h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I don't really rember rationing per se, but the occasional treat of sweets was amazing. Little white baper cones filled with 'Hundreds and Thousand' covered choc drops weighed out from a tall screw top jar. Oh the anticipation.

Mind you my mother said I had a liking for 'Whale' meat sausages - thank goodness we don't have to have them now.

Most people would have had paper cones- we try to be different.

As far as sweets go, did anyone ever try cocoa and sugar in a cup,( no liquid)chewing on the powder was a real treat. But one of my favourite "treats" which made my mother yell, was drinking vinegar out of the bottle!! I used to have to hide to do it! "It'll curdle your blood"!! I can hear her now!

Vinegar out of the bottle - eyuck!!!
Cocoa and sugar yes I did that.

I was talking to a friend yesterday and she told me that her Gran used to do 'banana' sandwiches during rationing, but the banana was sweetened swede - she was non the wiser until much later when bananas were back. Can you remember that first ripe juicy peach?

Crikey, you were RICH! I think we had the first peach (bought one at a time )when I had an exchange student staying with us,to show we knew how to welcome foreigners!I must have been 13 at the time!

Sorry, I should have said - re peach this was 1965!

Desserts were "rationed " at home; we only had 'em on Sundays. one of my Mum's "haute cuisine" dishes was banana custard...we loved it!On the other hand, her cakes were disastrous; my brother used to call them "sinker" cakes, for obvious reasons, so when I began grammar school and had cookery lessons (do they still have them??) the cakes and pastries were my job! Still do quite a tasty bit of pastry cooking, too. Thank you Mrs Austin, a horrible teacher, but a darned good cook! And how it smelt good on the bus going home, after those lessons!

Did our mother's have the same upbringing - we had bananas and custard to make them go round further - once we could get them, also cakes were very hit and miss. the misses were called 'Sad Cakes' and I was one of the few who would eat them. Mind you Ginger cake and Parkin never failed. Rice pudding was good - made with excess of full cream milk. Golden and creamy on top with a layer of sweet milk then the rice. Delish. Mother had a trick with trifle - mock cream made by combining 'hard' marge and sweetened condensed milk. Stewed fruit in season with custard.

I forgot - cooking became 'Domestic' Science and morphed into Food Technology. It is probably something else now 'Oliver's Camp Cuisine Course' I like Jamie though.