That's life
World War II dining returns, briefly
To commemorate the 60th anniversary of D-Day, the Orangery restaurant at Kensington Palace and the New Armouries restaurant at the Tower of London will feature a special World War II luncheon and afternoon tea menu, beginning June 6 and continuing for a year.
Both menus are inspired by original 1940s recipes, which ingeniously used the limited amounts of ingredients available during wartime rationing.
One typical week's allowance per person included three pints of milk, 12 ounces to one pound of meat, one egg, three-fourths of an ounce of cheese, four ounces of bacon, two ounces of tea, eight ounces of sugar, two ounces of butter, and two ounces of cooking fat. Meals eaten away from home were "off ration" and a popular alternative for people who could afford it. The ability of the rich to enjoy almost prewar quality dining led to such resentment that the government prevented restaurants from charging more than five shillings a meal.
An average wartime menu at the Tower of London might include:
• Lettuce, parsley, and potato soup.
• Salad of chicken, broad beans, cucumber, and lettuce with a mustard and tarragon vinaigrette.
• Potato salad with eggless mayonnaise.
• Treacle tart.
• Glass of rhubarb wine.
• Cucumber and watercress sandwich.
• Rock cake and plum jam.
• Carrot cake.
Many Americans love to collect recipes - handwritten favorites, things they've clipped from magazines and newspapers - but then they manage to lose them. Or they pile them into a drawer that gets so full it's difficult to find anything in it. A new organizer called Recipe Bites, however, might provide an answer.
Recipe Bites (www.recipebites.com) provides a quick, easy way to catalog and file recipes. Its binder is constructed of material that resists water and scuffing, and each section is easily customized with 12 preprinted tabs ranging from appetizers to holiday recipes.
All sections also contain recipe finder pages that allow you to write down where your favorite recipes came from. A measurement conversion chart is a handy bonus.
Recipe Bites includes 50 transparent sheet protectors in three sizes. The transparent plastic pages wipe clean, keep recipes flat, and are perfect for archiving handwritten family favorites. They also prevent newspaper recipes from turning yellow and fading.
