Blossom: Day Two, in a stew

Back to the factory.

Tuesday 2 Frocktober

Outfit

• Work uniform (at work)
• Pinny and headscarf (at home)

 Menu

• Breakfast -boiled egg, fruit
• Lunch - shredded salad, cheese and salad sandwich
• Afternoon tea - fruit
• Dinner - Irish stew, cabbage

Mood

• Still hopeful

Back to work! I like to get into work as early as I can, and have my breakfast at work: I sit at my desk when it's quiet, nibble away and get as much work done as I can. I call it my 'hour of power'.

So rather than porridge, which isn't very portable, I brought another version of Forties Takeaway: the hard boiled egg.

Eggs were plentiful here, where many people owned their own chooks. My poor family, in England back then, would have longed for the breakfast I had: a lovely boiled egg and some fresh fruit. In England we were rationed to a single fresh egg per week (!), as the land, and the grain to feel chooks, were needed elsewhere for other wartime services ... so bye bye backyard chooks. Instead of fresh eggs, people back in England used horrid powdered eggs. I believe they tasted a lot like chemicals and almost exactly unlike eggs. And after the war, when fresh eggs were back on the menu, so many kids had grown up with the taste of powdered eggs, they actually refused to eat them fresh. Poor kids.

I bought the rest of my food to work with me too. This is my usual habit anyway, I never buy lunch at work. I pack a Thermos flask of coffee (today it was stovetop coffee, of course) and sandwiches, fruit, hardboiled eggs or leftovers from the previous night's meal. Apart from the quality of the coffee, I must confess not a lot will probably change there.

I do like to eat food that is, you know, recognisable as food. Whole food, I suppose you'd call it. That's because I'm a very, very lucky person who has access to - and can afford - a lot of fresh local wholefoods, plus the time and opportunity to cook it. That makes me unusually lucky, these days, so I make the most of my very unfair good fortune. But during Frocktober I do want to explore some of the new, thrilling, packaged foods that kept people going during one of the hardest times in history. A sort of VICTORY CUISINE series. Stand by for the first one tonight.

Lunch was straightforward: sandwiches and salad. In the sangers, a very little cheese and a lot of lovely bitter greens which Need Using Up.

When I got home, via the shops where I stocked up on a few more important goods, I popped on my headscarf and pinny to keep my clothes clean and my hair out of the cooking and free of cooking smells. I rolled up my sleeves and got cooking.

Dinner tonight is that very traditional standby, Irish Stew.

I had some lamb chops in the freezer (Using Them Up). Two lamb chops, to be precise. Back in the (cough-cough)ies when I grew up, many people would probably have bunged them on the barbie and had one - or two - each. But I decided I could make these two lamb chops last at least four adult meals.

I also had - surprise - a lot of potatoes and carrots. (Spuds and carrots will be a recurring theme of this blog. You have been warned.)

I have an old, old recipe for Irish Stew that consists basically of mutton, carrots, spuds and water. I have a somewhat newer one that involves at least eight lamb chops, carrots, potatoes, fresh thyme, ham hock, homemade stock, best butter and parsley.

This is somewhere in-between. I think it is appropriate for wartime. It uses very little meat, ekes it out with a lot of nutritious, yet cheap and easy to grow, veg, and also includes one very special ingredient.

Okay, here we go.

Blossom's Irish Stew

Firstly, the vegetables.

Why, yes. This IS a lot of carrots and potatoes. Get used to it.

Chop 'em up. A forties woman like me has probably been labouring hard at the factory all day, and has raced home to try and get this slow-cooked delight on in time to feed her loved ones. So stuff it: just hack them to bits. They'll all fall apart in the pot anyway.

Next, the meat.

Please note the quantity of meat compared to vegies. That is two small pieces of bacon and two lamb chops.

The posh recipe for this calls for (fabulous organic local blah blah) butter. the very old recipe calls for rendered-down sheep fat. I used vegetable oil - it is the forties.

Brown your sheep. Then remove it and set it aside.

Then brown your bacon, and pop it aside, too. (By the way, bacon is optional. It depends on how many coupons you still had, how nice your hair and makeup looked, and how vulnerable the butcher was feeling that day.)

To me, that looks like a very sad quantity of bacon.

 Chuck in your vegies and stir them around until the onions get nicely browned.

There is a lot of brown forties food.

Browning vegies.

Pop your lamb chops back in the pan.

Then, add your stock. Now, to make stock, you need two kilos of organic cruelty-free, free-range locally raised lamb bones, locally-grown organic leeks, onions, carrots and celery, pick a large bouquet garni from your herb garden. Take out your vintage Le Creuset stockpot, warm up the Aga and ...

HA! Who do you think you are? THERE'S A WAR ON. That's a huge waste of time, energy and resources.

What's good enough for Blossom is good enough for you, Sunshine. All you need is ... THIS.

The sound effect I would like you to imagine you hear right now is a heavenly, angelic  'WHAAAAAAH'.

Stock cubes were a wonderful invention that saved many a wartime housewife a lot of energy, prevented hungry families, horrible fights, and a massive waste of vital household fuel plus scraps that could have fed a lot of crucial-to-the-national-diet pigs. Modern chefs snootily eschew the humble Oxo - but next time you use one, remember that this simple stock-starter probably helped a helluva lot of women to cope just a bit better with a world gone utterly nasty. No guilt. Just use the Oxo and dedicate all that extra time to something much nicer - like learning stuff or cuddling your pets.

Bung a few Oxos into a jug and make them up with water from your kettle. That's probably all that your aching, factory-wearied arms can manage anyway. Pour enough into your pot to mostly cover the vegies.

From this point onwards, it's really quite simple. Thank you, Oxo.

Let the stew simmer for an hour or so, or until the lamb chops become super-tender and break down into lots of lovely, slow-cooked pieces that permeate this vegie-rich stew.

Serve with cabbage, beans or any other vegies you fancy.

This recipe should make up four to six fairly hearty grown-up meals, depending on how many vegetables you can cram into the meals. I would suggest two adult dinners and at least two lunches. Sheep don't grow on trees, you know. Pad it out with extra bread or potatoes if you can - just make the meat last as long as possible. Then next time you pop on that extra spritz of perfume, ensure your stocking seams are straight and fix your lippie, then head over to the butcher, he will be a lot happier to see you. (Find out if he has any sausages hidden under the counter. If he does, can I have some?)

Frock you later,

Blossom