I thought the powdered egg might get a response! In an age of excess, with our worries about obesity, it's hard to imagine the British diet on our little fortress then. Here's a British adults ration PER WEEK in WW2. You had to present your Ration Book, with its rip out-tokens to get: 4oz bacon or ham, US 10 cents worth of scraggy meat, sausages not rationed but usually none, (reputed full of sawdust anyhow). Butter 2oz, Cheese 2oz, but an occasional convoy got lucky and 4oz might be had. Margarine 2oz. Cooking fat 4oz, (2oz in a bad week). Milk 2 or 3 pints. 1/4 packet dried milk. Sugar 8oz. 2oz of jam. Tea 2oz. Coffee, not then popular but usually adulterated with chicory, unsure of quantity. Bread and flour varied from lots to none. Fish not rationed, nor was liver, Pig's guts made into chitterlings (a sort of pressed 'ham'), Kidneys, Brawn (Pig's head pate), or 'faggots' made with lungs- not bad, surprisingly and still popular today! Eggs, 1 per week, sometimes 1 per fortnight (2 weeks). This is where the GIs came in! Sweets (candy)- I used to dream of candy!, 2oz, in theory. You could save up 'points' and luxuriate in a can of sardines or spam made out of whale meat, or be more conservative and get 8lb of dry split-peas. Youngsters got concentrated milk, had cod-liver oil shoved down their necks and concentrated (it was brown!) orange juice. We also 'Dug for Victory', growing potatoes, carrots etc. in the garden. We ate wild rabbits too. That powdered egg was so good, Ma hid the box! Clothes and most other stuff were also rationed, and I was a teenager in the mid 19-fifties before we returned to a semblance of a demand economy. Can you imagine the ABSOLUTE JOY of getting a whole Mars bar to stuff in your face, with no ugly sister wanting half? On your old bike, replete with chocolate, folded cigarette-packet clacking in the spokes as an 'engine' and singing Little Richard's
"Awampomaloomahabombamboom!" Sheer Bliss!
Alan
