Wartime cheese pudding

[Graye]

My Grandma Leah (at the age of nearly 96) has discovered the internet and email - my son has set her up with a PC and broadband and she is as happy as Larry! She is an excellent typist, is definitely still 100% mentally and has a huge thirst for knowledge and mental stimulation. I think her only problem is slight deafness which of course isn't a factor with her computer.

In the last few days I have been picking her brains about life and cooking in the war years. She was born in 1912 so was a married woman with a family to feed in the 1940s, living in Birmingham. Her husband was away in the Air Force and she had to work during the day in a munitions factory and cater for 4 children and her elderly father, a Yiddish-speaking Polish emigré tailor who never learned to speak English. They were Jews and had to work round the rationing as best they could. Meat was no problem as they were registered with a kosher butcher, although not a large amount was available. Apparently Jews could also exchange bacon rations for extra cheese. Although this was not kosher cheese I understand the local rabbis decided to declare it so to make life easier! The back garden was turned into a mini-allotment and her father grew onions, beetroot, garlic, herbs, potatoes and cabbages. He used some of these as bartering tools amongst the neighbours for extra things they needed.

She found me this recipe for Cheese Pudding and we tried it tonight - it was good, if a little bland. She says they sliced tomatoes on the top when they were available - which wasn't often. Apparently this was a very popular dish when the meat ration ran out and was served up with lots of root vegetables.


Cheese Pudding for 4

Half a pint milk or household milk (household milk was reconstituted powdered milk)
2 level tablespoons of dried egg mixed with 4 tablespoons water (I used two fresh eggs)
4 oz grated cheese
1 large cupful of breadcrumbs
salt and pepper
quarter teaspoon dried mustard.

Add the milk to the egg mixture and stir in the other ingredients. Pour into a greased dish and cook for about 30 minutes in a moderately hot oven until brown and set.

What amazes me is the small amounts of food available. No wonder there were few overweight people in those days.

[Rosendula]

What a wonderful story, Graye, and thank you for the recipe - one I will try in the near future

Please pass on my best wishes to your Grandmother . Are you going to invite her to join Ish? She probably wouldn't learn much from us, but I for one could use some of her wisdom. With your 96 yr old Grandmother and my 14 yr old daughter (BabyChrissy1993) being members, that would make one pretty impressive membership list Oldfella would feel like a spring chicken again

[oldfella]

What a great story, and from a spring chicken give your gran a hug from me, and I see that she still finds that life has new things to offer. to all you Grandmas out there in ish land.

[Shirley]

Fab story - it would be lovely to hear more, and it's so important to listen to the grandmothers/grandfathers/aunts/uncles to get this sort of information.

I made something similar to this following a recipe from the Cranks cookbook - it was very tasty!

[Green Aura]

Your Grandma sounds great - I wish I could get my mother (83) as interested. Get her registered here to give us more hints in living more simply. I'll bet there are plenty of people around feeling the pinch at the moment.

I'm definitely going to try the recipe too. Sounds lovely.

[red]

excellent

I always think the internet is perfect for elderly people.. in the future we shall all be here - you wont be able to move for silver surfers

[Graye]

We are still working on perfecting her understanding of MSN at the moment. I did try it with a webcam and mike but she struggles with the sound a bit. As she thinks and types quickly we are doing fine with MSN - I just need to keep reminding her to send occasionally before she runs out of space! She would be fun on here, she would have you all darning your "hose" as she puts it, and "making something out of nothing" in no time!

She has a big old book with all sorts of handwritten recipes in, the earliest in some sort of shorthand Polish which were her mother's from the 1920s when they first arrived in the UK (I think Leah was about 11 at that time and spoke not a word of English). I'm asking her all sorts of things and copying her replies - something tells me there is a book in here somewhere with her funny stories of old Jewish ladies, tricks on the rabbi and the lengths they went to "to put on a good face". I remember some of the really old ladies from my youth - they always wore a wig, lots of make up with copious amounts of face powder and had fur collars on their coats, big gold brooches and lockets with pictures of their families inside and a kettle on the stove at all times. They all seemed to live in a small area of back street Birmingham which I suppose became "little Warsaw" to them.

She's now tracking down a spicy stew they used to make with beetroots so I'll post it if she comes up with it later. She doesn't "do" scanning or printing so she will have to type it up once she locates it.

[Milims]

Greye your granny sounds wonderful! The cheese pudding is a must try - and I'll bet it's the good basis for some yummy adaptations. I can't wait for the spicy beetroot stew - I love beetroot and I have a good local source at the moment. Until you've encouraged her to join you'll just have to post her gems for her!

[snapdragon]

That's brilliant, internet is good for Grannies

I make cheese bread and butter (ish) pudding that I learned from my Mum who was a teenager during WWII it serves four and has a single rasher of cooked bacon chopped up in it, apart from that and some cayenne pepper (my addition) it has the same ingredients

[farmerdrea]

Made this for breakfast for the children yesterday, and they scoffed it down and wanted seconds! I used homemade chevre instead of a grate-able cheese and bread which had lots of seeds in. It was delicious, and will become a staple around here.

Thank you! Simply brilliant, brilliantly simple.

Cheers
Andrea
NZ

[JulieSherris]

I'll give this a bash too - sounds yummy!

But it reminded me that mum used to make cheese & potato pie quite regularly.... served with HP sauce & bread & butter.... lovely!

I shall schedule this for one night next week I think.... relive my childhood years

Julie

[Graye]

I'm glad it was a useful recipe. I made it with tomatoes and paprika on top and finely chopped onions added to the mix and I thought it was great.

I have just had what is probably the most hilarious hour of my life chatting with Leah on MSN. Her neighbour, a lady I remember well called Ribka Glass (also in her nineties), was also there and I persuaded them to switch on the mike of the webcam. I've recorded the conversation and must try to transcribe it at some point. As they are both on the deaf side I was typing and they were mainly speaking as I tried to extract the spiced beetroot stew recipe from them. It's obviously in Polish in the scrapbook and they were bickering about the translation, the spelling of the English equivalents, etc, etc. I thought I was reasonably au fait with a lot of Yiddish expressions but I learned a few new ones this morning. Anyway, the upshot was that the recipe calls for kvass, a sort of very mildly alcoholic rye bread beer which is usually home made. Once I get to the bottom of the recipe I'll be sure to post it!

I have to add this bit as a PS. Shortly after I wrote the above Leah and I had another ten minutes on MSN. Her friend had gone home and Leah told me she was in fact German rather than Polish and spoke no Polish anyway. In fact, as Leah pointed out, she hardly spoke any herself until she took in two Polish girls as lodgers about three years ago and had to dredge hers from the depths of her memory. I think the girls actually prefer to speak in English now but they keep her very happy nevertheless. I suspect the poor souls will be called on to do some translating tonight!

[StripyPixieSocks]

I am growing more and more interested in life during the World Wars so this made interesting reading.

I was never interested before but recently I was trying to find out the history of out house and who lived here and I stumbled upon a letter sent during the war between two girls who mentioned that our road was bombed during the Blitz and it got me more and more curious.

I always did enjoy my Grandparents stories about what they got up to during the was and my Nana still cooked alot of the meals she used to during the war and I guess that's where I learned my thriftiness from...

Sadly my dietician would flip if I ate something with eggs, cheese and milk in it but it looks tasty :)

[Milims]

We just had cheese pudding with roast mixed veg - very very yummy! Well that's another dish added to the weekly menu!

[Wombat]

Got to cut down on my cheese because of the cholesterol, bugger. Loved the stories though.

Nev