How hard can it be?

What’s it really like to live on the ration? Claud Fullwood tried it for 40 days and discovered far more than more inventive uses for potatoes

I was working on a charity campaign about hunger, and to raise money and awareness, I decided to live on wartime rations for 40 days.

I chose rations partly for the victory rolls and jaunty headscarves, but also because in the Second World War, Britain faced real scarcity. I wanted to connect with the reality of scarcity, since I’d never experienced it.

I also knew that rations worked. They were boring, but nutritious. By 1943, Britain was eating a homegrown diet, seeing us through the war and beyond.

So, armed with recipes and a stiff upper lip, I prepared to feel hungry and find interesting things to do with potatoes.

I did feel hungry, and I got bored of potatoes. A particularly dark day was Spam Fritters Day. Tinned food was rationed, and the Spam cost most of mine. But I couldn’t choke it down and, to my shame, binned it. On the plus side, homity pie, packed with cheese, greens (and, yes, potatoes) became a family favourite.

Wartime recipes can be dated and dull, so I asked people for tips. One friend photocopied her mother’s wartime recipe book – a recycled notebook stuffed with information leaflets, kitchen notes and personal recipes. It was a precious heirloom I was overjoyed to receive. Others shared notes on how to make vegetable scrap stock, and tips for eking out meat rations. I quizzed my mum on her ability to conjure meals from leftovers. I learned that making do has its own magic: the empowering triumph of reaching the end of the week before the end of the food.

I shared some tips, too: several friends used my Gran’s soda bread recipe – which I felt was closer to what people would have been making using their rations

(it was flour, rather than bread, that was rationed), just because it was delicious.

A chef friend helped to plan rations menus that used the season’s best, turning uninspiring fare into feasts. I made pierogi, pitas and winter salads; and roasted apples topped with a sprinkle of sugar and a naughty jot of butter.

If we eat locally and seasonally, the planet can give us what we need: berries and greens in summer; roots, mushrooms and nuts in winter. There’s a connectedness we miss in year-round, on-demand supermarket environments.

Rations definitely get boring sometimes. There are a lot of oats, scant eggs, and no citrus. So it became important to find other ways to feed my inspiration. A board game, a walk with friends – these became vital moments of celebration and renewal. Connecting with others gave me energy, fresh ideas to bring to my kitchen and ingredients when they felt tired and repetitive.

I learned from Land Girls and evacuees, and friends who now live sustainably, trading, growing and sharing to create abundance from scratch.

Living on less can make you turn inwards and hold on to what you’ve got. But it doesn’t have to. We need food and community, and kindness.

During wartime rations, people reached out to share. Communities worked and struggled together. Living on less makes us need each other more. And if we invite people in, before we know it we’re enriching our lives in ways we never imagined.

The Rations Challenge: Forty Days of Feasting in a Wartime Kitchen by Claud Fullwood (Lion Hudson) is out now