On Sun, 08 Sep 2013 17:55:43 -0400, James Silverton
> wrote:

>On 9/8/2013 3:44 PM, Tara wrote:
>> On Sun, 08 Sep 2013 15:31:32 -0400, James Silverton wrote:
>>
>>> I was a child at the time and I can remember the uninteresting food but
>>> it is believed that the general population ate a much more healthy diet
>>> than before the war. One thing that sticks in my mind is the complete
>>> unavailability of bananas.
>>
>> I'd love to hear more your experiences if you would care to share. Do
>> you remember some typical meals? Did your family have a victory garden
>> or raise animals for food?
>
>Well, you asked for it, but I scribbled down a few memories, a bit
>disjointed but I have not thought about British rationing in a long time.
>
>My family was not completely unusual in that we were a one-parent family
>with my father in the British army and perhaps better off than some. We
>did grow some vegetables in our small back yard both root and salad;
>lettuce, carrots and radishes I recall. Tomatoes did not grow out of
>doors in those days but we occasionally got some from uncles with
>green-houses.
>
>An impression that remains is the scarcity of the unrationed food that
>could be bought usually at the cost of standing in a long line. The word
>would pass remarkably quickly (even in the absence of telephones for
>many people) that a certain store had unrationed oranges and while the
>number you could buy was limited, long lines would form as people
>converged on the store. I don’t remember eating grapefruit or grapes
>either. Apples and berries were scarce but could be bought. Bread was
>not rationed during the war and only became rationed in the austerity
>years between 1945 and 1948.
>
>Ice cream was unrationed but not readily available. Like oranges, the
>word flashed around that a store was selling some and kids would descend
>on the place. As I recall there was usually one flavor called “vanilla”
>and it was very watery.
>
>School children had a special ration of milk which was 1/3 of a British
>pint and sold at a subsidized price at school and later was free.
>
>As I recall, fish was unrationed but was scarce even in a seaside town
>like where I lived. People got used to eating fish like skate which was
>regarded as trash before the war. Nowadays, it is called “raie” and is
>sought after. I believe kippers were sometimes available but I’ve never
>liked them.
>
>I believe restaurant food was unrationed but rather drab and requiring
>waiting in lines to enter the restaurant. Again, fish and chips were
>available unrationed but lines were long and the quality and age of the
>fish was pretty dismal.
>
>The candy ration, controlled by coupons, was small and I think was about
>12 ounces per month per person at its lowest. We kids resented this but
>our teeth probably benefitted. Going to the movies, our three person
>family might buy one Mars bar to share among all of us. If we wanted
>candy at Xmas, we just gave up eating it until the day.
>
>Soft drinks were produced according to a set of government rules and
>sold with the same drab uninteresting labels wherever you could buy it
>and most proprietary drinks like Coca-Cola just disappeared. I had known
>Coke before the war and I still remember when it became available again
>in 1945.
>
>Sometimes one could buy unrationed fresh eggs from farmer’s wives
>(possibly illegally) but besides the small ration, dried eggs from
>across the Atlantic were very common. People complained bitterly about
>them but they really were not bad and no worse than Eggbeaters. Orange
>juice came as similar transatlantic concentrates.

There is a BBC series called Wartime Farm that documents how farms had
to be run during the war. It's been on a couple of times in Canada.
Very educational, and we quite enjoyed it.

Doris