1940's World War II Food Rationed Meal Plans! Prep, Cook, and Eat With Us! Full Day of Meals!

[Music] welcome back sweet friends it is so great to be here with you today we hope this video finds you all well my name is emmy my husband is paul and this is the channel frugal money saver we're an early retirement debt and mortgage free couple living in the state of new york and our channel basically just shows you how to have a full rich abundant life while spending less money today's video we are so excited for paul and i put our heads together and we thought it would be so interesting to share a day's worth of meals for you that were typical during world war ii when food was rationed so we went to the cookbook american woman's cookbook and we took a day's worth of meals breakfast lunch and dinner and we created them some of the dishes we normally wouldn't eat today but they're not that obscure honestly we thought this would be a great way to have a look inside a typical menu plan from 1940s world war ii now i want to just preface the video saying the food items that were rationed during the war were sugar coffee meats fats canned fish and canned milk fruits and vegetables were pretty much in abundance because they did not keep well being shipped overseas or wherever our troops were so the foods at home tended to rely heavily on things that were available and not rationed we're going to go through the cookbook a little bit then we are going to prep we're going to cook and we are going to eat all three meals breakfast lunch and dinner we'll share them with you as we were looking through the menus to decide which ones to make some of the items today would be so expensive lamb seafood i mean some of these things now are not economical at all but back then i'm assuming they were readily available we picked menus that sounded good to us things we would eat because we didn't want to waste food and also the majority of the items we had in the home which was so awesome so i guess we cook like the 1940s and we didn't even know it so we're going to turn the camera around and we're going to begin our day of 1940s prep cooking and eating here we go [Music] we are so excited to be sharing this video with you the recipes the menus the inspiration we got for today's video is coming from the american woman's cookbook this book is copyright 1942 it's just a plethora of information one of the things i love so much about this cookbook are the color plates a lot of these older cookbooks don't have color pictures i just wanted to share it with you i thought it was fascinating the full color illustrations in the american woman's cookbook reproduce with striking fidelity the tempting texture of nicely brown chicken the appetizing hue of roast beef done to a turn and the verdant christmas of leafy salads they show precisely how attractive a properly prepared dish should appear when served it was like it was so important that the food you put on the table was aesthetically pleasing as well as delicious [Music] one of the sections in this book is wartime cookery paul and i as we were looking through the wartime era menus a lot of these menus call for items now that in our error are extremely high priced so we wanted to keep it realistic and true to the time yet still do something that we would eat and that was affordable today we picked the breakfast and dinner from this day the lunch from a different day i'm sure the cooks of that time did it as well pick a breakfast from this day a dinner from here or lunch from there it depended what they had in the home and what was readily available and affordable and you'll notice next to a lot of the dishes are little tiny numbers on the bottom is a key these are alternative dishes to those little numbers so where it says sliced oranges number one you come down here to the key number one tomato or grapefruit juice can be substituted for your sliced orange paul and i are going to have sliced oranges instead of waffles we're going to make pancakes so we're going to have sliced oranges rice pancakes honey or syrup notice the way they spell syrup s s-i-r-u-p i thought that was really unique milk and coffee and you see that little two there you go down it says cornmeal buckwheat waffles or griddle cakes may be substituted so that's why we're going to make rice griddle cakes and then the lunch that day was split pea soup made with picnic bone we did not have the makings for split paint which is an economical meal but we just didn't have that so i opted for a little different lunch dinner we're going to be making scallop potatoes and chopped picnic casserole so i was like we don't have chopped picnic but i looked down and it said scalloped potatoes and pork shoulder chops or link sausages in a casserole well we have that link sausages so we're going to make that with some buttered beets green onion carrot strips whole wheat bread baked apple stuffed with dates milk and coffee so this is going to be super fun though i will tell you i did not buy green onions i couldn't imagine eating green onion strips that's just not something we would do and i didn't want to waste the money and for the lunch what we opted for toasted peanut butter cheese sandwich coleslaw sliced banana and cocoa and if you look down at coco chocolate milk or milk milkshakes may be served we are so happy you are joining us for our war time menu meals tomorrow morning we are starting our cooking day and i looked over all the recipes and this one actually needed a little prep work ahead of time here's the recipe if you'd like to take a screenshot it says we need to mix rice with one cup of milk and let stand overnight so i just cooked a cup of rice so we have our one cup of cooked rice and then it says cover with two cups of milk wow and we're going to cover it put it in the refrigerator and let it sit overnight good morning we're going to start with our rice griddle cakes we have had the one cup rice soaking in the milk overnight i made a mistake we were only supposed to soak the rice in one cup of milk though the recipe calls for two i added both cups to the rice the second cup was supposed to be added later on just so you know that we're starting off that way but it's going to be a great day we're going to have some good food we are going to sift one and a half cups all-purpose flour and i've told you this before i don't own a sifter i use a large strainer and it works fine to sift ingredients we're going to add two teaspoons of baking powder half a teaspoon of salt one tablespoon of sugar now we are just going to give this a gentle tap and sift this all together now in this bowl i've got one tablespoon of vegetable oil add one egg to that this is where we were supposed to add the other cup of milk what i think i'm going to do is just add a little bit of the milk that the rice was soaking in because i had added the two cups right to it so i think this is fine so now i'm just going to add a little bit of flour and i'm going to add a little bit of the egg mixture alternately they said to add dry and then wet and we're just going to mix this together as we go along gonna do that again a little flour and a little egg mixture this looks like it's going to make a lot so we may be eating these for a while i bet they'll freeze real well though now it says to grease the griddle and they would probably use whatever kind of grease they had in the home i'm using a little bit of butter but they could have used any kind just take by spoonful and add it to the hot griddle and that's what we're doing [Music] i have my griddle on 300. so we're going to keep an eye on this as soon as i start to see little bubbles form we're going to flip them so i can see the edges are drying out a little bit you see those little bubbles that would say to me they are ready to be flipped and they are [Music] so we're just going to let these brown on the other side [Music] rice grill cakes let's try one they're good they're really good tastes like a great pancake this is really really good what do you think is different about these than a regular pancake they're almost like a crepe they're they're thick oh interesting yeah they're thin they're crispy uh it doesn't have any of the graininess which i expected because you know when you eat rice rice has got you know some substance to it probably roll these up with some jelly and put some powdered sugar great idea thumbs up good job this recipe was for five people and let me tell you it would be generous servings we have all these left over and as you can see as i started making them they got bigger and bigger now what we're doing is just letting them cool i am going to wrap them individually and we are going to freeze them for a later time because we don't want to waste food but i did want to make the full recipe to show you exactly what and how they ate it's lunch time we picked the menu toasted peanut butter or cheese sandwiches coleslaw sliced bananas and cocoa we think we're going to make one toasted peanut butter and one toasted cheese and then we'll each get a half of each kind we're going to make the coleslaw and we'll slice up some banana as well we found cabbage salad which was like the closest thing we could find to coleslaw wanted to find a dressing in the book we wanted to keep it as authentic as possible so we're going to make the sour cream salad dressing so paul shredded the cabbage it calls for no other vegetables in this but cabbage so we are going to do exactly that let's get on to make the dressing we're gonna start with our one cup of sour cream one tablespoon sugar it does cool for a teaspoon of salt i am not going to put a full teaspoon in to us it would be inedible and i don't want to waste the food an eighth of cayenne which is gonna be just a little bit like that i'm thinking that looks good right we need one tablespoon of lemon juice and i just have some fresh lemon that i am squeezing right into there two tablespoons of vinegar and i'm just using white vinegar nothing fancy because i don't believe they would have real fancy vinegars back then and that is it so i'm going to mix this together and this is going to be our dressing for our coleslaw i'm just gonna give it a little taste oh my gosh that's delicious oh i didn't think it would be that good okay now we're just gonna mix this in with our coleslaw this is gonna be a go-to dressing and now we're just gonna mix it all together here's our grilled cheese recipe we found in the same cookbook between two slices of medium thick bread lay slices of cheese cut about 1 8 inch thick place in oven until cheese begins to melt then toast on both sides and served hot there is no mention of buttering the bread anywhere and we are going to make the toasted peanut butter sandwich the same exact way we want to keep it as authentic as we possibly can they didn't use butter we're not using butter so the first sandwich is going to have two slices of cheese and the second one we just put some peanut butter on i'm putting it in a 350 degree oven it didn't give me a temperature so i'm kind of guesstimating again i'm gonna watch it though probably five minutes we'll we'll let you know we'll keep you posted cook for four minutes aside in a 350 oven but the cheese is melty and they're crispy the peanut butter one is really i guess just peanut butter on toast right if you think about it [Music] so this would be a typical lunch during the world war ii rationing period it actually looks delicious i'm really anxious to try this one it's simple and it's all foods i really like so it's a win-win it's dinner time for dinner we're going to be making scalloped potato and chopped picnic casserole so we're going to be using pork sausage we're going to eat buttered beets carrot strips we are not eating the green onions we just wouldn't it would be wasteful some sliced bread and we're gonna make baked apples stuffed with dates and a cup of i think it's gonna be decaf tea and coffee what do you think because it's nighttime let's get to making this delicious sounding meal so i found the recipe for scallop potatoes in our cookbook so it calls for six medium sized potatoes salt and pepper two tablespoons flour four tablespoons butter and milk the recipe we're using is calling for some pork so what we're doing is i am frying up two links of italian sausage and that is what we're going to add to this casserole it says pair raw potatoes and cut them into thin slices paul is carefully using this slicer to make thin potato slices for our scallop potatoes so here's our first layer this is three potatoes and we'll do the second layer will be three potatoes as well we have our first layer of sliced potatoes three of them then i have two tablespoons of butter that i just broke up into little pieces sprinkled it around and i did one tablespoon of flour now it says to season with salt and pepper so i'm gonna put some pepper on here i am not going to add salt because i am using the sausage and sausage is pretty salty and if we need salt we can always add it later i'm only using two links of sausage because i can't imagine they would have used much more and i just browned it to get some of the fat off now if they would have browned it back in the 1940s the fat that came off of it would have been kept cold to use at a later date because they wasted nothing remember fats were rationed now we're gonna layer the last three potatoes on top and now we're gonna take the last two tablespoons of butter and we're gonna put those on top and our last tablespoon of flour on top and a little more ground pepper now it says to add milk until you can see it between the layers so i'm not sure what that means but i guess when we see the milk between the layers that seems like a lot of milk i would say that would be good i'm seeing the milk and we also have to cover it so i'm sure it's going to steam while it cooks so we're going to cover this we're going to put it in a 375 degree oven for one hour and then we have to check the potatoes are fork tender now while this is cooking we're also going to be cooking our baked apples we are also making baked apples with this meal so we have our two apples that we have cored we have to bake it in a 375 oven doesn't say for how long so we're gonna have to keep an eye on it so here we have our two apples when last trip we were in carolina i had picked up dates to eat for a healthy snack while we were down there and we still had some left over so this worked out perfectly now it says to put a little bit of sugar in and then stuff it with the dates so i'm just going to take half a teaspoon not even in each okay they're all cored now i took four dates so two in each and we are stuffing them in there and now it says to add water to the bottom to cover so there we go and it doesn't say to cover them so we're just going to put them in with our scalloped potato casserole our dinner also calls for buttered beets and we always keep canned beets in the pantry so i'm just going to take these put them in a pan heat them through with a little bit of butter we just checked our apples and they are tender they cooked in a 375 oven for just about 35 minutes they're perfect so we cook this for 45 minutes with the lid on remove the lid cooked it for another 15. and we cooked it in a 375 degree oven so we're really anxious to taste it i kept checking it and i saw it was bubbling so i assumed it bubbles that's how the potatoes cook just said a silent prayer that this will clean up because this is a good pyrex but i'm hoping it will clean up i'm sure well i'm going to be positive i will let you know though and in this pot are beets and i added about a teaspoon of butter to them so let's eat okay this is our last meal for our world war ii cookery we have got our scalloped potatoes and sausage we've got our buttered beets we've got our carrot sticks a slice of bread it did not say to put butter on the bread so we're not going to and then we have our baked apple with dates that looks wonderful and we're really just drinking water with this it says you can have milk but paul and i don't drink i am going to taste the scallop potatoes and sausage casserole it is delicious the potatoes are just melting in my mouth they really are they are so soft and tender it is delicious it is really good so this is a win i know i love beets i know i love raw carrots and we'll let you know how the baked apple is okay i'm going to try the baked apple um yeah it's good the apples still warm it's kind of tart but the dates uh break up that tartness with the sweetness of the date so it's uh it's actually very good i like it yay yay so it's a win it is a win crisis averted the pyrex cleaned up perfectly just beautiful i love these classic pyrexes we hope you enjoyed today's video we had such a great time making it we really did the rice pancakes were something that i had never thought of and they were delicious baked apples my sister-in-law makes them all the time we've never eaten them really i've never made them they were phenomenal everything there was nothing i think that i wouldn't eat again and it just gave us a little insight into how it was back then how they ate and the meals were good size so all in all it was a total win and we hope you enjoyed it today's question of the day where do you get your recipes to cook from do you go on to the internet do you use cookbooks older cookbooks modern cookbooks do you have heirloom recipes that have been handed down what are your go-to recipes where do you find them i think that would be so interesting and if you have a cookbook that you could recommend or you say yes this is a great cookbook not that we're going to run out and buy it but maybe we can check it out of the library or look at it online because a lot of older books you can access online so share that with us we would love to know again we hope you enjoyed spending this time with us just a reminder that there will be no tuesday video and next week it will be next friday so please follow us on instagram to see what we're doing dm us over there just to say hi you know we always love to hear from you and you know that we answer each and every comment you leave us we ask that you give this a big thumbs up subscribe if you haven't thank you again we ask that you stay well we ask that you be safe and above all we wish you blessings see you next friday bye bye

Channel: Frugal Money Saver

Views: 64,942

Keywords: Frugal Money Saver, Frugal Living, Budget Living, Save Money, debt free, budgeting, early retirment, Christian, Catholic, purposeful living, tightwad living, Budget 2021, Homemaking, Christian homemaking, create a budget, Inflation, Food Rationing, financial goals, money saving tips and hints, contentment, Cook from scratch, inflation, grocery haul, loss leaders, Zero food waste, Frugal Cooking, 1940's, WW II

Id: JSrKETRKvOw

Length: 24min 39sec (1479 seconds)

Published: Fri May 06 2022