In celebrating Canadian Thanksgiving a week late, I always knew this would be a hard weekend food/ration wise. And yes, I slipped – badly – even though Canadians already received way more in rations than the Brits. But, in getting back on track today, it got me thinking a lot about food.

On the left hand side of the picture you can see my (British) wartime ration of 8 ozs of turkey meat to carry me through the week. On the right, in the brown bowl, the turkey leftovers my dog will be eating over the next few days in 2014.  It makes me remember my parents’ (who lived through the war) frustration when I wouldn’t finish my meals as a child – Don’t you know there are people starving in other parts of the world? – and guilt at what I’m ‘wasting’ on an animal, even though she’s much beloved.

Hmmmm. I really don’t think that we, in the west, who have the wherewithal, sometimes remember just how fortunate we are.

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Given that we had turkey left over from our Thanksgiving meal, I’ve decided to use that as the basis for my meat ration this week even though I’m not sure how common turkey meat would have been in Britain during the war.

My experiment for tonight was full of good ideas, but didn’t quite make it in the execution: baked potato with a turkey, cauliflower, raisin curried white sauce, with fried apples on the side.

It tasted ‘okay’, but I think that either a ‘regular’ curry sauce or one made with mayonnaise and curry powder might have tasted better.

Canadian Thanksgiving in 1944 was celebrated on Monday, October 9th, 1944. The Calgary Herald was not issued that day, but here is the editorial from two days earlier.

Happy (belated!) Canadian Thanksgiving to you all.