The Food of WWII

If you want some WW II German recipes, pick up Wilhem Gehlen's Hitler's Home Front. Gehlen was 12 when the war ended but he was endured Allied bombings, strafings (it helped him to get to the front of a butcher's shop once b/c everybody ahead of him ran for cover - he ran for the front door). He became a runner for a quad gun battery and this entitled him to eat at their mess. Not that their cook was trained by the German army as a cook. He worked at a funeral home as a civilian and had no cooking skills. As school children they were taught to forage and he learned about edible plants. His book covers a lot of ersatz (replacement/substitute) foods and has a lot of his mother's improvised recipes. It's not Julia Child French Chef stuff but it's what they had and they were grateful for it.

 

One of the British staples of WW2. My mother used to cook this regularly in the '70s, and I refused point-bloody-blank to eat it. Seems I wasn't the only one-
"Dressed tripe was a popular, nutritious and cheap dish for the British working classes from Victorian times until the latter half of the 20th century. While it is still popular in many parts of the world today, the number of tripe eaters, and consequently the number of tripe dressers, in the UK has rapidly declined. Tripe has come to be regarded as a pet food, as the increased affluence of postwar Britain has reduced the appeal of this once staple food."
Tripe - Wikipedia

 

My dad use to tell me after their GI meals...that scraggly looking Italian kids would go through the garbage cans looking for leftovers...something he never forgot.

 

Menudo! It's a Mexican tripe soup dish. They load it with hot spices and a Mexican friend told me the sweat helps them to purge the body of last night's alcohol. Being a teetotaler, I don't know how true that is or whether it works as a hangover cure. I'd eat it today but none of the "Mexican" restaurants in this area know how to make it. Too Anglicised.

 

Dbl tap

 

The Chinese do believe that. Do tell more about her varmint hunting. What & where?

 

Heard the same about goat curry. There's a Jamaican restaurant in Inverness does it as the house speciality, but never been brave enough to try it yet.

 

Interesting tid bit...
Australia's per capita beef and lamb consumption continues to be one of the largest in the world. Australian consumption of lamb was about 6.8kg in 2022, with the global average being 1.8kg, while the per capita consumption of beef was about 23.7kg in 2022, with the global average being 6.3kg
My understanding is that the US eats very little lamb?

 

Australian sheep are delicious!


Our famous Merino - Hundreds of years of breeding to get this magnificent animal:


85 pounds is 38.5 kilograms. Vs 23.7kg for Australians of beef.
Google: Australian beef is leaner by virtue of the All-Grass diet with a much more distinct fresh Grass-Fed flavor and sweeter aroma. US beef which will tend to be much lighter in color and fattier by virtue of grains being used more.
Australian beef cattle:





American beef cattle (awesome, healthy looking dudes):

 

Two dollar bill before we went to the gold coin...


Now if we are talking New Zealand - They are the sheep capital.
New Zealand is the second largest exporter of lamb meat in the world, only slightly below Australia, and also one of the top exporters of wool. Today the national sheep herd is far less than half of its peak of approximately over 70 million in the 1980s, having declined to only 26 million today. Only 26 million! They have a population of only 5 million people! So thats 5 sheep per person...!
Australia has 26 million people and 70 million sheep, thats only roughly 2 and a half sheep per person.

 

Menudo was/is also a popular boy band; I guess it sounds better than tripe

 

I've had some very good goat curry, try it!