Blossom: Keep Calm and Carry On

Any way you look at it, a bowl of porridge is not bacon and eggs.

This Frocktober – as in the last two years – I am returning to the 1940s for the month. Well, as much as is practical. I will be trying to wear the clothes, eat the food, live the lifestyle as much as possible.

The Darling Sisters decided to do this years ago for two reasons.

1)      When you own your own frock shop, wearing a new rock every day for a month is not all that difficult. (Three months isn’t that difficult, trust me.)

2)      We wanted to be inspired by the women in our past who did it tough, living, loving and laughing through one of the toughest decades in existence. Women who live through ovarian cancer do it tough, too. An early detection test would make all the difference in the war against this frightening illness. By doing it the hard way for a month, we want to honour the struggles, the humour and the courage of all those affected by ovarian cancer.

 A few years ago I sent myself ground rules for how to do this. Here they are, and please feel free to keep me on the straight and narrow if I stray from the path ...

1) Wear the clothes ... as much as possible. 

Frocktober is about frocks and that is how I will dress for most of the time. However, I wear a work uniform - I will not go into details for the sake of my beloved workplace, but suffice it to say it is an industrial sort of place, and although I am a 'shinybum' who very rarely comes to grips with the production line, I still wear practical woollen trousers, a cotton shirt, a cardigan and a pair of Very Serious Factory Shoes (which I love.) My Mum would tell me this is perfectly acceptable for the forties, given this was the type of uniform worn by so many women in the forties who went to work at the factories.

For the rest of the time, I may need to wear practical trousers from time to time - as women did seventy years ago - but I will get by in my small selection of forties-style clothing. HUGE knickers (sorry gentlemen, but it's true), stockings with seams, headscarves, bright red lippie because it's my patriotic duty to look nice, giant pinny for home because my patriotic duty to look nice does not include getting beetroot juice on my work blouse.

From experience, forties fashion is the Look That Goes Everywhere. In my forties duds I can go shopping, go to the cinema, go to parties, church, wherever, and look perfectly normal if a tiny bit more formal than many people. It is practical, modest and (apart from the dratted stockings) comfortable to wear.

2) Eat the food.

My family were in England during the war, and they had to cope with some fairly serious food rationing. It led to some extremely clever ways with economical cooking, menu planning and nutrition. It's popularly known that overall nutrition-related health improved during the second world war in England, as clever housewives with the assistance of the Ministry of Food worked hard to give their families maximum nutrition with maximum economy.

 After an agreement I made with my grandmother a few years ago, I will not be doing the fully-fledged British rationing. Why should she have gone through such a struggle, only to see me repeating it - by choice? We settled on Australian style nutrition, since this is where I live. The people who lived in my end of the world still had rationing but it was not as severe. In various parts of Australia at various times, rationed goods included meat, sugar, tea, petrol, clothing, dairy products, eggs ... yes, everything we like most.

Bye-bye for a month. Sob.

Australians were also mighty clever with making do, food-wise. I have several forties cookbooks, and economical cooking was the name of the game. Recipes made the most of cheap off-ends of meat, found clever replacements for milk and butter, and were heavy on locally-produced goods such as fruit (there was a glut in Australia, apparently, as we could not send our usual quantities to the 'motherland' in England due to the war, so Australians were encouraged to tuck into the fruit).

I can eat as much of this as I want. Phew.

A lot of my Australian recipes also include large amounts of local and bush foods - basically, anything you could grow or find yourself was pretty much off-ration so hurrah! I have a Tasmanian cookbook from the forties that teaches women how to cook fresh scallops and crayfish ... oh the trauma!

Lots of people around these parts kept their own hens and had veg gardens. So eggs were on the menu, not to mention local trout, feral rabbits, fresh vegetables ...

However for the spirit of the thing, I will be playing with recipes and dishes from other places ('foreign parts') because a month spent enjoying fricaseed lapin and local truffle honey just doesn't quite ring true, does it?

Er, also, I am not altogether wonderful with large amounts of cow milk. So if I replace that with soy, you won't dob, will you?

3. Live the lifestyle ... save, save, save.

Obviously I will be using my computer, digital camera etc. I don't own a scullery with a copper and mangle, so I will be forced to go with the washing machine. I don't own a wood-burning stove so my gas-and-electric is the alternative.

I take modern medications and obviously will continue, and over my cold, dead body will anybody remove my electric toothbrush and dental floss. Dental hygiene is important.

However to the best of my ability I will be keeping to the carry-on, make-do-and-mend, eat-for-Victory spirit of the age.

One of the main efforts that Australians at home could make towards the war effort was to save. Save food, save fuel, save petrol, save electricity. Save water, energy, recyclable materials. Economy was a powerful weapon and we threw ourselves into it as a nation, body and soul. (Right?)

Over the past few years I have discovered that the forties lifestyle is very economical. Our household expenditure goes down as we only purchase what we need. My credit card gets a month's little holiday. I don't buy new clothes, I make everything (especially my stockings) last as long as possible, I don't waste much.

So at the end of the month, apart from asking you all to donate towards my efforts, myself and my husband, the Captain, will donate a big chunk of the money that we have saved on household expenses this month.

Aren't you tempted to do the same?

4. Bloggity blog-blog.

Watch this space. I will do my best to bring you my month in the forties. I promise to share experiences, recipes and photos to the best of my ability.

In return, I hope you will share with me your own thoughts, ideas, recipes and  - I hope - your donations.

Here's where I ask you for money.

There is a whole team of us working on Team Darling, and any and all of us would greatly appreciate your donations. It's a good cause - a wonderful cause.

Here's where you can donate: Team Darling's Frocktober page
Here's where you can find out more about the Darling Sisters

Thank you for reading - and stand by for the first day of Frocktober.

XXXOOO
Blossom Darling