It's 1944, and I'm hungry!

...As I'm sure my counterpart was in 1944 after a long day at the factory getting metal shavings down the back of her neck. A few days ago I made a batch of corn chowder from a recipe in one of my rationing cookbooks, but as I was flipping through it I thought the sandwich fillings sounded equal parts bizarre and intriguing. In the spirit of rationing, I'm trying to make do with what already have in the house, since years ago no matter what you wanted, it was tough to get, even if you had the proper number of ration stamps.

I have some cheese, plus salad dressing, plus some green peppers still growing on the leftover plants in my garden, so I settled on cheese filling for my experiment tonight. You can see it at the top middle of the page above. I've accidentally cut off the top of the recipe, but the name of the recipe is the only thing missing. The ingredients begin with cheese and end with Worcestershire sauce. If you're trying this at home, don't accidentally add carrots or Tabasco just because I was too lazy to rescan my page. Those belong to another recipe.

Soybeans are pretty easy to get these days, but I'm not certain how they were packaged in 1944 when this recipe came out. They might have been dried like pinto beans, and cooked in hot water to reconstitute them, or they might have been fresh green edamame pods. I haven't seen advertisements either way, but I have a can of coked soybeans in my pantry, so I figured that would split the difference. In the future, I'll probably work to keep fresh-frozen edamame around the house, since they'd add a good flavor to whatever I put them in.

I cut the cheese into slices to facilitate chopping, then bundled up everything in my food pocessor and pulsed it a few times until everything was even.




My camera gives everything a green tint, so this sandwich filling was just about the color of pimento spread in real life, and a nice thick texture.


Again, forgive the green tint on the pictures, it was a very tasty-looking orange in real life.

And the verdict? It was surprisingly good! I used Thousand Island dressing, and TI plus cheddar cheese is always good on salads, so I guess it should have come as no surprise that this spread would come out so well. The green peppers gave it just the tiniest tang and the soybeans gave a little bit of a crunch to it. I'd say I have enough for four sandwiches, maybe six if I spread it thin. I already ate one sandwich before I wrote this, and I think I'll go back and eat another. In a day or two when I run out, I'll try its neighbor on the right: Carrot Filling.