Document nine
Food in wartime Dartford
I can't remember much about food, but I was never hungry. Everything was rationed, of course, so children had the basic necessities of life and we didn't know anything else existed. 'Waste' was not a word in the dictionary. I remember going shopping with my mum and she would buy a small piece of butter and cheese which was weighed on scales, and a little sugar each week - I think you had to take your own paper bags. She would then hand over a ration book and some 'points' would be cut out - so many ounces per person per week - a little more for children, I think.
I recall never being allowed to have butter on my bread if I had jam (a real treat!). We did have eggs though, because we kept chickens at the bottom of the garden and I can remember the smell of a pail of household waste, like cabbage and potato peelings mixed with some powdery stuff called 'chicken meal' being cooked in the kitchenette for the chickens to eat. It was foul! All vegetables were fresh and were grown in the garden - the grass was dug up to grow food, and in the allotment.
I don't remember much about meat during the war, but we must have had some!...I don't think we had much fruit, except apples. I remember seeing a banana for the first time when I was about 8 or 9, and then I didn't know how to eat it! As far as sweets went, they too were rationed until well after the war and a Mars Bar would be sliced like a loaf of bread and I had a slice each day for a week! My mum would also make baking powder bread which tasted like a sort of cake; we had suet pudding to fill us up!
PERSONAL REMINISCENCES OF JOAN SHILABEER (DARTFORD)