ANZAC DAY..... Recipes from the Post War/ Derpression Era

[Tisme]

I was watching Better Homes & Gardens tonight.
Fast Ed had to make a recipe, only able to use the ingredients from the War/Depression Era?
The Great Depression (1929–32) was a time of extreme hardship for people in Australia. For many people this period began before the market crash in prices and lasted until the Second World War (1939-1945).
Do you have any recipes from great granparents or grand parents, even parents? So what is your family recipe, using barely anything we are so very used to using?
Maybe you can you come up with a recipe?
I remember my Nan making Mock Chicken (Exact same recipe JustJan has posted in her cookbook)
I remember Nan telling me that, Golden Syrup relplaced eggs and sugar during war time.

An interesting site is ~ http://www.leadedgejournal.com.au/Le59_online/Le59_r_w/Le59_janet.pdf

This is an exert from http://www.walkerbooks.com.au/statics/dyn/1266361153226/Carrot-Fudge.pdf

During World War II, Australia, Britain and the United States all introduced food rationing.
But Britain, which suffered a naval blockade relied on millions of tons of food being shipped in each year, was particularly badly affected. Meat, eggs, sugar, butter, cooking fat and virtually all the ingredients that make food delicious were rationed or just not available. Bananas vanished. So too, for a while, did onions. Oranges were very rare.

Carrot Fudge ~ *Note that this recipe has no sugar and no fat. Don’t try it. However clever you are, it won’t be nice.

4 tablespoons of finely grated carrot
1 gelatine leaf
Orange squash or orange essence
1. Put the carrots in a pan and cook them gently, in just
enough water to keep them covered, for ten minutes.
2. Add a little orange squash, or orange essence,
for flavour.
3. Melt a leaf of gelatine and add to the mixture.
Cook for a few minutes, stirring all the time.
4. Spoon the mixture into a flat dish and leave it to set
in a cold place for several hours. When the fudge feels
firm, cut it into chunks and get eating.
But carrots, swedes, parsnips and potatoes were always plentiful. The Ministry of Food put a lot of effort
into encouraging people to eat root vegetables – they invented the cartoon characters: patriotic “Potato
Pete” and health-giving “Doctor Carrot”. Cookery writers published countless ingenious recipes.
Housewives were told they could replace cheese with sour milk, and cream with whipped margarine and
vanilla essence. Other spooky ingredients came to the fore: dried egg – which is never nice – and liquid
paraffin, which isn’t really a food at all. Spam, a pink processed meat, came into its own.
And so did Doctor Carrot. Wartime carrot recipes abound: carrot pie,
carrot croquettes, carrot savoury, curried carrots, carrots with peanut
butter, carrot sandwich spread (Yeuch!). So too do sweet recipes: carrot
buns, carrot cookies, mock apricot tart (made from carrots…), and
toffee carrots (that’s a carrot on a stick). The idea was that carrots,
because they are naturally sweet, could take the place of sugar. But you
can push things too far. Carrot marmalade was apparently vile. Turn
over for a recipe for carrot fudge.


Maybe we could make an ANZAC cookbook?

[Jen T]

Sounds a great idea. I will have a sort through my "oldies" and see what I have.

[Tisme]

Jen T wrote:
Sounds a great idea. I will have a sort through my "oldies" and see what I have.

Good one Jen, It will be interesting to see what you have.
I was just looking through one of my Nan's cookbooks.
"The Willow Housewife's Hnadbook on Cookery".
Era around the 1930's.
I rather like the look of the Curried Tripe Recipe!!!!

[**Jubes**]

My father was born in 1929 and he had an older brother and sister (later three more brothers and another sister). My grandfather was a bricklayer.....money was tight. My Dad says his mum could make a meal from next to nothing. Neighbours and families shared what they grew in their gardens and eggs if they had chickens.

Dad was telling me that men would walk to try to find work. If they saw a front fence with a red cross painted on it....that would mean that the family there would share their dinner

My father says he didn't enter his trade until late....he packed tobacco rations in Newcastle as a young teen. Rations were weighed and packed in brown paper to be taken all over NSW. As a child he remembered going to the store and getting broken biscuits.....you were allowed more that way

Really makes you think how hard times would have been back then

[**Jubes**]

Curried tripe ..... ewww!

I also remembered my nanna would use her tea leaves twice. I guess that was something learnt early in her life

There's some great stories written by 'oldies' here
Memories of the Great Depression.
Ons story is written by a lady who said her father bought a farm property in Wallsend (a neighbouring suburb to where I live now). I recognise all of the areas she speaks of in her story

[Tisme]

What wonderful stories Jubes.