One difficulty of cooking during World War II that doesn't seem to get much attention now is that rationing wasn't just of things like meat and sugar, but fats too. Maybe the low-fat era made people forget that doing without cooking fats was a hardship, especially back when people were likely to be malnourished following the Great Depression. That's why I was so interested in The American Food Stretcher Cook Book's (ed. Ruth Berolzheimer, 1943) chapter "Fats and How to Get Them." In addition to telling how to render fat out of chickens and geese, it suggests ways to stretch butter at home.
I guess calling it "The Aladdin touch" was supposed to make it sound glamorous to make butter and milk into Butter Spread...
... or the more dire-sounding Economy Spread.
The thing that really floored me, though, was that something we consider somewhat of a luxury today (The reason millennials can't afford houses! 🙄) was considered somewhat of an emergency substitute when households couldn't necessarily get the types of fat they usually used.
Yep-- Avocado Spread was a wartime measure to help make up for fat shortages! That's kind of hard to imagine today.
And if you were really hard-up in trying to ensure the family had enough fat and you had no compunctions about ruining a perfectly good avocado, you could even make Fruit-Filled Avocados.
Imagining the combination of grapefruit's battery acid-esque assault with the oily salt-lick of olives makes me shudder, but if you combine that with the buttery avocado and a slick of French dressing, the family will be suitably lubed up for the day.
I'll bet that gave you a lovely mental image of a "lubed up" family as well! Some things are even worse than fat shortages....
What's worse than butter thinned out with milk? Butter thinned out with dry milk. Off flavors will certainly decrease consumption, possibly more than rationing in the first place. This is what the older generations seem to think that Millennials should be doing in order to afford a home (or anything really) even though it basically serves to ruin the flavor of perfectly good food. As for me, I watch the app for the expensive grocery store every day to see what meat is marked down cheap for a flash sale. So... much... chicken...
ReplyDeleteOf course, all the tips for saving money are usually pretty much bullshit anyway. Saving a couple bucks a week by eating a breakfast that doesn't make you happy is unlikely to be much help in the face of $1000+ monthly rent and the cost of owning and maintaining a car in a society that mostly refuses to invest in public transportation. Might as well tell people to rearrange deck chairs on the Titanic. It's easier than trying to create a real social safety net.
DeleteTrue that! It doesn't matter how much you economize if rent, car payment, and student loans cost more than you earn in a month. There comes a point when you can't just get another job.
DeleteYes! I hate wondering if I should get a FOURTH job. There's only so much time in a day, and people should be allowed to enjoy at least some of it....
DeleteEnjoy life?! Not in this country. Lately I've been speculating with friends if there are any adults in this country who aren't depressed. We all think no. We also have a feeling that most kids are too. I keep thinking about maybe getting another job but I get tired easily and there's only so much caffeine can do.
DeleteThat assessment sounds about right...
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