It seems I’m doing a lot of ‘Eating At The Savoy’ this week, so dinner is taken care of tonight. That leaves lunch. With cheese being so heavily rationed for my lunchtime sandwich, I’ve turned to Marguerite Patten’s book We’ll Eat Again for some different ideas. What do you think of her suggestions?

1) Shredded cheese and chutney or cooked beetroot.
2) Cooked mashed potato, yeast extract and chopped parsley.
3) Chopped grilled bacon and lettuce.
4) Mashed sardines, pilchards, herring or haddock, mixed with shredded fresh carrot.
5) Minced crisply cooked bacon rinds and toasted oatmeal.
6) Fish paste and chopped parsley.
7) Brawn, shredded swede and chutney.
8) Vegetable or meat extract and mustard and cress.
9) Chopped cold meat and mashed cooked vegetables with seasoning.
10) American sausage meats and watercress.

I’m going to hedge my bets and have a cold sausage sandwich with my soup today.

October 15th, 1944 was a Sunday, so I can’t find any links to any newspapers for that day. Instead, I checked out this great site which has a lot of information on Rationing in Canada during World War Two. Here are some of the main points from the article.

Food was seen as a ‘weapon of war’ so, as in Britain, the Canadian government took control of:

1) Rationing.
2) Promotion of ‘Patriotic Food’.
3) The launch of an unprecedented national nutritional campaign.
4) Controls on the price, production and distribution of everyday foods.

Coupon rationing of sugar in Canada began in April 1942, followed by tea and coffee in August, butter in December, and meat in March 1943. Meat was limited to 2lbs per person per week. (Compare that to the half-pound of meat per person per week in the UK!)

Restaurants offered meatless Tuesday and Friday menus.

Petrol/gasoline was rationed in April 1942.

Alcohol was also rationed – but I couldn’t find a start date or amount for that.

Two hundred cookbooks were published during the war years, and Canadians ate more, and better, than they had for over a decade. (The Great Depression.) Members of the RCAF received approximately 3,900 calories per day.

What were the ‘Patriotic Foods’? Apples and lobster. Lobster! Canadians were encouraged to eat Lobster cocktail, Lobster a la King and Lobster sandwiches.

After the Fall of France in May 1940, Canadian food exports became an essential lifeline to Britain. By the end of the war, Canadian exports accounted for 57% wheat and flour consumption in the UK, 39% of their bacon, 15% eggs, 24% cheese and 11% of their evaporated milk.

Canadian housewives were encouraged to save fat and were reminded that one pound of fat supplied enough glycerine to fire 150 bullets from a Bren Gun. Two pounds supplied a burst of 20 cannon shells from a Spitfire or 10 anti-aircraft shells.

Another great movie set on the Homefront in Canada (Alberta) during World War Two is Bye Bye Blues. Based on the true life experiences of the director’s mother during the war (she found work as a pianist/singer with a dance band to pay the bills when her husband was taken as a POW by the Japanese) it’s extremely hard to find, but well worth it!