Open Writing

How wives and mothers coped with feeding families during wartime rationing must have been very difficult indeed, but looking back on those days I don’t remember complaining about meals or asking for more. My mother was a lovely cook and thought up some really good meals for five of us. I have been trying to remember some of them.

My brother, sister and I all attended Almondbury Council School during the forties. There were no school dinners available, so we used to walk home for our lunch. Mum always had the card table set for the three of us -- in front of the coal fire in the winter and through the French windows on the back lawn in summertime.

I liked the wintertime best because we could sit on the floor in front of the blazing coal fire with a toasting fork each and make toast, which tasted much nicer than toast made in a toaster nowadays. Mum used to make her own potted meat which was made with shin beef (and probably other things) and put into little glass dishes to set. We loved that with hot toast.

I remember reading an Enid Blyton book where the girls in the story went camping and made Cheese Dreams for tea. I persuaded Mum to make them for us, and that dish ended up a real fattening favourite with us. Such a simple recipe (if one could call it a recipe), but so tasty -- just two slices of bread with slices of cheese between and fried in the frying pan on both sides until brown and crisp. Very filling and tasty.

Another favourite was Toad-in-the-Hole. Everyone must know what that consists of, but my brother insisted that his sausages were REAL toads.

Mum, being a thoroughbred Scottish mum, was a dab hand at making jolly good soups. I can still remember the taste of her potato soup, thick and so good on winter lunchtimes, and her lentil soup made with ham bones was also special to us.

Dad had a large kitchen garden and also two allotments, and he worked hard growing vegetables for his growing family. We also had raspberries, blackcurrants and gooseberries in the garden, which Mum converted into plate pies.

Every Sunday morning for years Dad used to take the three of us for a long walk through Almondbury village, up Kaye Lane and onto the hillsides where blackberries grew. Mum stayed at home and got a cooked breakfast ready for us on our return. I remember she made blackberry jelly with the mounds of blackberries we had picked. When the fruit was cooked, she used to turn a square stool upside down, tie a piece of muslin across the stool legs forming a square sieve, then pour the hot jelly into the muslin which dripped overnight into a large bowl underneath. Then it was bottled, and there was sufficient bread and jam for us all -- until we got almost fed up of eating it!! I don’t like blackberries at all now. Maybe I had too much then.

Oh, and potato fritters! So fattening (but it didn’t matter -- nobody was fat in those days), but really scrummy with vinegar. Even the thought of them nowadays put me pounds on!

Mum made good doughnuts too. My sister and I used to stand and watch her cutting the round doughnuts out. Then, using her apple corer, she cut a hole out of the middle, then put the inside of the doughnuts on one side for the last rolling, which only left one middle bit. We used to argue over who was having that bit.

In summertime I loved parsley butter. Mum would sometimes say that she hadn’t anything special for tea, so it would have to be boiled egg. We had five hens at the bottom of the garden, so we were never short of eggs. I wasn’t very keen on eggs, so I would go in the garden and pick some parsley, which Mum would chop up and mix with margarine and spread it on brown bread. I loved that with a sprinkling of salt, and still do!

When we used to go on holiday to our grandparents’ house by the sea on the east coast of Scotland, we definitely had meat at every dinnertime. My grandfather had three butchers’ shops, and he used to bring meat home every day. He even brought fresh liver for their cat. We couldn’t understand for ages why we got meat every day at grandma’s house but only occasionally at home.

Incidentally, can anyone remember the Fry’s cocoa tins which, when you removed the lid, had a little painted farm animal or bird moulded from lead? I had quite a collection of these, mainly cockerels.

In those days a child was never asked, “What do you want for your tea?” You had what Mum made for you, without question. How times have changed. But I suppose it’s all relative, as the saying goes these days.

One of my brother’s friends ate nothing but bread and jam for every meal all through the war days. I see him around town occasionally, aged about 66, and he looks the picture of health. But what a bore mealtimes must have been.