JUMP TO RECIPE

Do you ever have days when you go from one small task to another and feel like you are caught in a life-size puzzle? Sometimes I begin what appears to be a reasonable chore, like emptying the dishwasher or paying a bill, and find one small-but-necessary detail after another that has to be addressed before I can finish what I started out doing. Like having to stop and get a chair to put a dish on the top shelf before I can put another dish in place. Or having to search for a password. Or having to go and find my phone to get a security code. Just one tiny thing after another, until the handful of tasks on my to-do list ends up taking all afternoon. It feels like there are 500 things to do.

Everyday Homemaking in World War II

I wonder how often civilians during World War II felt this way. They typically had smaller kitchens, fewer and less-advanced appliances, and double duty managing housework along with war work. No immersion blenders. No stand mixers. No clothes dryers. No food processors. No dishwashers. Washing machines that required manually running every article of clothing through the wringer. I’ll bet sometimes they felt like they had been through the wringer!

Wartime homemakers had to balance all these things while also managing ration books and food shortages. Each week, various shopkeepers had to be visited for the rationed amounts of sugar, coffee, processed foods, meat, fats and cheese. Expiration dates on ration coupons had to be carefully watched. Menus had to be planned, usually including recipes or ingredients never tried before, or with substituted ingredients. Rationed amounts changed as supplies were available (or not). Point values changed. Brands and weights changed. Circumstances changed, sometimes dramatically.

Rationing in the USA

Americans were not under the same strain as homemakers in some European nations, whose import supply channels were being targeted by enemies. Nevertheless, US civilians still had to put up with rationing to ensure enough food supply for the armed forces and lend lease, and to keep everyone at home healthy. The strain of living in war was real.

This is why people—and governments—shared recipes, especially ones using new ingredients or substitutions. They were in magazines, newspapers, on the radio and in wartime cookbooks.

This week’s blog post features a 1943 cookbook from Hollywood, Coupon Cookery by Prudence Penny. If the title hadn’t garnered a homemaker’s attention in 1943, perhaps the author’s pseudonym would have. Getting help with ration coupons and saving money would have been helpful in the same way 30-minute, slow cooker or Instant Pot meals are to us today.

A Victory Menu

Not only does this cookbook include several pages of charts showing every rationed item from applesauce to sour cherries, from asparagus to tuna, it also includes “Home-Tried Victory Menus” for one, two or four. I decided to try one of the daily menus for two people. You can see the day’s menu above. For lunch, I stuffed the celery with cream cheese. For dinner, we had hot tea.

Preparing Three Meals for the Day

The meals were simple and fairly easy to prepare. For breakfast, there was only to scramble eggs and toast bread. For lunch, I made a simple Asian chicken salad using one large tin of chicken mixed with mayonnaise, a bit of toasted sesame oil and coconut aminos (you could use soy sauce). If you have any leftover cooked rice in the refrigerator or freezer, rice pudding is a tasty way to use it up. A recipe is included here if you want to try it. During the War, lemons were difficult to come by in many places but if one were available, the zest of one would have taken this pudding to another level.

The dinner menu had to be considered early in the day. Refrigerator cakes are extremely easy to make but they rely completely on time. The graham crackers or vanilla wafers that give this dessert its cake-like texture must have several hours to soften in the filling. But other than the few minutes it took to whip cream, mix instant pudding and drain mandarin oranges, dinner took no time except for brewing a pot of tea.

Prudence Penny did not include a recipe for Orange Refrigerator Cake in her book so I improvised one—and included a recipe here in case you want to try it. Making vanilla pudding from scratch would have taken more time so I opted for instant pudding. This convenience food debuted in the mid-1930s so would have been a handy ingredient for wartime homemakers. If you prefer to make your own, I have a recipe for vanilla custard in an earlier blog post that would work perfectly in this refrigerator cake.

Beans and Breads

I also used store-bought beans and breads. Americans would have had access to the breads or to the ingredients for making their own. Homemakers in England and some other countries would not have been so blessed as to find a variety of bread or even white wheat flour. In England, only the grey and mushy National Loaf was legal.

All in all, these meals were filling and good. They included more grains than a lot of us might choose today—especially breakfast, with both shredded wheat and toast—but remember that nearly everyone during the War worked long hours at jobs and at home, walked more, and was generally more active than most people today.

If you have 500 hundred things to do, maybe these meals would help you along. They are quick to prepare and don’t even use an oven. The only part that might give pause is doing the dishes! 😊

SPECIAL NOTES

This week includes some important dates related to World War II.

Tuesday 25 April, was a special day for the ANZACs—the Australia New Zealand Army Corps—and these two Allied nations that remember their citizens who gave their lives to defend their countries. Although ANZAC Day was established as a memorial day near the end of the First World War, it would have been remembered during World War II, as it is now. I hope it was a blessed day.

I decided to try the famous ANZAC biscuits (see photo at the top of this post) and used an authentic recipe from my treasured Edmonds Cookery Book. These little cookies were designed to withstand travel to loved one serving in the armed forces, without spoiling. Made with coconut, rolled oats and golden syrup, I must say, these were delicious!

Seventy-five years ago yesterday, following the end of World War II, Israel became a nation to help ensure Jewish people would have a refuge in future, and not be helpless anymore. Happy Independence Day!

REFERENCES

Penny, Prudence. Coupon Cookery. Hollywood, CA: Murray & Gee, Inc. 1943.

Edmonds Cookery Book. Auckland, NZ: Goodman Fielder New Zealand Limited. 2011.

“Then the LORD will go out and fight against those nations as when he fights on a day of battle.”

Zechariah 14:3