed the 'tins' from metal to cardboard because of metal shortages, but the factory was still producing 2000 'tins' per day.
There are a couple of rationing recipes that have golden syrup in them, too.
The key thing to remember about golden syrup and wartime - the stuff lasts for ever. It doesn't go off. And it's so sweet that you don't need that much of it.
My Nana used it to make toffee during the war, when she was a cook.
the bread's gonna keep you fuller for longer because it hasn't got the 'filler' that commercial breads have, and it's heavier too
Lucy Clarke Hi, Modern day bread has the opposite of filler. It is made by the Chorley Wood Method which is dough with air pumped into it to enlarge it to make it rise and cook faster.
Well done, really enjoyed your video, I am 73 next month and can remember my mum talking about rationing. In fact, I was born in 1947, I can vaguely recall having my own ration book for sweeties!
My mum's 74 and she's still got hers!
Its been very interesting watching your 1950's vlog and then this one, I was born in the early 1950's and I think there is one main thing you need to be aware of as it makes a huge difference - men went to work and women were housewives. As far as I can remember all meals were home made, there was no refrigerator, no microwave, only a very basis electric or gas stove, if you were wealthier then mabe an AGA or Rayburn. The reason I mentioned the men / women situation is because the preparing and cooking of home made food took quite a but of time so it would have been pretty impossible for both men and women to work as there was not enough time in the day to do everything - remember there was no washing machines in those days so all the family washing was done by hand, and that took time as well.
Also your food portions are far bigger than I remember, whereas we are always feeling full up today in those days we were nearly always hungry, not hungry starving, although some were in big city's, but just a feeling of hunger. Proper meat was only ever eaten on a Sunday and a chicken was a thing of fantasy and only eaten at Christmas. If we did have meat it would be cheap cuts like scrag-end, rolled shoulder and liver.
Gravy was only ever made in the roasting tray using the left over meat juices and some flour to thicken, I don't remember anyone making gravy using Bovril, but it could have been done, it would need to be thickened or its just hot brown water.
Its worth remembering nothing was instant in those days, it was all time consuming and hard work, that's why we were all thin and healthy.
That dense bread looked great! You’re a great “drama queen” on camera, honest, creative and inventive. The most interesting ration vid by far. Thanks for making it. Loved it!
Awww absolutely loved this!! I wish more people would do what you did out of curiosity, love how you really entered into the spirit of it and tracked your rations. Fabulous!!! C xxxx
Such a good idea for a video at this time of year! I remember having conversations with my great-grandma about her queuing up at 4am for rations. Had to laugh at your mum throwing serious shade 😂
your vids are great for procrastinating. I should leave my house now....
I think if I were an employer, "I got into RUclips" might be an excusable tardy. Haha!
This just showed up in my recommended videos. Well done!
I’ve always been fascinated with WWII, but I felt guilty saying so because (unlike my guy friends) I was never any good at remembering battles and such. One day, I was looking at my collection of WWII books and realized that my interest was in the home fronts and how people lived.
Those who have the will to win
Eat potatoes in their skin.
Knowing that the sight of peelings
Deeply hurts Lord Woolton’s feelings.
Llama Sugar don’t be guilty, that you like social history. It’s a fun sphere of historical study. We’re basically time travelers in training.
shes going to 100% going to have her own cooking show
thumbs up to see grace the grackle on food network
Rationing in UK lasted well into 1951 or so... and the rations did slowly change over time. There were a few interesting flexibilities in the system... For one, cabbage was planted everywhere because it grows fast on little soil, for another people who kept bees received a ration of sugar to feed the bees over winter and those with several chickens had a grain ration to help feed them. (My grandparents had chickens and bees, meaning they had more access to sweet things than most people, and more eggs as well, so my mother's breakfast each day included a boiled egg. All extra eggs and most of the honey were surrendered to the rationing board in their locale.) I remember my mother telling me that apart from the sugar for the bees they only used honey as a sweetener and that toast and dripping was a favourite light meal. She also said that toast brought you a choice: you could have jam, or you could have butter/margarine, but never both on the same piece of toast. The rationing of fruit also depended on whether you grew it yourself or had it as a ration item, and bananas were only given to the elderly. Cabbage was in every main meal except breakfast, and as a result when rationing ended my mother refused to ever eat cabbage again.
You did fairly well with what you produced, but you could have added more herbs, edible weeds and explained that ALL oranges were imported. Apples, pears, berries and stone fruit were grown locally, and sometimes were not rationed at all. Meat, most dairy and baking needs were heavily rationed as were tea, coffee, alcohol and ready made confectionery. Golden syrup, treacle and molasses were rationed, though molasses was often kept exclusively for supplementing animal feeds. Carrots, potatoes, parsnips and greens were often home grown along with the cabbage, but turnips and swede were stock foods. For my mother, her milk was raw since the dairy was literally down the road, and her mother made their butter. A lot of Brits used barter to expand their range of foods, so when my grandparents had extra honey or eggs, they were exchanged with the dairy for milk or cheese. Yogurt was not a common food item there. Schools taught their students how to grow cabbages, potatoes and other non-greenhouse vegetables, and thus supplemented their own rations (for some, school lunches contained all the meat they would see in a week)
Rationing ended in Britain in 1954.
NothingToNoOneInParticular ... Oh thank you for correcting me... I appreciate accuracy in historical accounts.
My mother worked in a bank in a small country town during the war. Quite often local farmers would ‘pay’ off an overdraft with produce like eggs, cheese, bacon or meat. All very ‘under the counter’!
I believe it lasted until 1954
I always put Marmite in stew! I love these '5 days of' videos. I always wonder what a week of clean eating or doing food prep would be like.....then I'm like nope I'll just watch somebody else do it instead haha
IT WAS SO YUMMY! think im going to be doing that again
Yeah, you do it if the recipe calls for something like a beef stock, and you realise you don't have any, so a glob of yeast extract is a valid substitute.
Hahaha! I'd rather watch other people doing challenges like this
RUclips has decided to promote your channel I guess, Ive seen like 3 suggested videos from you
this was really good, very interesting
I am SOoOOO glad you found it interesting! I was a little worried no one else would find it as interesting as I do hahaha
The carrot cookies are actually very good. In primary 7 we made them during our world war topic and I even made them at my own house after the topic was done
Bistro Gravy Powder was available in the war. It’s been around a long time. Apparently it came on the market in 1908. Love what you are doing with food.
original content dayummm
a gal tries
For woolton pie, you can put mashed potatoes on top instead of the wheat pastry. Much tastier. Also I'm sure people ate meals at friends houses now and again, so your free lunch probably would have happened back then too. ;)
Over a year late to the party, I really loved this! My mum came through the depression in Western Canada and they really WERE hungry. 8 of them living in a grain shed, sometimes they had steamed onion for 3 days. (Her dad was Scottish though so they always had porridge for breakfast). My dad grew up in Scotland so the war hit him harder than it did mum, he liked to say that they were starving and didn't have anything...but they ran a restaurant. So they had chickens i.e. fresh egg, they had a cow i.e. fresh milk and they got triple rations that everyone did. Sorry dad, no tears.
Watching this in the time of the coronavirus. Hopefully will get some tips as all the supermarkets are empty from all the panic buying 🤦♀️😅
This was such an enjoyable video! I admire your determination to plough on even when you weren't enjoying the food. And the interactions with your Mum were a treat to watch.
5 days and no crisps!?! Tell Mum that OXO cubes were on the market since 1910 and used extensively in WW1. Also, I'm sure a comely lass like yourself would have the American G.I.s cued up to share their rations with you! Well done - thumbs up!
Apparently I eat national load every Day. In Denmark it is the stable of the lunch table.
We just Call it Rye bread, though.
Katrine Petersen we eat rye bread in the UK too. I don’t think it’s quite the same as the national loaf, but I guess on the same level as they both contain seeds/grain etc!
Love your personality, came across your channel yesterday and im hooked! also you look like Drew Gooden's British sister, lol
LOL, I get this a lot, I just watched one of his videos for the first time, kind of a cracking human I guess so flattered
Hi, I recommend you watch Supersizers eat the '40's and Supersizers eat the '50's, to see Giles Coren and Sue Perkins and Mary Berry and another chef show the food during the war. You'll love it! You didn't actually stray off the ration diet. On Supersizers, they explain that restaurants opened during the Blitz, for rescuers and people bombed out. They were quite popular, and weren't part of the rations. I think you did a very good job!
This was such a good video idea I love that you mentioned that Brits were the healthiest during this time cause they had to fill up on a lot of vegetables/potatoes/grains from their gardens. Which busts the myth that carbs give you diabetes 😂 it's so interesting. I hope you do sth like this again.
And maybe could you make a video for the bread recipe? 😀
Its being overweight from too many calorie dense foods & the effects of too much sugar that can cause diabetes. As fats & sugar were rationed people ate less calorie dense foods and had less ill effects from sugar. Also most people would have walked a lot more then and more people would have done fairly or very hard physical work. House cleaning & cooking would have involved a lot more labour than now too. So the calories people ate would be more easily burnt up.
Many women complained about weight gain on the rationing system. They even advertised diet methods to decrease the amount of weight gain during rationing, and they were specific in mentioning that weight gain on the ration was because it was an unbalanced way of eating high in "farinaceous food" (in modern terms that means starchy). At the end all high fat animal products were rationed severely, so much so that children growing up during those times were so used to powdered egg replacer that they did not like real eggs when they were off the ration years later.
I find the claim that they were healthiest during the ration something that should be taken with a grain of salt.
As for diabetes, the general consensus is that there is no one food that gives people diabetes. It's usually a combination of factors such as being overweight/obese, genetic predisposition, unbalanced/unhealthy diets and generally just overburdening the pancreas.
Well, there is only one food that is even linked to weight gain and diabetes, and that's soda. On all other things the jury is still out. There's too many contradicting study results, the soda thing came through because that's the only one they didn't have contradictory studies on.
Nutrition is a fickle field of study so the progress is really slow.
@@sarahstrong7174 Before cars and central heating people used a lot more calories to stay warm and get from A to B. It wasn't uncommon for a slender rich woman in the victorian times for example, who would have been relatively sedentary compared to others in that same time, to burn 3500 kcal or more in a day.
As for WW2 and rationing, you're right most of them had to make do with a calorie decrease in their diet, on the other hand some people found themselves gaining weight because many starchy foods were not on the ration (and thus were unlimited if you had the means), and again on the other hand people in positions that allowed them to be sedentary pre WW2 were encouraged to contribute to the war effort and that generally meant they became more active.
For example higher class women were encouraged to join help groups (voluntary services, such as providing food and tea to the needy, knitting items for soldiers and providing help to those who were homeless because of the bombings).
Lower class women would be encouraged to join groups like the women's land army (basically means they helped farmers produce more food), or encouraged to do factory work to produce weapons and plane parts, or even join one of the military women's divisions.
I think it's safe to assume that previously sedentary men were encouraged to take up extra or different work leading to more physical activity.
@@itsalwayshalloweenexceptwh5118 Of course & Im sure a lot of people who might have felt relatively isolated socially before felt better for being more involved in the local community. Shame it takes a war to bring people together.
@@itsalwayshalloweenexceptwh5118 What do you mean by Soda please? Do you mean Bicarbonate of Soda or are you talking about fizzy drinks or something?
No criticism, just a thought: what you describe as fairy bread seems a lot like cinnamon toast I grew up on. But the difference is you butter the untoasted bread, then sprinkle on sugar and cinnamon, then toast it. The sugar melts into a delicate crust and is very good.
You toast it flat on a tray in the oven, of course, not in a toaster.
This is FASCINATING to me! My parents were young marrieds during WWII (in the US -- my dad was a Marine Captain on Okinawa). I've always been obsessed with this era!
Barbara Bavier My uncle married a Japanese woman right after WW2, he’s told me they got a LOT of stinkeye from people back home in Texas.
He’s how I started my WW2/Japan obsession as he was stationed in Japan before the end of the war.
Love this! I’m a huge WWII buff and you did a great job on the ration diet. It sure was not easy on them in so many ways in those days and to feed a full family, especially the children who were probably used to sweets.
That bread looks really good, like a hearty wheat! Thanks for sharing!
I'm not so sure they were used to sweets. My mother grew up during the Depression (in the US) and they only ate what they grew most of the time. If they had lived in town it might have been a little different, but I don't think it would have been very different for most people. We were late to WW II, and war spending saved A LOT of people in the US from starvation....
ooh the stale toast with sugar had to shed a little tear brought back so many memories love your videos young lady
That's a fascinating video. Shows how times have changed, so much! My mum was housewife with 2 kids during WWII so although I was born after that, the economy and recipes were sort of part of my childhood (I'm a little over 60). It must have been much easier for those in the countryside, and considering that there was less spread out of cities too. You can get salads, fruits, have a chicken or 2, stuff like that, and barter your jam for example, for your neighbour's milk or whatever. Glad I live in the mountains, where there are wild plants you can pick up, and veg gardens etc. Well done.
National loaf is brilliant if hand kneaded. Its a denser texture so is designed to fill you up so you don't go hungry
I make alot of our breads,and I especially lov the denser kind.They do fill you up on less pieces for sure! When I buy them in store I try to find the denser breads also-I dont care for the factory commerical nothing but air bread!
My Mom has a recipe for WW2 bread. She lived thru WW2 as a young woman. I am 69, she is 99. Yikes! She can still remember rationing and we have some remains of ration books. My grandfather was a pork butcher with his own small business, so my Mom's family had a good amount of meat, not pork chops (which he sold at local markets) but his own sausage, bologna, scrapple (ingredients and flavor much like Scottish haggis), and EVERYONE had large vegetable gardens in their yards or any extra land; they plowed under the grass and planted victory gardens. Ladies in my kin would get together in late summer and bring lots of different vegetables and Mason jars and lids to one lady's kitchen. All the veggies were washed and cut up and cooked and then canned to make chow chow, a sort of pickled vegetable side dish that could be served all winter. They made pickles -- both dill and sweet -- as well. And relishes too. Everyone would go home with their jars all filled and sealed. American wives canned a lot of food. We also dried food. One good entree was dried green beans with ham and potatoes and an onion. Dried corn was another fave and I still buy John Cope's dried corn in vacuum bags and make casserole side dishes with it. Dried apples were also popular; we ate many apples during the winter and mother had all sorts of recipes for apple pies and dumplings. People also had fruit trees; in the 1950s we would collect up the fallen apples from my Grandma's five apple trees which were probably in their prime during WW2, and she would cut, core, remove brown spots and then cook, sieve and freeze applesauce. This would take sugar, but during war time homemade honey or golden syrup could have been used. After the war families got freezers and would freeze their garden produce. In the 1950s I remember shelling lima beans and peas. We had two sour cherry trees and we pitted the cherries and Mom froze them for use in winter fruit salads. I would often eat them right from the freezer box in winter -- what an icy treat full of cherry deliciousness. They also froze corn, green beans, etc. They would parboil most of the veggies, then pack them in plastic bags, and put the bags in little cardboard boxes. Into the chest freezer they'd go. She would also can pears, peaches, and make jams and jellies. We didn't have to buy canned veggies at the store until March -- our garden foods lasted all winter. Of course this was when most moms stayed home and did all this food preservation. Dad would come home from his office job, eat dinner and then work in the garden til nightfall, plowing, planting, weeding, watering when needed, and finally harvesting. We three kids helped with all this too. Thus we learned a LOT about growing food and fruit, and how to preserve it. Who needed video games? With all this activity plus school and play, we were busy and slept very well because we were bone tired by the end of the day, but in the best way possible!
where do you come up with these ideas?! you're awesome, amazing and inspirational and you're teaching me to love food and live life again after my eating disorder - i honestly wish i could find a way to thank you materially...do you have a PO box?
I love people recreating ration diets! When it was time for me to start losing weight I did a version of this for a MONTH. I didn't lose any weight that first month, but it did teach me how to be aware of my eating and keep track of my intake. It made it really easy to switch to calories counting. 45lbs down, 55 to go!
This was such a neat idea! When I was teaching third grade we did a project where we studied what George Washington (first US president) would have eaten for breakfast. One mooring the kids came to school in colonial grab and we ate George Washington's breakfast and drank tea (not a standard beverage for American kids.) It was really fun but not as cool as you week of British WWII rations. The bread and leek and barley soup looked good to me.
Sarah Mockingbird it’s sooo fun exploring history and what people used to eat, soooo fascinating!
So happy to see young people take an interest in the past! I love watching all kinds of vids on the British Home Front. Well done, Grace! Also, could you point me in the direction of the recipe you used to make the War Time loaf? Thanks x 😊
'Supersizes go wartime' is another good video for everyone who was interested in war time rationing
Watch "Wartime Farm" gives you an idea of what is was like. "1940's house" is on YT in 4 parts as well. I love history like the Victorian Farm, Edwardian Farm, Tales from the Green Valley, Tudor Monastery Farm, the 1940's house. It's interesting "reality tv." These are on RUclips. Enjoy
Yes! How could i forget those too. I love Ruth.
@@NothingToNoOneInParticular Yes! How could I forget those series.
The beetress Don't forget Peter and Alex! Can't believe it's been 20 years since they did all those series!
Commenting a little too late maybe, but fun fact (??) about toast and sugar!
I'm from Italy and my grandma was born in 1920, so she lived through WW2. When I was little she used to give me and my sister bread with sugar for pudding, but she made the bread wet with a little of water and then sprinkled the sugar on top (and i remember that we loved it!!) :) She always told us that that was she would usually have for pudding as a child, coming from a poor family, and that wasn't unusual! A variation of that, but for adults, was bread with wine (because we are from Tuscany, but I think that this might have been common in many other countryside places)
"I wasn't around during the war"
Is it bad my first thought was "BETRAYAL I FEEL BETRAYED I THOUGHT YOU WERE 99 YEARS OLD"
The bread looks actually really good!! Great video, I love the originality
People here in Northumberland had allotments where they grew alsorts of veg and kept hens and pigs to help feed the family.
I love this video by the way.
Fairy toast is great. Use a pestle and mortar to grind the sugar into a fine powder and sprinkle on the toast and put under the grill to melt the sugar. I used to do this when my daughter was little when we did a wartime ration month.
they would have gathered wild stuff to make tea with: nettle, dandelion, hawthorne, blackberry leaves etc
Is the bread more wholemeal than you are used to maybe? Or maybe it has different grains in it? Rye & oats might be more sustaining for example.
Can you link the recipes? Or put them on a sheet or blog or something? especially for the bread?
thanks!
Probably the best and most interesting video you’ve done :)
I’d love you to do another one as WW2 is also the war that i find most fascinating (in a non morbid way)
Keep up the great work!
xMardi.Louisex thanks so much for the kind words!! Ohh I’ll have a little think of some more ideas!!
Milk dissolves stomach acid so it stops you from feeling hungry for a while. I usually have a glass before I go to bed so I don't get hungry.
But I had almond milk, do you think that works the same?? SO INTERESTING
@@Grackle hmmmm, probably still has stuff in it that would fill you up.
Almond milk has an alkaline composition which can help neutralize stomach acidity. However, only skim milk and very low-fat milk has the same effect, as high-fat milk actually increases the stomach acid production and therefore worsens any symptoms you could get from being very hungry like acid reflux and heartburn. Especially before laying down you should never drink high-fat milk as acid reflux is naturally happening because of your bodys position and because of the higher amount of acid can cause serious damage if you do that too often. eg. barett-oesophagus (a medical condition causing dysplasia in the endothelium of your oesophagus)
@@LikeLemonCosplay I use skim milk it keeps me full and makes me happy
Grackle I don’t know I drink almond milk and I feel like it’s light and not feeling
Interesting video and shows how different life was then. My friend’s grandmother always stored a ton of butter flavored crisco for “emergencies.” She was a young girl during the Great Depression and they only had plain crisco to use on food.
I literally just stumbled upon your account. My names grace and my sister calls me grackle. WHAT THE HELL. 💗
Its a mystery, Grace. OooOooooOoOOO
What the account was on the ground and you nearly fell over it? Wow.
That was a great video. I also find ww2 fascinating from the view of the people at home. Rationing, food stamps, etc would have been very hard to get used to! Thank you for doing this video, it was fun to watch
Instant gravy was a thing, an excerpt from the grave website: "It wasn’t until World War II though, when imported gravy products were in short supply that Gravox became a household name."
Wasn’t the instant gravy commonly used to stain legs to imitate wearing stockings?
Also bronzer for the face.
That was very interesting, Gracie. You did very well. Thanks for posting.
You're so charming and sincere! I learned a lot from this video and so enjoyed your honest reactions. Thank you so very much!
I am thoroughly enjoying your videos! I really should get up and get something done around the house but I feel compelled to watch every RUclips video that you have posted. LOL! :)
I found this so interesting because I love world war two and the food and everything haha! Great video tho xx
Its so interesting isn't it!!1
I, too, am fascinated by WWII homefront history. You did very well. Golden syrup was available but not plentiful. I have used Marmite to make a decent "beef stock" for noodles and gravy. But you did not have to worry about bread. National loaf was not rationed. I'm not sure how well I would have done without butter, which i love or even marg, which is better than nothing. question:is Marmite expensive in Britain or just because imported to US?
That is REAL food. Not the rubbish that we eat these days.
Cheers from Idaho in the US!
How is it real food, people were starving and dying in the war so they didn't have anything, and this is actually very good compared to other countries, my native country, people would boil leather just to have something to eat
Are you serious? You didn't need to tell us whee you're from, it's painfully obvious you don't know anything about WWII rationing if you think this was "real food".
Saw dust and plaster of Paris would be used to stretch flour. Women and girls would miss out on milk, cheese and eggs. Google ricketts.
@@sashasyskova3156 I think they mean real ingredients as opposed to artificial additives.
Another great video! My dad often talked about his dried egg and dried milk.and one square of chocolate per week. My mum used to make me a soft boiled egg chopped up in a cup with a slice of bread and butter and another blob of butter for good measure. Maybe that was a thing. I also had either syrup or treacle on bread as a snack or bread butter and sugar or jam. Mum often baked scones or fairy cakes. We had stovies, which was an onion browned and a couple of sausages to feed 5 in a pot, then add chopped potatoes and water and salt and pepper boiled down to almost dry with some tasty crusty bits on the edges. 😃 mince and potatoes was a big feature too. Loved it. My son’s favourite now. We were veggie then vegan for a few years but back to eating small amounts of meat with lots of veg. Just like the good old days. I’ve just batch cooked mince and tatties, with peas, carrots and cabbage, spaghetti bog, Mexican beef medley (mince with tomato soup, sweet corn peppers and onions, garlic and chilli for pasta) and stir fried rice and veg with one chicken leg between 4 meals. All my sons choice. He was born in Australia but says he feels much more Scottish than Australian.
Ur dedication to sick new content makes me weep
Check out Tales from the green valley, wartime farm, Victorian farm, Edwardian farm, Tudor Monestery farm, the 1940’s house e1-e4, et all. All great content, almost 20 years old.
I am American. There have been times in my life where I had to be very tight in budget, and still manage to feed me and my children, and doing what you are doing is exactly the way to make sure everyone gets fed, with very little waste. You have to budget, exactly the way that you have been doing. So this sort of thing, i would think, is a good tutorial for you in case you REALLY need to close with your grocery budget. Good going there.
Mum wasn't around in the war either🤣 Great experiment
That was such an interesting video concept, absolutely loved seeing it. You always make me want to try my own 5 days challenges. :)
Loved this video. Would love to see more baking and trying recipe's from other periods of history x
Rachael B that’s a cracking idea, I’ll try thinking of which period to give a go next
Check out "The Supersizers Eats..." documentary series (on youtube) for ideas. Very entertaining
Egg in a nest!!! I still make them and was raised on them. I'm 34. It's delish! My weekend treat every weekend. I use two eggs, one per each toast. So 2 slices of toast 2 eggs in the nest and usually sausage LOL
I can't watch this because I have anorexia/in recovery from and I'm sure I already know off heart the effect of restrictive eating haha but fascinating vid idea! Well done on 12k, been here since the first few :)
Ahhh i am glad you know what won't be beneficial for you to watch. Thanks for the positive comment anyway, and my next video is a good old vlog with me and the fam, so you can def watch that one! I'll post it tomorrow if you like so you don't have to wait too long? :D
@@Grackle yay! Lots of love
Wait same lol, good luck in ur recovery btw!~
Shut up
@@riley6253 y should she?
Also, what you say about using things up is really interesting. I do that without noticing (allowing for the odd fail when I'm busy).
But I was brought up, and taught to cook by my Nana, who as I said in the other comment, was a cook in the 30s and 40s till she was called up for munitions work. So it was instilled in me from being tiny - if you're making a recipe, but something in the fridge is about to go off, chuck it in to avoid wasting it.
I still feel guilty if we have a chicken and I don't boil the carcass for stock, like Nana did.
I had no idea that it was eaten at that time but I've had bread and sugar on top before and we used to add a little bit of water just sprinkled with your fingers over the sugar. My mom used to give me and my brother that when we were kids like 20 years ago 😀😀
We used to have sugar sandwiches when there wasnt anything else to go in our sandwiches for school lunch. There was usually a little marge to stick the sugar on with though.
@@sarahstrong7174 wow I've never had that. I love jam on a piece of soft bread(not toasted) to this day.
In the U.S. we eat cinnamon toast, sugar and cinnamon stuck to toast with a bit of margarine. My kids love it.
We do cinnamon toast. My children love it. They want with no butter. But I have to have the butter. Product of the 80s put butt tons of sugar on everything I am.
The sugar on toast is probably the origin on Australian fairy bread - now with colourful sprinkles on fresh, buttered (usually white) bread
I really like this video. I appreciate your dedication to making it as accurate as possible. My only criticism is that the information slides are really hard to consume fully in the time you give. I had to rewind several times in order to pause at the right time. If you could give it a few more seconds, pausing to read would be easier. I'd like to see more of these.
Thanks for all the work.
Ohhh ok, I may get someone to check and read over it before it goes up next time!
@@Grackle Perfect! Thanks so much. I really love your videos. :)
as a German, i was very confused and I thought "this is def not what my grandma had" - so let me tell you, your menu would have been 5* compared to what they got here in germany, because everything was closed and shut down, and especially in Berlin, they were dependent on the Luftbrücke
anyway. interesting experiment. cheers
Loved your fun, funny, and smart video. Highest compliments for the brilliant insights in the wrap up
My grandmother basically lived on war rations diet her whole life. She lived to 96with no ill health. Just got dementia in the end. No vegan, raw keto, nuffin.
i'm a lil late but "just got dementia" lmao that can be cured on a vegan diet tho
I'm American and my grandma ate similar. She saved everything too.
LILITH I sincerely hope you’re being sarcastic
@Adrian Heath I don't think they understand that lower risk for dementia doesn't mean cures dementia. I'm so sorry for your loss
your creativity and originality never fails to impress me
thanks for the support, always there oxoxoxoxo
Love watching your food challenges!! Such a good video idea! 👌
Thanks so much!!!
Honey, they had feeding stations in UK during the war. It was the start of common restaurants. So your eating out would have been normal. Most people ate out at least once a week, sometimes more. It was off ration, but. Could have been anything because food was in short supply. You have done a great job trying this out. I enjoyed the 1950s diet one too. I think the great generation was so healthy because they physically worked so hard. I am American, but I love the UK. I would love to visit some day.
Wow this was really interesting, and I didn’t skip any of it witch I normally do ! X well done
Danielle Jones this comment is touching considering I am an avid video skipper, means a lot you watched the whole thing!!!
Hello, thank you for this. We're learning about food rationing in WW2 in homeschool and this gave us a much better idea of things were during that time. So interesting!
your mum is hilarious, very judgemental lollll great vid btw really interesting x
please don’t touch me hahahahaha, just wanted to make sure you had the right info bless her
Great video! I nearly clicked on another of your videos but WWII diet sounded really interesting! We take so much for granted these days!