Friday, January 8, 2010

It's a Friday in 1944, and today I ate...

Today started out pretty well. I got up earlier than usual and had a cup of coffee and a slice of toast with peanut butter before I went out on my run. It was also before I remembered that I was supposed to be following rations today. Oops. It wasn't all that big a drop though, since part of this breakfast was supposed to include toast and jam, so I guess I can pretend that I ran out of jam and had to use peanut butter. I'm not at all sure about the scarcity of peanut butter during wartime, but then again, there IS a recipe for peanut butter and bacon sandwich filling in my ration cookbook. Not sure how hungry I'd have to be to try that one. There are just some things that only Elvis should eat. For everything else, there's me.


I'm going to call this my White Breakfast. That's oatmeal made with water and sprinkled with top milk and currants. You can't see it but there's also cinnamon and brown sugar in it. I think you all know a hard boiled egg when you see one, so I don't have much to describe there, and that was my second cup of coffee for the day. As teensy as this meal looks, it did the job of filling me up and giving me enough energy for several hours, so I can't complain. It was a beautiful day today, another sunny mid-70s California winter, and I decided to enjoy my breakfast outside at my bistro table, watching the neighborhood come to life, which is always a good way to spend the morning.




I started getting hungry again about 2 pm, and made it even worse by absent-mindedly flipping through old food magazines. So I went home to make lunch, when really what I wanted to do was swing by a fast food joint and eat my lunch on the way to my next errand, but I didn't. I'm so proud of myself.

The last time I got the hankering to make ration food I made a great little sandwich spread out of cheese, soybeans and salad dressing, which sounds disgusting but turned out REALLY well. So well that I was very eager to try the sandwich filling next to it in the same cookbook, a filling made from soybeans and carrots, which actually sounds like it would be tastier. I like soybeans, I like carrots, and with a little mayo thrown in it soulds like it might actually make a pretty good salad or something, so much better-sounding than soybeans and cheese. But alas, this filling was nowhere near as tasty as the other. I think it needs more salt or maybe a shot of salad dressing to tang it up abit. But rules are rules, and rationing is tight, so I can't waste it. I'm going to have to eat it, but it's not going to be on my list of things to make again. It's not SO bad, it's not disgusting, just boring. But next time I'm definitely going with the cheese and soybean spread, or maybe the bacon and cream cheese.

The apple was tasty, and the two cookies are Almond cookies. Strangely enough, you do get to eat cookies with this rationing business, just not a great many of them.

Now here's the weird thing: I'M NOT HUNGRY. I was going to make dinner, but I'm just not hungry enough to eat it, and it's 9 pm. I mean, just look at this stuff! This doesn't look ike it would be enough to sustain me for one meal if I lumped it all together, but it kept me going ALL DAY! Maybe this is a quirk, maybe this is just one of those days where you don't get hungry, as rare as those days are. So perhaps tomorrow I'll be hungrier since I skipped dinner tonight, I don't know. Tune in tomorrow!

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