It is well documented the British diet was actually the healthiest during times of war time and post war rationing. The main stay of the diet was vegetables.

We fill up on huge platefuls of steamed veggies, piles of potato and very few expensive items such as faggots (sorry Ali….I know you read this, but the end of term has meant the leftovers are consigned to the freezer and I picked some ready made ones from Aldi on the way home and was £1.30 and some will go into Dearly beloved’s sarnies tomorrow! )

I suppose I’ve developed my eating habits from my mum who was born in 1939 and grew up in times of rationing and then financial hardship of her own. As children we never flinched at mounds of liver casserole, haslet, brawn, mackerel and pollock until we couldn’t get up from the table. Jam was always blackberry and sandwiches for packed lunch were always jam!!! Lemonade and ginger beer was homemade and often exploded in the cupboard under the stairs and every meal was accompanied by a pile of mashed spuds and steaming veg, piled so high that I often couldn’t see around my plate. Even now, no meal is complete without lots of vegetables or salad and that will always take up three quarters of our plates. So supper tonight consisted of ready made faggots with mashed potatoes and a whole savoy and some huge carrots. Mum and the ministry of food would be proud. Cost as ever is under £1 per portion and it has certainly warmed and cheered us on this murky windswept evening. I like to keep people entertained so click here to enjoy a few minutes of “Wartime kitchen and garden”

Clickety Let me count the ways clickety…………………….I make my own bread and save all of the crusts in the freezer; I then make bread crumbs in the food processor and love the way they are chunky and irregular.

I used up some of the remainder of the breadcrumbs by making a treacle tart and with some of the spare pastry; I made a cheese, onion and tomato quiche. We had no ‘salad’ in the house to eat with the quiche so I grated two large carrots, chopped two cooked beetroot and made salad dressing from the zest and juice of an orange, a splash of vinegar, some olive oil and a sprinkle of salt; all shaken together in an old jam jar.
Here’s the quiche and treacle tart. We’ll eat half the little treacle tart and freeze the rest; have a slice each of quiche and the rest will be divided up into portions for both of us to take to lunch for the next two days.


Supper! Treacle tart made from left over bread and instant custard (9p a pack from Morrisons!) Quiche with carrot, orange and beetroot salad.
Treacle tart and custard 50p per portion Quiche and salad 50p per portion so £1 per person per meal!

Take a bag of old crusts out of the freezer and ding them in the microwave for just a few seconds to soften. Then blitz in the food processor until large chunky crumbs. Pour the crumbs into a bowl and add some black pepper, salt, some lemony herb mix that you have lying around. Take the defrosted wild pink salmon, that you bought in Aldi for £2.50 for four pieces and roll it in one beaten egg, that you’ve diluted with milk to make it go further. Then roll in the bread crumbs, then dip back in the egg mixture and repeat with the bread crumbs - I like a crispy crust.
Bake the salmon (I use all of it, we’ll eat the remainer cold for lunch tomorrow) in the mini oven for about 20 minutes. Cook the half packet of cherry tomatoes leftover from yesterday (25p in the co-op on my way home)
Take a bag of spinach - 79p Aldi and wash in warm water (that’ll almost cook it) and cook it in a tiny amount of water and tiny knob of utterly butterly and then stir in half a pot of Aldi low fat soft cheese (49p a pot), sprinkle in a little black pepper and some squirty lemon juice that keeps in the fridge for years. It’s now creamy and lemony. Pile up on a plate, we love it and there’s so much nutrition for so little money.

Place the crispy salmon on top of the creamy spinach and add the cooked tomatoes which squirt and mush deliciously when you stick your fork in them and becomes almost a tomato sauce to eat it with. Very posh and cost? £1.16 per person!!! What do you think you would pay for that in a restaurant??? I hope dearly beloved appreciates the money I have saved him tonight!