A BUTTER QUEUE AT TONYPANDY IN ·THE WINTER OF 1917
POTATOES IN PLACE OF FLOUR.
Mrs. Weigall gives a demonstration of the uses of the potato as a flour substitute
ETON BOYS AT WORK IN THE POTATO FIELD
Eton boys on rations
The proprietors of the tuck-shops in Eton have been asked not to serve the boys cakes, biscuits, rolls, and scones
February 9, 1917
Weekly allowance per head: bread 4lb (or 3lb flour for breadmaking), meat 2½lb, sugar ¾lb. The importance of bread-saving is occupying the attention of many economy experts since the announcement of voluntary rations, and it is regarded as likely to be the most difficult ration to save on, in view of the many forms in which wheat flour is used. People who use macaroni and forms of spaghetti to supplement meat lose sight of the fact that it is also a form of flour, and must be counted in the weekly limit.
Miss Margaret Dyer, head of the cookery section of King’s College for Women (Household Science Department), said yesterday that oatcakes have a special value in the saving of wheat. They can be easily cooked over an open fire or in the oven, and could be used in many cases to take the place of bread. They are excellent with cheese and good for children. At Queen Mary’s Hostel attached to King’s College the head cook, who holds the diploma of the College. suggested the use of very stale bread moistened with milk in the proportion of ¼lb to ¾lb of flour in making fig or date puddings. This plan, she said, not only saved a quarter of the usual quantity of flour, but made the puddings very light. She also suggested the use of more vegetarian dishes, such as vegetarian Irish stew made of all kinds of vegetables - dried peas, beans, fresh potatoes, &c, on a tomato puree basis and let, simmer until thick. The disadvantage of vegetarian dishes is that it is difficult to make an appetizing use of what is left over; meat, on the contrary, can be treated In many different ways - with rice, potatoes, haricot beans, or some other vegetable. The best way to prevent waste is to see that nothing is left that cannot be recooked in some form.
Miss Margaret Dyer, head of the cookery section of King’s College for Women (Household Science Department), said yesterday that oatcakes have a special value in the saving of wheat. They can be easily cooked over an open fire or in the oven, and could be used in many cases to take the place of bread. They are excellent with cheese and good for children. At Queen Mary’s Hostel attached to King’s College the head cook, who holds the diploma of the College. suggested the use of very stale bread moistened with milk in the proportion of ¼lb to ¾lb of flour in making fig or date puddings. This plan, she said, not only saved a quarter of the usual quantity of flour, but made the puddings very light. She also suggested the use of more vegetarian dishes, such as vegetarian Irish stew made of all kinds of vegetables - dried peas, beans, fresh potatoes, &c, on a tomato puree basis and let, simmer until thick. The disadvantage of vegetarian dishes is that it is difficult to make an appetizing use of what is left over; meat, on the contrary, can be treated In many different ways - with rice, potatoes, haricot beans, or some other vegetable. The best way to prevent waste is to see that nothing is left that cannot be recooked in some form.
The Headmaster of Eton has just notified the boys that they are to go on the war rations laid down by the Food Controller. In future every house must abide by these regulations and keep within the specified limit of bread, meat, and sugar per head. The proprietors of the tuck-shops in Eton have been asked not to serve the boys with food which would add to these rations, such as cakes, biscuits, rolls, and scones. Only chocolates and fruit may be bought outside the war rations. The boys have also been asked to cub down their tailor’s bills to the lowest possible amount. To prevent unnecessary railway travelling it has been decided to dispense with long leave this half. Two extra days will be added to the holidays instead.
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We must eat less
All over Europe the potato crop has partially failed, and in the United Kingdom we have had the worst potato crop for thirty years
February 17, 1917
A fortnight has passed since Lord Devonport, whose temporary indisposition is generally regretted, issued his appeal to the nation to limit its consumption of the three staple foods of bread (or flour), meat, and sugar. Precise statistics are not yet available regarding the response to the appeal, but there can be little doubt that it has had considerable results.
A great many people have reduced the size of their meals, and are honestly trying to fulfil the Food Controller’s wishes. Probably the total quantity of food consumed in the country during the last two weeks was appreciably less than in the preceding fortnight. At the same time, it is also reasonably certain that large numbers of households are still ignoring Lord Devonport’s prescription of voluntary rations, and are still eating more of the staple foods than they ought to do. The conscientious rigidly limit their consumption, while the indifferent and the greedy continue as in the old days of plenty. The impression prevails that the appeal has received least attention in rural districts and in the smaller provincial towns, but if this is the ease the explanation is simple. We believe that the whole nation, both urban and rural, will gradually respond to the call to eat less, as it has responded to every other call to sacrifice, if only the issue is placed constantly and clearly before it.
A great many people have reduced the size of their meals, and are honestly trying to fulfil the Food Controller’s wishes. Probably the total quantity of food consumed in the country during the last two weeks was appreciably less than in the preceding fortnight. At the same time, it is also reasonably certain that large numbers of households are still ignoring Lord Devonport’s prescription of voluntary rations, and are still eating more of the staple foods than they ought to do. The conscientious rigidly limit their consumption, while the indifferent and the greedy continue as in the old days of plenty. The impression prevails that the appeal has received least attention in rural districts and in the smaller provincial towns, but if this is the ease the explanation is simple. We believe that the whole nation, both urban and rural, will gradually respond to the call to eat less, as it has responded to every other call to sacrifice, if only the issue is placed constantly and clearly before it.
The defect of the Food Control Department is that it has not yet made its appeal sufficiently widespread and continuous. It has caught the ear of London and the great provincial cities, but has not been universally heard. The reason why the War Loan has been such an astonishing success is that those who were helping the Chancellor of the Exchequer mobilized every form of publicity in every corner of the land. Lord Devonport must imitate these methods, and must neglect no means of bringing home to the public the vital importance of the voluntary movement he has so successfully inaugurated. It may be that before very long we shall have to resort to the cumbrous and complex policy of compulsory rations for the staple articles of diet. We still trust this may not be necessary, for the attempt to improvise compulsory rationing on a wholesale scale may further complicate the already muddled system of distribution. Let us, however, at least see to it that the voluntary principle receives a fair trial. To this end Lord Devonport will have to resort to publicity on a far more elaborate scale than his Department has hitherto attempted.
Captain Bathurst, the Secretary to the new Department, cleared up a number of misapprehensions in his address to a meeting of women at the Adelphi Theatre on Thursday. He dwelt on the question of the deficiency of potatoes, which is becoming somewhat alarming, and he made the useful suggestion that there should be a voluntary potatoless day every week. If the farmers, the wholesale dealers, and the retailers do not rapidly adjust their differences about the price of potatoes, with or without the further intervention of the Department, we may soon find ourselves undergoing a succession of quite involuntary potatoless days. All over Europe the potato crop has partially failed, and in the United Kingdom we have had the worst potato crop for thirty years. Farmers and dealers alike declare that the prescribed prices are inadequate, and the potato trade appears to be on the verge of a serious deadlock. We can only hope that the anticipations of the Food Controller are well founded, and that the position will soon right itself.
Captain Bathurst very properly laid great stress upon the supreme importance of watching very closely the individual consumption of bread. The public have not yet realized that we are in more danger of a perceptible lack of bread than of meat. Bread and flour, cakes and pastries, are the articles, of food upon which vigilance should be primarily concentrated. We have grown so accustomed to a superabundance of bread and other flour-foods that many find a difficulty in observing Lord Devonport’s warning in this respect yet it is even more important just now to count and weigh our slices of bread or cake or pastry than our slices of meat. It does not yet seem to be generally understood, moreover, that Lord Devonport’s rations were not meant to be inflexibly adopted in the same proportions by all alike. Some classes, notably the agricultural population, eat more bread than others. Lord Devonport clearly laid down, and the point was again emphasized by Captain Bathurst, that the rations might be varied to include more bread, or more meat, according to individual requirements, provided that the total weight of the staple foods consumed did not exceed the prescribed quantities.
As to the question of “hoarding,” we doubt whether hoarding has been extensively practised, at any rate in the case of the staple foods. For example, hardly anybody could hoard sugar nowadays - if they wanted to, for the simple reason that even the official sugar ration is difficult enough to obtain. In the same way, people who attempt to buy staple foods by the hundredweight are not being supplied, and inquiries seem to show that there has not been during the last fortnight the wild rush for excessive quantities of food which occurred on the outbreak of war. When Captain Bathurst very rightly condemned hoarding it was noticeable that he limited his condemnation to “the supplies of staple food.” If a rich man is extravagant enough to purchase a considerable supply of pate de fois gras, he is at least not depriving the poor of their bread or their meat. There is, indeed, some reason in the contention that the well-to-do should not be discouraged from giving their normal orders for such expensive foods as remain on sale in the country, so long as they scrupulously refrain from using their wealth to obtain undue advantage in the specified staples, or in such cheap substitutes as rice and pulses and the commoner cereal breakfast foods. Such a course on their part ought to tend to ease the shortage instead of accentuating it. In any case, we may anticipate that the supply of imported luxury foods will not long be maintained, for they will probably find mention in the coming further restrictions upon imports about to be announced by the Prime Minister. As to game and the other costlier meats, as well as the dearer forms of fish, people who feel they can afford to purchase them should not be discouraged from doing so. These foods ought to be eaten when in season, and those who buy them are helping, and not hindering, if they regard them as substitute foods rather than extras.
Too much is being made of the difficulty about domestic servants, which should be solved, where it exists, when the whole problem is more generally understood. At the same time, the extraordinary multiplicity of meals and “snacks” in many kitchens ought to be drastically curtailed. If the rule of three modest meals a day, and nothing between them, were resolutely observed in every household in the land, both above and below stairs, we should all be doing a great deal to help Lord Devonport in his most difficult task.
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Hardly anyone foresaw when the war began how intimately its mighty issues would come to be associated with questions of food. Few of us realized that it would become necessary for a Minister to say, as Mr Bonar Law said yesterday, that in certain specified instances the Cabinet regarded the production of food as more important even than sending men to the Army. All the belligerents have shown grievous lack of foresight in questions relating to food, and we are not at all sure that in this country the public are by any means alive to the situation.
The relative attention paid to the consumption of meat and the consumption of bread and flour is a case in point. Large numbers of people are scrupulously watching their meat rations, but we fear that a scrutiny of the rations of bread and flour is not so general. There is evidence that the nation is really eating less meat, but not enough proof that it is stinting itself of bread to the requisite degree.
Captain Bathurst, the Secretary to the new Department, cleared up a number of misapprehensions in his address to a meeting of women at the Adelphi Theatre on Thursday. He dwelt on the question of the deficiency of potatoes, which is becoming somewhat alarming, and he made the useful suggestion that there should be a voluntary potatoless day every week. If the farmers, the wholesale dealers, and the retailers do not rapidly adjust their differences about the price of potatoes, with or without the further intervention of the Department, we may soon find ourselves undergoing a succession of quite involuntary potatoless days. All over Europe the potato crop has partially failed, and in the United Kingdom we have had the worst potato crop for thirty years. Farmers and dealers alike declare that the prescribed prices are inadequate, and the potato trade appears to be on the verge of a serious deadlock. We can only hope that the anticipations of the Food Controller are well founded, and that the position will soon right itself.
Captain Bathurst very properly laid great stress upon the supreme importance of watching very closely the individual consumption of bread. The public have not yet realized that we are in more danger of a perceptible lack of bread than of meat. Bread and flour, cakes and pastries, are the articles, of food upon which vigilance should be primarily concentrated. We have grown so accustomed to a superabundance of bread and other flour-foods that many find a difficulty in observing Lord Devonport’s warning in this respect yet it is even more important just now to count and weigh our slices of bread or cake or pastry than our slices of meat. It does not yet seem to be generally understood, moreover, that Lord Devonport’s rations were not meant to be inflexibly adopted in the same proportions by all alike. Some classes, notably the agricultural population, eat more bread than others. Lord Devonport clearly laid down, and the point was again emphasized by Captain Bathurst, that the rations might be varied to include more bread, or more meat, according to individual requirements, provided that the total weight of the staple foods consumed did not exceed the prescribed quantities.
Too much is being made of the difficulty about domestic servants, which should be solved, where it exists, when the whole problem is more generally understood. At the same time, the extraordinary multiplicity of meals and “snacks” in many kitchens ought to be drastically curtailed. If the rule of three modest meals a day, and nothing between them, were resolutely observed in every household in the land, both above and below stairs, we should all be doing a great deal to help Lord Devonport in his most difficult task.
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Some food questions
The Food Controller would do well to note that the sugar problem is gradually producing a great deal of exasperation
March 17, 1917
Hardly anyone foresaw when the war began how intimately its mighty issues would come to be associated with questions of food. Few of us realized that it would become necessary for a Minister to say, as Mr Bonar Law said yesterday, that in certain specified instances the Cabinet regarded the production of food as more important even than sending men to the Army. All the belligerents have shown grievous lack of foresight in questions relating to food, and we are not at all sure that in this country the public are by any means alive to the situation.
The relative attention paid to the consumption of meat and the consumption of bread and flour is a case in point. Large numbers of people are scrupulously watching their meat rations, but we fear that a scrutiny of the rations of bread and flour is not so general. There is evidence that the nation is really eating less meat, but not enough proof that it is stinting itself of bread to the requisite degree.
Yet it is no secret that the bread question is even more urgent and imperative than the meat question. Innumerable households pride themselves upon having adopted one or more meatless days, but are they weighing their bread? Are they cutting down the use of flour for cakes and puddings? The bread ration does not present a tithe of the difficulties of the meat ration. It contains no complications about bones and fat. It is not always easy to cut strict rations of meat, but everybody can check their bread ration to an ounce.
It is to the women of the country that we must look for greater vigilance regarding bread and flour. Mistresses of households are inclined to economize in meat first, because the price is far higher, and also because as a rule women consume less meat than men. They must realize that while it is important to save meat, it is even more important to save bread and flour.
Lord Devonport is now trying to encourage the eating of rabbits by altering their relation to the general meat ration. The rabbit, he says, contains a large amount of bone, and its flesh provides less sustenance than butcher’s meat. He therefore allows it to be reckoned at half-weight, or even less, in calculating the meat ration. This is a wise decision, because the rabbit was not taking its rightful place in our food supplies, for the precise reasons noted by Lord Devonport. We agree that the restrictions regarding the destruction of ground game might be further modified with advantage. The questions which most perturb the public mind just now, however, are those relating to potatoes and sugar.
lt is not sufficiently realized that we should probably have been in very much the same plight about potatoes at this juncture if the submarine had never been invented. In common with other countries, we are suffering from the partial failure of our potato crop, and not from the destruction of cargoes of potatoes on the high seas. Thc huge and necessary purchases of potatoes for the fighting forces are a further complication. We have been plainly warned that there are not enough potatoes to go round, and that an early exhaustion of the supply must be expected. At the same time the price of such substitutes as artichokes and onions, and even parsnips and swedes, is steadily rising. Yet a plain duty is now laid upon people who can afford to turn to substitutes for potatoes. It is not enough for them to have one or two potatoless days. All of us. who are able to do so should refrain almost entirely from buying potatoes, and should leave them for the poor. We shall merely be anticipating by a very few weeks that compulsory abstinence from potatoes which will soon be the common lot.
While the potato problem troubles the poor, the dearth of sugar is affecting all classes. The Food Controller would do well to note that the sugar problem is gradually producing a great deal of exasperation. Men and women all over the country want to know why it is that although they cannot in many cases obtain the sugar ration, or anything approaching it, the confectioners’ shops are still full of sweetmeats. The production of chocolates and sweetmeats of all kinds requires to be treated with far greater severity.
It is to the women of the country that we must look for greater vigilance regarding bread and flour. Mistresses of households are inclined to economize in meat first, because the price is far higher, and also because as a rule women consume less meat than men. They must realize that while it is important to save meat, it is even more important to save bread and flour.
Lord Devonport is now trying to encourage the eating of rabbits by altering their relation to the general meat ration. The rabbit, he says, contains a large amount of bone, and its flesh provides less sustenance than butcher’s meat. He therefore allows it to be reckoned at half-weight, or even less, in calculating the meat ration. This is a wise decision, because the rabbit was not taking its rightful place in our food supplies, for the precise reasons noted by Lord Devonport. We agree that the restrictions regarding the destruction of ground game might be further modified with advantage. The questions which most perturb the public mind just now, however, are those relating to potatoes and sugar.
While the potato problem troubles the poor, the dearth of sugar is affecting all classes. The Food Controller would do well to note that the sugar problem is gradually producing a great deal of exasperation. Men and women all over the country want to know why it is that although they cannot in many cases obtain the sugar ration, or anything approaching it, the confectioners’ shops are still full of sweetmeats. The production of chocolates and sweetmeats of all kinds requires to be treated with far greater severity.
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