Table For Two

Everyone, hear this! There’s news from The Hot Chocolate Bar in Diagon Alley! (That’s us: Jeremy and Lauren) We have given a special tribute to one of our favorite professors at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry with her own specialty menu; Professor Cybil Trelawny, a strange woman to some, but a valued member of staff. She always hung around her attic-classroom gazing into her telescope or her crystal ball with a cup of tea ready for you to read. We give you our Special-Tea-Lawny Menu! Hurrah!! We’ve perfected our double boiling method now with an infusion of tea leaves. This procedure took the most of our time, so we only have 3 student cups for the tasting, but they are a formidable preview with more to come. No further adieu! These folks are craving chocolate! Fire up the stove! *Lacarnum Inflamare!* <poof!>

 

Neville may have been clumsy at first, but if he could stand up to his friends, persevere through countless setbacks and find the strength to fight in the battle of Hogwarts all while his parents were residing in St Mungo’s, (especially with a surname like LONGBOTTOM) it truly proves him to be a hero in his own rite. He had a green thumb for herbology, so we’ll start with a green tea milk base. A local witch from Saratoga Springs NY makes chocolate bars with green tea and they’re scrumptious. It does wonders for the brain with its L-theanine, antioxidants, and boosts the metabolic rate. We asked Madam Pomfrey about it and she showed us this list. 3-5 cups a day works wonders, but do keep your iron levels in check, and politely decline if your pregnant, or taking blood pressure medicine. Let’s see,  a white chocolate for his sweet  and innocent disposition, a swirl of honey for his pure heart of gold and a soft marshmallow coating as a nod to his sticky situations. We say Neville’s Nightingale is perfect for a spring gala. Serve it with a smile soft as a baby’s blanket.

Now for something invigorating, Finnegan’s Fire will do the trick. As his name suggests, Seamus is an Irish lad with a magical mum and a muggle dad. He usually shouts first and thinks about it later. Once he comes back to his senses, he’ll go back to being a pal and give you a reason to smile. Just don’t insinuate about him or his family. Seamus has a fiery temper. Remember that rum incident from 1st year? He always did have “a particular prolificacy for pyrotechnics”.

Milk chocolate gets a bit tricky when it’s old. Once you start melting it, there’s a grainy fudginess from the dried out lack of fat from sitting so long. Just add some butter while it’s still melting and whisk in gracefully. We’re using Irish whisky tea mixed with paprika and cayenne pepper to give it that taste like a phoenix on a burning day. These muggle popping candies sure come in handy. What’s a Seamus Finnegan trick without explosions? Just be mindful of how long the cup stands. Be Careful! That pepper will burn hotter and spicier the longer it sits! Serve it no longer than 2 minutes after it’s done!

Lastly, let’s end on a more gentle note, something with grace and poise but still dripping with emotion just like our last hot chocolate for today, Cho Chang. She was rather quiet, so nothing too out-spoken. Let’s double up on the chocolate for the extra endorphins. Brew it slowly! She needs time to heal. After all, she saw Cedric being brought out of the maze, dead. Not to mention, she had to grieve while guiltily dating Harry and all of those guilty twinges about kissing the wizard who couldn’t save him. It’s a wonder she could fly in a straight line in her 6th year with so much unbalanced. What hers needs is a chocolate tea, stewed into a dark chocolate, spike it with vanilla.  Not too much!! That doesn’t come cheap!! (10 gallions per bottle at the cheapest!) Very good, but the one thing no sour-face can resist is a covering of whipped cream. As a nod to her Asian heritage, I’ve designed the chocolate and regular whipped cream in the form of a yin-yang sign symbolizing harmony in opposing forces such as her wise Ravenclaw head and her passionate heart. Last comes a blue sprinkled line in between for house pride and to prevent the cream from smearing. 

Bear in mind we are still experimenting with different flavor combinations and we would appreciate any comments about anything we’ve done so far. If all goes well (as we hope) then we can expand into more diverse options. We hope you enjoy our latest brews if you have any suggestions or ideas, send us your owl to the comments section.

We haven’t had wantons in a long time since the pandemic started. I really miss having cute bite-sized dumplings whenever we go out for Chinese or Japanese cuisine. I wonder how easy it would be to make them ourselves…at least, until we can find another place. I remember back when I was an undergrad making jiaozi during a Chinese new year competition with some of the other party guests.

You take your wrapper, put a teaspoon of filling inside, dab water on the edges, fold it up and pinch it closed. “Crazy Rich Asians” used a story to remember, Put the baby into bed, cover him with a blanket, tuck him in and kiss him goodnight.

It was a lot of fun racing against the clock trying to stuff as many as I could in only a minute. I won; not bad for a North American. If jiaozi were that easy, how hard could wantons be?

Keep in mind, Jiaozi are not the same as wantons though; jiaozi have a long saucer shape and are served with dipping sauce. Wantons are ball shaped, served in broth.

We started off with  raw ground chicken mixed with your typical Ginger, garlic and green onion. Since this is a soup dish, over-seasoning the meat in a salt bath is off-limits, but you don’t want to neglect the filling either. Like I say in the kitchen, “Bland is Boring“. We threw in a few mushrooms too because, why not? Mushrooms are everywhere in Japanese cooking. That’s the fun part of cooking. You can innovate whatever kind of dumplings you want.

We tucked them in to bed using store-bought wrappers. Having practiced with a few test dumplings we found that if we used too much water to seal them in, they tended to get waterlogged despite them being boiled. We boiled them only for 2-3 minutes before throwing them into a hot skillet to finish off cooking the filling. This brought in some sweet caramelization, enhancing the flavor and texture. It’s that nice little crust like my dad’s side does with their meatballs. By the way, this recipe makes ~30 wantons, so please, make sure you have room to place them down or make an assembly line with your friends and family. This sounds like a great way to get teens and those in-between to sit down and have a working conversation and quality time.

While all this was cooking, we made the broth like good multi-tasking professional chefs would have done. We’ve never had any luck with any of our Asian sauce ideas. There was always too much salt or the sugar hoisin sauce took over, so we stuck with plain old soy sauce and sesame oil. We found that making a basic chicken soup broth worked out the best . We spiked our broth with some garlic, onion, celery seeds, and soy sauce, brought the whole thing to a boil and simmered until the flavors all had a chance to get to know each other. Onion, don’t be such a stinker! Sheesh!

This latest iteration was very nice but still had some room for growth. I need to work on my seasonings since these still ended up being a little bland. (I know, we LOADED everything, but yet nothing! How is that even possible?) Maybe with our next cook I can work on this. 

It’s that time of year again when the strawberries are ready to be picked. With the pandemic going on, it was a perfect way to get out into the fresh air. Here in NY, strawberries are ready to be picked somewhere in mid to late June, one of the first fruits to ripen.

Now riddle me this, berries have their seeds on the inside, but strawberries are not even berries. So if you bury a fresh strawberry, it will grow into a plant. We did our picking at Hand Melon in Schuylerville. This is great for little kids because the bushes are down low by your ankles. I did it with my dad’s side of the family when I was a kid when they came up for the weekend.

I came to this farm once or twice to go picking too! It’s sort of a family tradition of ours to go fruit picking at least once a year.

Needless to say crouching, stooping and picking was quite the workout for me, especially in the hot sun that day. It makes me want to join one of Annette Funicello’s beach parties. We need to turn these strawberries into something like jam, cake filling, smoothies, or pies. The possibilities are endless. We decided to make 2 frozen treats.

Firstly, we both love cheesecake. It’s practically a requirement for her family. We saw this recipe on Tasty and thought that we should give it a try.  The name is “frozen strawberry cream cheese bits.”, a nice and simple recipe that requires very little ingredients we happened to have lying around the house: cream cheese, coconut oil, vanilla extract, and of course strawberries.

We threw the ingredients into a blender. It turned a lovely pink color. Muffin tins with parchment paper worked okay, but cupcake wrappers would’ve held a better shape. Lastly, they need to freeze for an hour, but we had a little help from Elsa. They came out absolutely delicious. Even my father had a few of them. The only issue was that the coconut oil really packed a punch. I would quicker call these frozen blintze bites than frozen cheesecakes. Still, they came out very delicious.

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It is super hot out. Today alone set a lot of records. What better way to cool off than some nice ice cream.

Jeremy, You know you’re trying to lose weight.

You’re right. I’ve got to work on that. How about we cut out the cream and have sorbet?

Okay, but not too much.

This recipe was a breeze and a great way to incorporate fruit into your diet for those that struggle with that. All you need is some strawberries, chia seeds, and honey. Like with the first recipe, we threw them into a blender and made a puree. Then you freeze and enjoy. This was one of those things I found hard to put down. It was delectable! And the best part was it took care of the strawberries (they don’t last long) and it was perfect way to cool down.

Well, we still have a lot of strawberries left, Lauren.

I know, we kind of went COWABUNGA on picking. I froze the rest for safe keeping. If any of you know of something else summer themed, let us know in the comments! Next up is blueberry season!

 

Hi, Everyone! I have an update for you. I was on my first shopping trip in 2 months (Masks and nitrile gloves) when somewhere in the cheese section, I spotted an old favorite of ours, a nice salty feta. It seemed like we were due for a treat after everything started changing around AGAIN what with who can work, who has to go to the office and all of that stuff. So, we took a hint from a page in our  cookbook, “The Food of the Greek Islands” by Aglaia Kremezi. Page 113 shows a meatball dish called, Soutzoukakia Lemonata, using rice and lemon broth. Sounds like a nice distraction from everything turning sideways, no?

I prefer lean meat since it’s not as fatty. We used 80-20 because we’re not fond of eating baby animals like lamb and veal, and ground beef is easiest to find. For taste, I substituted the rice in the meatballs with breadcrumb. I’ve tried the rice method with meatballs before, but it came out super crunchy, because it had no time to cook. I didn’t want to waste food on experiments, so since I know breadcrumb tastes better to me, I did it that way.

As for the cilantro, we didn’t have any left. This is the key ingredient in Cyprus, but we did have oregano, so I guess these didn’t come out the same way as the book specified. Oregano gives it that pizza flavor. Cilantro is sharper and stronger. To be perfectly honest, I would have liked to have seen feta in the recipe.

I couldn’t taste any of the lemon in there, but 1 lemon typically has 3 tablespoons and that’s what was added. We rolled it out as best as we could ere cutting it open so the juices can loosen up and flow more easily. The seeds aren’t as stuck inside either.

The meatballs were a little loose the next day in the broth, so we fished them out and pan-fried them to give them a little more stability after all that time in liquid, sucking in all of the broth flavors. (could be a technique to remember for later, sort of like marinating)

While he tended to the beef, I took out some hot dog buns, laid some greens on the bottom and crumbled feta for the top. It reminded me of the meatball subs my mom makes with the extras from macaroni nights. So, if people can use mozzarella and red sauce for that, why can’t I use spinach and feta for a Greek version?

Wherever you go, there will be some recipe for meatballs, be it France, Greece, Italy or even India. Perhaps this could be the start of a tour across the globe, so to speak sampling meatballs in the style of every country. Tell us what you think in the comments. Until next time, αντιο σας!

Hey there, folks! Summer time is the best time for chicken wings inside and out. What meat-eater says “no” to this crowd-pleasing appetizer? We have 3 judges with us today to give us their honest opinion on 3 of TASTY wing recipes.

I am Princess Jasmine from Agrabah. I eat chicken instead of pork lots of times for Halal.  I like it best when the chicken is nice and juicy, but not pink. Pink is raw and makes me sick! Since I am wearing royal clothes, I don’t want them to get messy. Sauces can be tricky to wash. Flavors that are hot, I like the best. They remind me of how the air smells in the market. I would like sweet too like ladoo from holidays in the palace.

My name is Clara. I’m in 2nd grade. I have 3 rules about chicken wings for them to be perfect.

1. They can’t make a big mess. I don’t want to use all of the napkins at the same time! Then, nobody else would have any. That’s mean!
2. They can’t taste really dry or be raw. It should taste like chicken wings, not burned chicken wings or goop.
3. I like sweet flavors best of all. If there could be a candy chicken wing, I’d eat it! Hot wings are okay, but I don’t like it when they’re too hot, but then I get to eat ice cream after, so…

Yo Yo! What’s up? I’m William the genie, formerly of the lamp; but y’all can call me Will. The best chicken wings are the ones with the biggest flavors, that nice crisp coat on the outside, and NOT raw in the middle and unlike these 2, I don’t mind so much if I have a little something on my cheek, as long as I can lick it off my finger. <poofs into Colonel Sanders> They’d better be finger-licking good. <poofs back>  I should know, I’ve tasted enough over the last 10,000 years.

 

Wing number 1 is an Italian herb, garlic and parmesan wing.

 

They are a bit drippy, and too pink, but they are cooked.

Mine is clean, but I think they could be more crispy, and they need to have more cheese.

There’s no flavor in these wings, but the olive oil is garnished pretty well. Let me give them a little citric assistance! Try them now.

 It’s better, but I tasted lots of garlic, The olive oil washed everything else away!

 

 

 

 

 

Wing #2 is a Cajun barbecue wing.

 

Ooohhh! This one has some fire in my belly. Once it hits the mouth it starts boxing <poofs into Rocky Balboa> It gives your mouth the old 1-2. <poofs back> First the sweet comes in strong, but then the heat whams at you from underneath.

Yes, yes, my tongue is tingling with delight! But, they are too messy for my clothes. I need a napkin. Everything inside is just right.

It’s so sweet and spicy, it’s like eating a big Valentine’s Day cinnamon heart! They’re not raw either. Can I have more?

 

 

Finally, we have a Teriyaki wing with sesame seeds

This is a very good flavor. I love the sugar and honey.

It’s too salty. I need a glass of water.   No it’s not! It’s Asian flavoring like where my mama was born, Myanmar South Asia.

 

 

These brown little sweethearts make a lovely couple with the toastiest sesame seeds. Not as exciting as the Cajun, but it was very nice.

Now for the hard part. Which one do we like the best?

 

Let’s go over the facts first…

Wing #1 was too much of all the wrong things. It was more like plain wings dipped in olive oil. I didn’t like them very much. Me either. But it did have potential.

 

 

Wing #2 was my favorite. It was spicy, but really sweet too. I want to take them home!

Cajun in very American spicy. I loved how it started out sweet and then the tingly feeling came! That was fun!

Yeah, that had the whiz-bang-boom that I was looking to find. Wings are very simple, but it’s the toppings that make them spectacular.

Wing #3 was very sweet and the saltiness was wonderful for me!

That one didn’t taste very good to me. It wasn’t sweet enough. I don’t like salty things.

I liked it just fine, myself. The seeds got a little toasted in the pan. It was only a tiny bit under-done. So, I think we have a winner.

 

The winner is…CAJUN BBQ!! They were as good as wings can get. When Sweet meets Heat, your mouth is in for a real treat.

Thank you very much for letting us be the judges and taste your yummy chicken wings. We hope to be judges again soon!

Something that really hits the spot on a rainy day (and another, and another, and you’re stuck inside watching pirate movies) is a hot bowl of egg drop soup. 

The recipe we found online was from “Souped Up Recipes” We followed along with her pretty easily steps. Best of all, soups are usually very filling during the winter. If you save and then reheat, best to do it on the stove rather than the frustration of uneven microwave cooking where the bowl gets hot, but the soup stays cold.

Yeah, usually, I don’t always feel confident that I can do something all by myself, but this was so simple, I thought I could do it alone without a hitch, but I prefer doing it with my darling because it’s now part of how we bond; not just cooking it together, but sharing the meal afterwards, talking about how it went, what we do and don’t like, and what we would like to do next time. Sometimes we come up with full-on parties but because of what we can and can’t do right now, we have yet to throw one ourselves.

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There aren’t too many eggs if you only make enough for 1 or 2 people. The whites came out nice and stringy. The onion was perfect, but the broth was absolutely terrible.

The execution went awry because took 1 bad suggestion. We used a bouyon packet instead of actual stock. Now, now, let’s not point fingers, especially not the naughty one. It was low sodium and seemed relatively safe on the outside. But the inside smelled like cat piss and tasted like that from a dog.

Heck, when I tried to do just a cup of broth with it, there were clumps like something tried to build a beach in my cup. We took a guess and ended up wrong. It happens to everyone; us included. From now on, we’ll stick to using stock, and trying super hard to keep the sodium levels down. This recipe has potential, but next time maybe we could try making our own broth, darling.

Kon’nichiwa! We just came back from an at-home trip to Japan and boy, are we stuffed. As you know, Lauren and I are BIG fans of Asian cuisine and since we can’t hop on a plane or even stop by our favorite restaurants we did what we do best, make it ourselves!

Onigiri are rice balls that hail from Japan. They can be eaten during any time of day and prepared in a number of ways. Back the time of the refrigerator, onigiri was another way for the Japanese to use up leftovers before they could spoil. According to this website though, there is usually one golden rule: there at the very least needs to be rice! Nori (or dried seaweed) is optional though usually added. You can also grill onigiri. It should be noted that onigiri is not another type of sushi. According to this article, onigiri rice is prepared with only a little bit of salt for flavor, whereas sushi is prepared with a slurry of vinegar, sugar, and salt. It is recommended for both that you use short grain rice.

Since I had my first taste of it in San Francisco, you know we had to try to make some for ourselves. So, we ordered an onigiri mold and took it for a test-run. It’s  plastic triangle just like one you use for playdough or cookie cutters but it has a stamp that fits inside. You can use your hands, but it requires a lot of work and using the mold is just as fun. We have the steps laid out here.

1. Lay your nori on a mat with the rough side up (Shiny side down)
2. Place the mold on top of the nori just above the middle area
3. Fill the bottom of the mold with your rice and stamp it down flat
4. Place your filling in the center of the triangle. You can use whatever you like, but make sure it’s all cut into teeny-tiny pieces. Don’t over-stuff it.
   
5. Cover your filling with a layer of rice and stamp it flat just like you did on the bottom. Make sure you remove the mold carefully.
   
6. Fold your nori starting from the bottom to the top, then fold the corners inside the top point. Use water on the edges to help keep things from unfolding.
   

Onigiri is a great to-go nosh full of vegetables and proteins depending upon how you fill it. We used avocado, cucumber, and shrimp in ours. But if you prefer carrot, ginger, strawberry, cream cheese, beef, leftover corn mush, peppers, bean paste, Who am I kidding? This list is ENDLESS and on top of that the endless possibility of combinations. You get the picture. Please send a picture to our Facebook page of your creations. You might just be our next inspiration. As they say in Pappyland, “There’s no limitation to your imagination!” See you soon.

Jeremy, Remember when I was asked to come in to work a few extra hours back when I was a cashier? Oh yeah, You had to endure a ton with what was going on at the time so, I whipped up dinner for you when you got out as a hot happy treat.

Her favorite dishes have shellfish and shrimp was readily available cooked and raw, and Italian just like her. (3/4, with some French) Well, after troving the internet for a while, I came across it, shrimp fra diavolo. It can pack a mighty punch of spice, but that can be mitigated by cutting down and swapping some of the peppers for herbs. (so it’s not sooooo devilish I suppose.)

The name “fra diavolo” comes from the Italian for “from the devil”. It is a type of red sauce used with seafood where you put in a bunch of capsacin (red pepper flakes, chili peppers, etc.). Capsacin is a killer on the taste-buds, to the point of not being able to taste flavor anymore. A mouth plagued with hot sauce is a painting only done in 1 tone of the same color. 

For this reason, I decided not to add a ton of red pepper flakes opting for more of a traditional herbal red sauce – oregano, basil, parsley, etc. The herbs actually counteracted some of the capsacin, making it less spicy but not completely eliminating the spice all together. What’s life without a little zing?

I had no other choice but to use angel hair pasta underneath, playing off of the heaven vs hell motif. Thin noodles take much less time than thick ones. There’s an old nona’s tale about how to tell if it’s ready. But as fun as it may be to throw stuff at the walls, that isn’t a great indication of how it feels in your mouth. If you live with neat-freaks who don’t cook because they like a clean kitchen, it might get you in trouble. The only way to know how it tastes and the mouth-feel is just right is to simply taste it yourself after 8 minutes and test every minute if it’s not ready yet. Al-dente means “to the tooth” not to firm, but no squish either.

The recipe I used to prepare this was from Food Network and was remarkably easy. All you do is cook your shrimp in a pan with olive oil and spice par usual. Then (in the same pan) make your sauce pretty much like you would make any other red sauce. Since we don’t care much for wine, I cut their amount down to a quarter. This way, the wine can still contribute, but that kick is damped down too.

I was so delighted by the dinner and let’s just say, we put the leftovers in a very small container, and I got a lip-shaped sauce stain on your cheek.

Once we can go out again, I’m going to beg and plead you to make that with me. I’ll start now, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, pretty please?

Hello everyone, Jeremy here. It was the 4th anniversary of my first date with my lovely Lauren on March 25th. Despite this whole pandemic, we wanted to celebrate while still being sensitive about the situation. I had some heavy cream and chocolate lying around, so I figured, why not make some chocolate mousse to spoil ourselves? We had recently watched Jamie Oliver make some using eggs, sugar, cream, and chocolate. Normally I would just melt the chocolate, whip up the heavy cream, and fold them in together. This time around, I wanted to spice things up a bit and lighten them too (my previous attempts came out SUPER rich). I like making this dish since it doesn’t require a lot and come on, it’s chocolate! My darling angel loves milk dark  and chocolate, especially with peanut butter or berries.

This recipe is not exactly the simplest. (I actually needed to call my mom in for part of this. How embarrassing!) First, you need to whip the heavy cream until you get stiff peaks and let it cool in the fridge. This allows it to stabilize which leads to a fluffier end product precisely what we want. Then, after thoroughly cleaning out the mixing bowl, I whipped the egg whites together. Cross-contamination is a HUGE no-no, but as long as the eggs are fresh, this shouldn’t be a problem according to this website. That’s our meringue. I recommend not trying to whip either of these by hand, or else you will be at it for at least 10 or so minutes each just whipping. I guess it’s a good upper body workout, but if you have a wrist injury, do what I did, use a standard mixer. 

Now for the the fun part where we get to make a big fat mess, melting the chocolate. The original recipe called for adding water to the melting chocolate. Turns out according to: this article, as long as it is above roughly one tablespoon. Surprisingly, melted chocolate is considered a dry ingredient since the moisture content was removed when factories harvested it from cocoa beans. It’s the equivalent of adding water to flour, it causes the molecules in the chocolate to stick together, forming a paste, as mentioned here. However, if you add water to seized chocolate, it will help the chocolate come back to its . This is because, according to Fooducation, the water takes the place of the oil that binds the chocolate them together. Science comes in handy in the kitchen.

So, you add some butter and water to the melting chocolate over a double boiler and let it all ooze together. In a separate bowl, cream together the egg yolks and sugar. This also adds fluffiness. Now for the tricky part. Once all the chocolate is melted, SLOWLY add it to the beaten eggs while whisking, AND I MEAN SLOWLY. If you move too quickly, it will give you chocolate scrambled eggs, YUCKY! Once you’ve gotten it all smooth, mix in the rest of the chocolate. When it’s all together, pour it back over the double boiler to let the egg yolks cook and reduce. Finally, fold the chocolatey goodness in with the meringue and the whipped cream. I definitely enjoyed making Jamie Oliver’s truffles, especially since the final product came out tasty. I may have to try this again sometime. (and hopefully not gain weight…) But the biggest reward for me is seeing the look on Lauren’s face when she takes the first bite.

 

 

We haven’t had a chance to cook together lately and had to cancel our first dinner party to keep our families safe, so I’ve had some time to reflect on when families struggle. It’s certainly no hoax that there’s something making people suddenly look up how to cook and bake from scratch. It was only 80 years ago that people all over the world were skimping, scrounging and saving everything they could in response to the World War II effort of the 1940’s. Anyone else remember American Girl Molly McIntire, the youngest daughter of an army doctor? The scene here really sets the tone of the entire movie: Molly: An American Girl on the Homefront Meat, butter, sugar, cooking oils and cheese were heavily rationed. There was a points-system put in place where stamps and different color coins were for different types of items, but the number value was how many points it was worth, kind of like a sub-economy as well as the regular price tag. Let me give you an example:  A butcher sells sausage links for 40 cents per pound, then the government says it’s worth 8 ration points. You pay both charges. The WWII Museum has articles about this sort of system here.

During the years when my grandfather was in the navy aiming cannons, fresh fruits and non-root vegetables were increasingly costly, but seeds were practically pennies a pinch! City slickers could give their hand a green-thumb instead of shelling out the green in their purses. If you were a British kid, you were most likely evacuated to the countryside or overseas for your own protection. It makes you look at the 1st scene of the first Narnia movie directed by Andrew Adamson in a whole new light. Joan Collins even has a chapter in her autobiography about her family crowding into a bomb shelter.

The government assisted farmers by promoting the planting of Victory Gardens. 20 million were planted; 9-10 TONS of produce fresher than fresh were blooming out on peoples lawns. It was an agricultural BOOM that also boosted the morale of the homemakers and kids. They could help out by doing simple things around the house while the highly trained men and women were out taking care of major duties. Too bad the urban folks stopped in 1946, or there wouldn’t have been a shortage that year.

Naturally, the cuisine of the era was high-carb, low-sugar and low-fat. Honestly, it did England a favor in their flu, obesity, diabetes and cardio health rates for a solid 14 years. There were Victory Cookbooks printed for housewives to create balanced healthy meals for their families catered to the rations they were given. The key was to waste nothing and stretch your goods for as long as they could last before rotting. That’s why there were so many books and pamphlets out around town on canning, pickling and preserving. 

One thing my grandmother remembered and Mom told me, was that chicken was often boiled, so that the meat would come off and the water and bones could become soup broth. After this, the chicken could be used for croquettes, pot pies, casseroles, sandwiches, salads, patte, stews and so much more than just roasting it and calling it a day. I would try and make chilli out of it if I had the spices for it.

Hey, Look! I found some cookbook titles from the war….

“Eating for Victory: Healthy Home Front Cooking on War Rations“

“Ration Cookbook: Recipes & History“

“The Wartime Cookbook“

and a Mental Floss webpage with 11 pages more…here