But March is Women’s History Month and the theme this year is “Our History Is Our Strength.” This got me thinking about all those home front women who not only had to take care of their families even while they were working in jobs outside the home, but who also had to deal with the challenges that rationing must have presented to them. Now, they had to feed and clothe their families on limited supplies of so many things. These women are really unsung heroes, who never received a medal for what they did and very often lost the job they had come to enjoy when the war was over. But the lives of women on the home front, the women who kept the proverbial home fires burning while juggling so many new and different tasks, are indeed the embodiment not just of the theme of “Our History Is Our Strength” but also “Our Strength Is Our History.”
Kudos to those strong women.
Of course, to help out the home front woman, new cookbooks books were printed and newspapers everywhere began to include recipes and menu suggestions designed to accommodate rationing, like this from the September 25, 1943 edition of The New York Times:
And since the Sunday dinner a New England Boiled Dinner, and as a nod to St Patrick’s Day on Thursday, I am including the very poignantly amusing bit from the October 18, 1942 Times:
Weekend Cooking is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share: Book (novel, nonfiction) reviews, cookbook reviews, movie reviews, recipes, random thoughts, gadgets, fabulous quotations, photographs. If your post is even vaguely foodie, feel free to grab the button and link up anytime over the weekend. As always Weekend Cooking is hosted by Beth Fish Reads
What a great post!! Love all the info. I'd fly 3000 miles for my moms chicken and dumplings!
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Awww what a nice compliment for Mrs. Vierra! So true that many novels fail to portray the daily fight with rationing and trying to feed your family.
ReplyDeleteGreat post! I have a cookbook around here somewhere that is exclusively recipes from the rationing days of WWII -- your post reminded me of it, and I am now going to dig it out. Thanks!
ReplyDeleteI didn't realize that recipes in newspapers were such a direct result of rationing during WWII ... very interesting!
ReplyDeleteWhat a great story. interesting about the recipes in the newspaper.
ReplyDeleteAgain, a wonderful story about war times. I wonder what my grandparents used to make (during the really meager years of a) the Chinese civil war and b) the Japanese occupation of Taiwan. Nowadays it's difficult to imagine not to have access to every ingredient you want.
ReplyDeleteMy grandmother used to talk about having to learn to cook rice during the war -- as an Irish woman from Hell's Kitchen, she was a potato woman, and didn't even eat rice until it started to come with her rations. What a great post!
ReplyDeleteI am glad everyone enjoyed this post. I am finding it so interesting since cooking and food is a relatively new aspect of the social history of World War II for me.
ReplyDeleteI too have often wondered what people ate in China, if I find out, I will certainly pass it along.
What a fun story about the soldier and his mother's corned beef and cabbage! I asked my aunt about rationing once and she said that was a time that she was very grateful to live on a farm! They increased the variety in their diet by growing more.
ReplyDeleteGreat post. I am so used to popping out the store and finding ingredients from around the world. It would be achallenge to cook with a more limited selection. Thanks for sharing this.
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