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Just found the damnedest thing

There's a theory that Pasta alla carbonara was invented because powdered eggs and smoked bacon was supplied by the american troops in Italy back in those days...
 
Oh, yeah - lots of things were rationed although, as Michael Chris notes, not as severely as in Europe: gasoline, of course, but also meat and various meat byproducts, sugar, fats, various metals, rubber...lots of things, really. I have this really cool cookbook that was produced just a couple of years ago called Grandma's Wartime Kitchen, by Joanne Lamb Hayes, which includes lots of rationing-friendly recipes, particularly those using produce from Victory Gardens. It's a fascinating read, although I must say I haven't tried many of the recipes. I tasted the "mock sausage patties" - not bad, but they didn't taste a thing like sausage.

And yes, you could get a deferment from the service to stay and farm.

That's another book for my wish-list then! :)

There was a series on British TV (probably years ago now!) about cooking and gardening during war-time, it was fascinating.
 
There was a series on British TV (probably years ago now!) about cooking and gardening during war-time, it was fascinating.

Yes, it was. I saw that, too. I can't remember what it was called, but it was part of a series. They did another one called the Victorian Kitchen, so maybe it was called the War Time Kitchen. I remember being amazed at the ingenuity of the things they made back then, and the limited quanities of food they had to make do with. They say Britian has "an obesity crisis". If they put us all back on wartime rations, they'd have it solved in 18 months, max! :lol:

To the OP, maybe you should consider donating the ration book to a local museum or something. That kind of social history is important.
 
My Mother still has one of her rationing books from WWII.

I didn't know you went through rationing in the States, I thought it was just in Europe.
My Mother says that all the toys were made of wood when she was a kid, because all the metal had to be used for the war effort.
 
I have some crumbling WW2-era atlases (ca. 1943) that the Germans introduced in Belgian schools. Quite interesting, especially the section where they describe the inhabitants of a country!

I haven't looked at them in a while, maybe I should risk destroying them to look at the contents again. :)
 
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