Eating for Victory and Make Do and Mend

Two new additions to my library. Eating for Victory and Make Do and Mend.

These two books are a collection of reproduction pamphlets that were handed out by the British Ministry of Food and the Ministry of War to the common folks during the second world war on how to live on the ration system. These two books also are a very good peek into what our friends in Great Britain had to deal with in their daily lives on the home front. Literally everything was rationed, from cloth and furniture, to food, fuel, and metal. Somethings were heavily restricted, while other items were non-existent due to the Nazi blockade. Over half of their food pre-war was imported from the U.S and other countries. The war in itself changed the way their agriculture worked. Everything was tightly restricted and controlled, and these two books are a couple of examples showing what they had to go through.

Eating for Victory covers the food rationing system and gives a lot of recipes and meal plans with foods that are heavily rationed. It shows you how to plan meals, how to work with new foods like dried eggs and dry milk. With us today... Well if you think about it having things like food storage is really food rationing, you are working with only the stuff that you have if you can't get to the store. Most of the items in this book should be in everyone's food storage. They have recipes using stuff like butter, sugar, flour, oils, salt, and food additions that would add any sort of flavor into dishes that would be bland.

Make Do and Mend is the companion book to Eating for Victory. This book covers home heating, basic home repairs, clothing maintenance and all the ration coupon rules and regulations. There is just one pamphlet alone that covers how to wash your clothes so they don't wear out as fast. The Mrs Sew - and - Sew pamphlets show you how to darn and repair rips, tears and holes in clothes. This book also shows you how to conserve fuel if you use gas or coal cooking ranges (I think there are several here that might be interested in that!) There is so much more in this book that what I am just telling you here.

Both of these books are very good, if not only for the historical value, but also for other prepping ideas. The only few downsides to these books are: 1. Some of the information is old since we are talking about the mid 30's to mid 40's era here, especially the health information so keep that in mind. 2. They do use different measurements than we do, especially in cooking, if you can get around that, you would be doing fine. Personally though, I think these books are good to have in a prepper's library. I got both of these on Amazon, though I don't remember what I paid for them, they were not real expensive though.