1918 Rations and Nicer Subjects

My mother didn't break off her walking tour after all! Yesterday, to our delight she finished the first, nine-day stage of the journey from Berlin to Leipzig, took a bus, and returned to grace us with her presence. And this morning we all woke up early (before 9 o'clock, practically unheard of on a weekend!), ate bread rolls and croissants, drank coffee, and talked.

Last evening I'd read that food rations were introduced in the UK in 1918. So for the sake of my history experiment I'd weighed out my day's ration of sugar, butter and tea into little teacups and a saucer that I lined up at my spot at the breakfast table, and resolved to buy a package of bacon. Besides eating an ahistorical croissant this morning, I therefore made porridge, regretfully using water instead of milk, and used a little of the sugar ration to redeem the thin taste.

After tidying the kitchen, and taking out the compost and the regular garbage into the heating atmosphere (it was 24 degrees Celsius or thereabouts at first, reaching apparently toward 30 degrees later in the day) of the courtyard, I went grocery-shopping. Since rations were distributed, apparently, more in shops than in markets, I visited the littler organic food store near our apartment building.

I bought red currants, a melon with lovely deeper green flesh, apricots, early potatoes and carrots there, as my 'civilian ration.' Then I went to a larger organic food store to buy bacon for my 'civilian ration', but also two tins of gulash soup to approximate the tinned beef and turnip and carrot soup that British soldiers would receive, and the only whole grain salty biscuits I could find, to approximate army biscuits.

For lunch, then, I grated the carrots and added celery for a cold salad; boiled the potatoes; fried the bacon using a fraction of my butter ration; and heated the tinned soup. After the soup had boiled, I crumbled the biscuits into items portion, my main complaint being that it was over-salted. For reasons of frugality, I fried most of the potatoes in the remaining bacon grease and they became crispy and flavourful. Besides I mixed cocoa with a little sugar and poured boiling water on it, in imitation of a soldier's ration.

Feeling well fed especially considering what a hot day it was, I also enjoyed talking with my mother and brothers and sister, who had come over bearing gifts: After Eights that had melded together into a semi-solid and intriguing mass, Cola gummies sprinkled with sugar, and orange-marmalade-filled Jaffa cakes. All anachronistic, especially considering that luxury chocolates were banned during 1918, but I did take an After Eight even before my experiment had ended.

A while after T. left again, we had a teatime of coffee, melon, leftover bread rolls, and further conversation.

And, for the sake of my mother's birthday, we ate an anachronistic pound cake. (I ate it with my rum ration, which to be honest I'd rather looked forward to.)

Besides I read part of the Berliner Zeitung, kept knitting my second sock — I am at least 3.5 inches into it — and read books. The Death of Vivek Oji, part of my aunt's gift of a book subscription, is finished. I also read The Tale of Jemima Puddleduck. Reeling from the disturbing themes of women deprived of authority over their own reproduction, predators, forcible confinement and vigilante justice, I realized that I might be overthinking things, or that a few of Beatrix Potter's books are arguably far more child-friendly than adult-friendly. In terms of other children's authors of her time, L. Frank Baum was still publishing Wizard of Oz books in the 1910s; I might read one or two of them after Beatrix Potter, but frankly expect similar 'surprises.'

At 7:30 p.m., I'd finished my 1910s experiment for today, and watched the television news: Not-so-good news: heavy rain is forecast, a little perturbing in view of the recent deadly flooding in western Germany, but not expected to be anywhere near as severe. Good news: the first 'real' Christopher Street Day parade in Berlin since before the coronavirus pandemic took place today.