There are several initiatives around looking at how ‘wartime recipes’ can actually teach us a thing or two when it comes to managing on a low food budget:

10 Wartime Recipes From a Bygone Era – Insanely Good

Including from the Reader’s Digest:

Karen Burns-Booth takes us through her favourite vintage wartime recipes, not just for the historical interest they evoke, but for health and thrift reasons too.

Retro recipes: 10 Thrifty wartime dishes – Reader’s Digest

There are lots of books exploring the issues and offering some recipes:

The Ration Book Diet: Amazon.co.uk: Mike Brown, Carol Harris, C J Jackson: 9780750968225: Books

This is from Carolyn Ekins and her ongoing very interesting experiment:

The 1940’s Experiment

Frugal Wartime Recipes to See You Through Challenging Times!

One of my big interests is cooking simple food as frugally as possible..I do like the notion of mending and making do. I guess this has lead to my interest in domestic life during WWII especially how families and the housewife adapted to food rationing. I’ve been cooking wartime recipes for 10 years now – its a huge passion of mine. It gives me satisfaction that one can eat healthily and spend so little (and it has helped my family and I survive some very lean times in these past 5 years)

I am CONVINCED we have so much to learn from this period of time and I truly believe that by following a rationed diet from the 1940’s will improve my health, allow me to lose weight and above all be a LOT kinder to our planet (sourcing local foods, using less imported goods, less packaging etc)

About – The 1940’s Experiment’

Are you worried about the state of the world right now? Have you been asking yourself: What if I lost my job? What if I became ill and couldn’t work? What if my income halved?

In a society of abundance, most of us in the developed world never have to worry if there will be food in the shops to buy, and when we run out we simply pop out and stock up, no queuing, no anxieties. Are we becoming detached from knowing how to cope with restriction and how to make do with less?

Join the “Living on WW2 Rations Experiment” now. Your country needs people like you to share your experiences. Will you give it a go? Whether for 1 day, 1 week or 1 month, it will I’m sure, teach us all something

(20+) Living on WW2 Rations 1940sExperiment.com | Facebook

picture: Amazon.com: The 1940s Experiment : Carolyn Ekins: Kindle Store