FAT FOR BRITAIN

New Zealand Listener, Volume 15, Issue 366, 28 June 1946, Page 5

FAT FOR BRITAIN

Sir-May I comment briefly on Dr. Muriel Bell’s note in The Listener on the question of English point-rationing of cereal breakfast foods. (1) "Scotch" oatmeal is not rationed, but is exceedingly hard to find in the ordinary grocery. (2) The English just don’t like it anyway. If they make what they call portidge it is cooked with milk and suger and eaten with more. Consequently, the milk ration being usually two pints a week and sugar 80z. this would consume a hopeless quantity. (3) Those English who like the genuine article either get it from the stores or Harrods, or send to Scotland for oatmeal. (4) Breakfast cereals, being packaged’ goods requiring labour and paper, ate on. points. However, expensive as they ‘are in that way they take little preparation, and with fuel, gas, electricity always in a state of uncertainty .... or worse . «. + preparation in the home counts heavily. During war, with families demanding meals at weird hours and all different times for shifts, a breakfast any fool could get by shaking it on a plate was worth a lot. True, the milk and sugar question is acute there too, but does not seem to absorb as much as porridge. Various "porridge oats" are on

points, but mostly are of the quick-cool-ing type. I served from February, 1940, to the end of the war in the British Army as a hospital cook and spent»most leaves in hostesses’ kitchens wrestling with civilian ration-a very different matter from Army issue. May I beg Dr. Bell to use her influence to urge on the sending of ordinary frying fat. . . . That is far more urgent than fussing over butter coupons, One ounce of cooking fat a week means around half a teaspoon a day-and that doesn’t help much. I’ve used New Zealand dripping sent from my people to relations when it was nearly-a year old, and good as the day it was packed. The tins I save and send now evoke far more enthusiasm than any other item. It is hard to make the average New Zealander realise that the average Englishman does not use butter, but when on the ration he feels "entitled" and with war wages can afford his 20z. Margarine is far more important to the worker, being practically indistinguishable from butter and a fraction of the price. In peace he can use as much margarine as he likes. After the last war he learnt to prefer it to butter and New Zealand had much difficulty in selling her produce. We, in this war, had the 60z. of margarine butter for so long that we learnt to manage quite well, but when the cooking fat was at 20z. it was hard to fry things. And the loz. periods mre misery. One girl wrote recently "it’s clettie to pastry again," and with no fruit and not enough milk for the beloved miik pudding, pastry was a help, needing no or little sugar. And remember jam is

rationed too.

BRENDA

BELL

(Shag Valley). (Dr. Bell’s comment in reply to this letter was this sentence: "Every time I have fried potatoes, or fried fish, or fried bread, or white sauce made with cooking fat, or steamed pud* ding, or pastry or biscuits made with cooking fat, I feel for the British who can’t have these things on their miserable fat ration."’) ‘