Food and Rationing

Potato Soup + Potato Salad

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Who Doesn’t Love Potatoes?  

    For my Food and Rationing assignment, I chose to go with something that involves potatoes all the way. You can probably already tell I’m a potato lover! As I was looking through the recipe index of WWII recipe’s, I had come across several interesting ones that caught my eye. The desserts really stood out to me as well. It was really cool to see how civilians worked with the very limited, and rationed portions  of ingredients they were given weekly. Through this assignment, I was really able to differentiate and compare how food was made in the past, compared to the present. 

Lets Dive into the Making of the Potato Soup!

Potato soup ingredients:

1½ lb potatoes.

1 stick celery, a few spring onions

2 tablespoonfuls chopped parsley

1¾ pints of vegetable water or water

1 teacup of milk or household milk.

Directions:

Step 1: Slice up the potatoes and celery into small portions.

Step 2: Boil celery and potatoes into boiling salt water.

Step 3: Wait until they are very soft. After, mash the potatoes and celery together. Make sure to mash well, as it is going to be very thick!

Step 4: Next, add milk. As you add the milk, mix everything together.

Step 5: Add the chopped parsley on top.

Potato soup is ready!

Final Product

Salad Time!

Potato salad ingredients:

Potatoes (diced)

Chopped celery

Chopped Parsley

Onions (diced)

Shredded cabbage

Salad Dressing

Directions:

Step 1: Dice up the potatoes.

Step 2: Dice up a small portion of onions, and mix them together.

Step 3: Chop up celery and parsley.

Step 4: Shred cabbage into thins.

Step 5: Mix everything together!

Step 6: Add dressing on top.

Enjoy!

Time to try!

Mhmm. Ive got to admit, both the soup and salad smelled delicious. As you can probably already tell, I was pretty excited to taste the final products. I was a bit worried about the soup, because I have never heard of, or tried soup with milk so this was different.

I tasted the soup. Honestly, it tasted horrible. I thought that it was very bland, lacked flavor, and the ingredients did not go well together. The combination of the potato and milk threw me off. However, the consistency of the soup was pretty thick, and looked appealing.

As it was time to try the salad, I was now a bit hesitant. However, the salad did not turn out to be so bad! It was pretty decent. Adding potatoes to the salad was interesting. The only one thing that was a downer in the salad was the cabbage. It tasted wierd to me. Overall, I was able to take a couple of bites of the salad. Plus, it looked very appealing to eat!

ThoughtsIt was super interesting to see these were actually some of the foods that civilians ate during WWII. Potato was one of the main substances that was used the most. The rationed portions really affected the way poeple ate, and had access to some ingrediants, while not to others. Personally, I did not like the soup, but surprisingly liked the salad. I believed the soup to be very bland. However, the people from WWII might have thought the soup to be the best dish ever!

3 Comments

  1. Saima,

    I am pleased to see that you made two recipes! And you are right in asking “Who doesn’t love potatoes?” Certainly the British did. Have you given any thought as to why potatoes were used so much? Also, you didn’t talk much about the cooking process of either of these dishes. What was it like? Did anything cause confusion? If so, why do you think this was? Also, why do you think the soup turned out so bland? Is it only because we are used to more flavorful food now?

  2. That’s amazing that you did two. And both of your dishes look amazing. It looks appealing to the eye and I am assuming that was the whole point. That it looks better than it taste. The dish is colorful and your dishes required way more ingredients than the recipe I choose to do.

  3. With out actually knowing the ingredients that went into preparation, I would have thought it would have been really tasty. It kind of looks like a New England Clam chowder. I bet with all the potato eating, the Brits probably set off any existing diabetes without even doing so.

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