To Gwendoline, it was a plan.

The Kitchen Front on the wireless droned on. “As you all know, sugar is perhaps our biggest challenge. Because it is entirely imported, sugar, more than other foodstuff, has been affected by the U-boat blockades. We have to find alternatives. Honey, treacle, syrup are on the Points Plan—you get twenty-four points a month to spend as you like. Sweet vegetables can also be used. Cooked carrots have a lovely natural sugariness. For example, you can make goat’s milk palatable for children by mixing it with pureed carrots.”

“Pureed carrots?” Audrey grimaced, going back to her berries. “You can bet Ambrose Hart has never tried goat’s milk, let alone mixed it with carrots.”

Alexander came over. “Funny how dear Ambrose lives so close by in the village and yet we’ve barely seen him since Dad left for war. You’d have thought he’d be a bit of help to us, being a good friend of Dad’s. You could give him some proper cooking tips, Mum.”

“He’s a busy man, Alexander,” Audrey said.

“Why don’t you ask him for a job on his radio program?”

She laughed. “They don’t let women do jobs like that.”

“But Ambrose doesn’t know a thing about cooking. Didn’t he used to do a travel program? One minute an expert on the French Riviera, the next on pureed carrots.”

Audrey glanced at the wireless. “That’s how the world works. Men who’ve never been in a kitchen in their lives tell us women what to do. The Ministry of Food thinks we women are mindless worker bees in need of a queen. Or a king, in this case.”

“You’d be much better on The Kitchen Front than him, or any other BBC presenter. Listen to him! He’s just regurgitating government propaganda. Next he’ll be telling us how food rationing is making us all terribly healthy.”

“Wise housewives know that the Ministry of Food has your health in mind…”

They both began laughing as Ambrose Hart expounded eloquently on a subject about which he knew absolutely nothing.

Audrey’s Homity Pie

Serves 4

For the pastry

? cup margarine, butter, or lard 1 cup flour

For the filling

4 large potatoes

2 large leeks, chopped A little butter or margarine 2 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley and thyme, or 2 teaspoons if dried Any other leftover cooked vegetables or scraps of meat 1 egg, whisked

? cup shredded cheddar (more or less according to how much you have left from your rations) 1 teaspoon English mustard Salt and pepper

Preheat oven to 400°F/200°C. Make the pastry by rubbing the fat into the flour, then binding it together with a little water. Roll it out and fit it into a greased 8-inch pie dish. Half bake it for 10 minutes, then remove it from the oven.

Turn up the oven to 425°F/220°C. Peel and chop the potatoes. Boil until cooked through, then drain, retaining their shape. Meanwhile, chop and fry the leeks in butter or margarine, adding the chopped parsley and thyme.

Add the cooked potatoes, any leftover vegetables or meat, the egg, half the shredded cheese, the mustard, and salt and pepper to the cooked leeks. Mix briefly over the heat, then pour the mixture into the pie dish. Top with the other half of the cheese and a sprinkle more thyme and pepper. Bake for 25 to 30 minutes, until the top is browned.

     Allow to cool, then cut into thick slices to go into a packed lunch. The egg holds the filling together, making it perfect as a lunch or nourishing snack.

Lady Gwendoline Strickland

A Wartime Cooking Demonstration, Fenley Village Hall

As she stood on the stage in the wood-paneled hall, Lady Gwendoline Strickland looked precisely as she should: her coiffured brown hair neatly rolled at the back of her neck and her dress conservative—nothing too extravagant or youthful. She was a thirty-eight-year-old lady, with a capital L, speaking to mere housewives. All in all, her air was one of high efficiency.

“Today I am going to demonstrate how you can make an elegant dinner party a glorious success well within your usual weekly rations.”

At a glance, nothing in Lady Gwendoline’s looks or manner resembled her older sister, Audrey. Her hair was a rich brown, her mouth thin, straight, and uncompromising. But beneath the mascara and makeup, the sisters shared the same eyes: blue and wide. Lady Gwendoline’s flickered impatiently around the room, as if inspecting it and finding it wanting.

If not precisely packed, no one could dispute that the event was popular. Both well-to-do matrons and working-class mothers sat in tight rows, their dresses beginning to show wear now that clothes rationing was entering its second year.

The public’s acceptance of food rationing was reasonable, the Ministry of Food told its demonstrators. After an initial spurt of confusion at the ration book system and the ensuing annoyance that they couldn’t make their usual meals, women seemed ready to adapt and experiment.

    Fear was goading them. The Nazis were at their door. Every food sacrifice was deemed crucial. Vegetable patches were patriotic. Gardening groups ploughed up cricket grounds and parks. Posters told housewives that food waste was illegal and cost the lives of seamen shipping food over the Atlantic—now the deadliest waterway in the world.

Food had never been more crucial.

Ambrose Hart sat in the front row, smiling. Just in case the public failed to recognize him, he wore his trademark polka-dot bow tie, and he looked around sporadically catching people’s eyes and nodding, as if he were minor royalty. His hair was long on the top, carefully swept over a balding crown with the liberal use of hair oil, and his eyes seemed to pop out, as if he were overly keen. Although he was an acquaintance of her husband’s, Lady Gwendoline tolerated Ambrose Hart, and vice versa.

Also in the front row was Mr. Alloway, her dreary yet painstaking Ministry of Food supervisor, and beside him were a few of Lady Gwendoline’s fellow Ministry of Food demonstrators, or home economists, as they’d been ceremoniously dubbed. Instructing ordinary women about food and rationing had become a good way for upper-class women to “do their bit for the war.” Lady Gwendoline was still yearning to be adopted into the higher circles, her husband’s knighthood merely scratching the underside of the aristocratic heights. Thus, she had joined the ranks of posh home economists to boost her status, feigning a deep-seated longing to help the war effort, which she promptly adopted as a long-held truth.

“On tonight’s menu we have Lord Woolton Pie, named after our very own Minister of Food. It was created by the chef at the Savoy Hotel, no less, to aid the war on food. Lord Woolton is a great fan of carrots, but if they are not popular in your household, you can use any vegetables available. Onions are scarce since ours usually come from France, so why not use leeks or chives instead? Remember, you can use every part of a vegetable, from the tough outer leaves of cabbages to the peelings from potatoes and carrots. Any inedible remains can be put in the pigfeed collection box at your local town hall.”

    Lady Gwendoline began by parboiling the vegetables—today she had carrots, leeks, cauliflower, and the inevitable potatoes.

Next, she began spooning flour into a mixing bowl. Pastry was one of her specialties. Her mother had taught her the basics as a child, but she’d never had any interest in it, thinking it was rather beneath her. Besides, her mother would never think her as good as Audrey. When she took the course to become a home economist, she was surprised how easily it came back to her.

Chemistry is at the basis of all cookery, she thought. It was all about precise measuring and following recipes. She had it mastered.

“I’m replacing some of the flour and fat with cooked, mashed potatoes in order to use less precious fat. The mashed potato gives the flavor a lovely wholesomeness, but you have to cook it quickly as it can turn the pastry a gray color. Some people say that it makes their pastry hard, but that’s only if you don’t eat it immediately.”

As she blended the pastry, she remembered to smile at her audience and fill the silence with a spirited speech.

“Winning the war isn’t only about young men fighting on the front line. It’s about the home front, too, and how we can stay strong for them through all the shortages and rationing. We need to show Hitler that the British will never give in.”

Tucking the pastry neatly over the vegetables, she put the pie into the portable electric oven with a flourish. “It’s as simple as that!”