Recipes, Rationing, Recyling

I note from my diary that this week in 1952 tea was removed from the British government's list of rationed commodities.  My parents married in April of the following year. 

Being possessed of northern thrift and well read, our mother used to cut out recipes and paste them in a green book passed down to her in turn from her mother, Evelyn (nee Burrows) of Market Street, Hyde.  The recipes were a regular feature in a newspaper which was then printed and produced in London and Manchester, the Manchester Guardian.  Manchester's newspaper quarter now boasts fashionable shops and eateries.  I still have the green book.  One memorable recipe starts "Now that cheese is off the ration..."

I am cutting out and saving recipes too.  These are not from the Guardian but from The People's Friend, a magazine that did not feature in our family although Women's Weekly, famed for its knitting, certainly did.  I don't stick them in the cherished and still consulted green book, which is now beginning to fall apart, but on file cards which I keep in a grey box in the kitchen. 

I can recommend The People's Friend.  An older customer over the street reads it and passes it on to another neighbour.  She in turn passes it on to me.  I snip out spring recipes in October and warming winter dishes in July.  No matter, they all go in the file.

It may be some time before I attempt the knitting, however....