Cooking heroes…

Yesterday, Marty and I were delivering in Saratoga & Albany, NY. We stopped at Restaurant Depot to pick up a few things for us and a few cleaning items for the production kitchen.

As we walked around, we noticed many things out of stock again. Things were out of stock during the pandemic, but then things got better. Things have slid backward. On the drive home, I started to think about other food shortages in history and how people dealt with them.

During WW2 the people who were affected most by food rations and shortages were the women of the households who did the shopping and cooking for their families. Forgotten heroes of wartime were the women who had to make do.

They were encouraged to keep a positive attitude. Publications wrote suggestions for using war rations. Their patriotic duty was to fight the war at home by changing their families’ diets and being careful not to overbuy or have any food waste.

“We must all help win the war and one way is to save sugar for the solider boys.”

I say it was their patriotic duty because the rationed food was being saved for the soldiers fighting in WW2; their job was to figure out how to cook and bake without many staple items they were used to.

The first item rationed was sugar, then coffee. Next came meat, butter, cheeses, and fats. As women started figuring out how to cook differently, they shared their recipes by sending the recipes to the newspapers to print.

Women were united by the recipes and food they shared. Clever substitutions and ideas sparked more ideas and recipes. Women were still cooking delicious, healthy food, even with food rations.

One of the most popular recipes was for victory or war cakes. Food manufacturers began to print recipes for war cakes using their products. One example is The Crisco Victory White Cake recipe called on women to bake for their families. The recipe started with, “Lady, your family will say you’re a magician when you serve this new mouth-watering sugar-saving Victory Cake!”

Some substitutions for sugar were the liquid from soaked raisins and other dried fruits, corn syrup, and honey. Nestle encouraged women in an ad in the Saturday evening post to stop buying chocolate, announcing, “Chocolate is fighting food!”

Shortening and margarine were used to replace the hard to come by butter. Spice cakes replaced chocolate cakes and so on and so forth.

Vegetarian diets began during WW2 out of necessity. Women were encouraged to serve dinners such as Meatless Mondays and Wheatless Wednesdays. Home cooks learned how to use macaroni, rice, crackers, processed cheese, and spam as part of their daily cooking.

They used every part of the vegetable and meat. They saved the fat from meats since cooking oil was rationed.

Casseroles used small amounts of meat but were delicious and satisfying. Soups and stews used every scrap of vegetable, throwing nothing away. Now, do you know why your grandmothers washed their tin foil?

One of my favorite savory pie creations used the entire potato. The potato skins were boiled until they were soft and became the bottom crust of the pie. This is fucking genius! Kudos to whoever came up with that one.

I remember both of my grandmothers talking about making mock apple pie. The “apples” were soaked Ritz crackers. Welch Rarebit was another classic, and American Chop Suey became popular using only a small amount of meat, elbow macaroni, and tomato sauce.

Can you even imagine if people today had to cook, let alone be creative, using only what they could find? Could Americans do without prepared and frozen foods if necessary? Could people cook only what they could afford due to the high food prices? Could they go without many staple items? Would cooks come together and help one another?

I cook dinner almost every night and have always been creative and frugal, but the shortages I saw yesterday were disturbing. While we were driving, Marty talked about how bad things were getting, and I tried to be positive and said, “But they will get better.” He told me, “Good for you to think like that; I like that.”

Like during the war, I thought of how scary it must have been to know that there won’t be items available. The rations changed often keeping everyone on their toes.

The women who helped “win the war” are amazing heroes to me, stepping up to the plate and doing simply what they needed to do. There were no other options, but they did it, and did it well! Many recipes are still used today, especially in vegetarian cooking.

I have a few 1940s and wartime ration cookbooks that are prized possessions of mine. Some I found at garage or book sales. I have my grandmother Nana’s handwritten cookbook, which has the recipe for Poor Man Cake.

I also was gifted my biological grandmother’s Victory Cookbook, the Wartime Edition. Having something that belonged to my grandmother, whom I never knew, is a strong connection to her. Looking at the pages of recipes that looked like favorites makes me smile.

When I go to bed at night, I give away all my worries to God. I know I don’t have to list them because He knows everything, but listing them helps me watch them float away. Last night, I added ample food supply for our country to my list. Amen.