Posted on 11/19/2019 2:39:50 PM PST by NRx
How Americans coped with the shortages of the war years.
Huh? What does this have to do with this thread?
Everything.
Also inside was his original BSA membership card from 1921 and his passport with visas from all over Asia stamped in it, also a Army Air Corps shoulder patch. I think he worked on B-29's on Saipan or Tinian.
Many families had a head start by learning how to deal with nothing in the depression days of 1930-1941.
I was a little boy during the war, and very conscious of the rationing. I had to eat crummy canned food. Hardly any milk. No butter. And I especially missed bubble gum, which FDR forbade to civilians.
The hunter in that article is Not Guilty.
She brings home the bacon and fries it up in a pan.
Not Guilty, and Bacon. I think I’ve died and gone to heaven.
My family bought a cow for milk and plowed about a acre of land for a vegetable garden (lots of hard work for a kid under ten). My brother and I shot squirrels and rabbits to put meat on the table. I remember buying stamps from the post office and putting them in a booklet to accumulate enough to purchase a war bond. I don’t think I every got enough to get the bond.
I remember the ration books and the red “tokens” that had to be presented for purchase of certain foodstuffs. Sugar was unavailable, among many things, so the substitute sweetener was corn syrup, Karo Syrup, or molasses. My little sister was about two at the time, so when my father went to the store to get groceries, he would carry her along, and while Karo Syrup was sort of rationed, he would ask the storekeeper if he could get “some extra”, and the deal was made, with the trading of other goods. Butter was also rationed, but as my father was a dairy farmer, part of his payment from the creamery was in a certain number of pounds of butter in a month, which were then also used in an underground barter system, partly for doctor visits and the like. Likewise for home-butchered beef and pork. Cut up and kept in a locker plant, that helped farm folks to live a life with a little more nutritional balance than the majority of urban or non-farm folks.
Also, as a farmer, my father had authorization for virtually unlimited gasoline to run the farm tractors, and while it was plentiful and cheap, the rating was only about 63 octane, which a Model A Ford could run on just as well, but most newer automobiles at the time kind of sputtered and knocked a lot. The reason for the gas rationing was not for the petroleum, but for rubber to make the tires with. Almost all our supply came from the East Indies, and denied to America, as there were only a few plantations in Brazil and around the Caribbean, and all that was going for military use. When tires wore out, they were stuffed with hay or even poured full of concrete, or the vehicles were sometimes running on the rims. There was a national speed limit of 35 miles per hour, but almost nobody was on the road except for military traffic.
When I was bitty, during WW II, and beginning to eat regular people food, my mother bought me Campbell’s beef & barley and beef and veggies soups, because there was REAL meat in both soups, but you didn’t need a ration coupon to buy them. It was
a good way to stretch rations, as yes, even tiny toddlers were
given ration books.
She’ll never let you forget you’re a man. Never.
Nonsense!
There is a neat woman on YT that has a channel and does “Depression Era Cooking”.
I inherited my mother’s 1942 good housekeeping cookbook. It has recipes for eggless cakes and such, to make rations go further. It’s in very fragile condition now.
My mother was born and raised in Manchester, England. She came over, alone, on the Queen Mary at 22 years of age after my father sent for her. They had spent a weekend together in Manchester 2 years earlier when my dad was stationed in Europe and wrote to each other every week in the interim. They were married 2 months later and remained together until his death 44 years later.
She was so happy to get out of England because they were on rations until 1953, 8 years after the war had ended! According to my mother, King George was determined to pay off their war debt, so rationing continued until the debt was paid in full. I wish our current politicians had that same mindset.
So as bad as we had it, it was even worse in Europe.
https://www.cooksinfo.com/british-wartime-food/
Both my parents had vegetable gardens. My mother lived in Germany at the time. Her food was taken by the Nazis, probably because her entire family refused to join the Party. Can you imagine Snowflakes today being asked to make such sacrifices?
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