Customer Reviews

Grandma's Wartime Kitchen: World War II and the Way We Cooked

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

With Grandma's Wartime Kitchen, Joanne Lamb Hayes has filled a void in the culinary history of the 20th century. Those of us old enough to remember WWII, food rationing, victory gardens, and canning marathons will welcome this book, which puts between two covers so many of the meat-, butter- and sugar-stretching recipes women cooked in those lean years. They will also love reading the stories of how women coped and cooked, often working in munitions factories all day, then coming home to cook for their children. What imagination, what grace-- and all of this without dishwashers, microwave ovens and so many of the time-saving appliances we take for granted in this pampering age of plenty! The recipes look wonderful, as on-target today as they were in the 40s and I, for one, am eager to try them. But even if you never cook from this book, you'll love curling up with it. No dose of history was easier to swallow. Take a hard look at this book, Gen Xers. Keep it on a handy shelf. You can learn a lot from your grandmothers!

Those of us living in this age of plenty have no idea what it was like to cook during World War II when sugar, butter, meat and oh, so many canned foods were rationed. I was a very little girl then and didn't understand so many of the hardships my mother endured. This book answers so many of the questions left unanswered and for me it is a joy to read. I do remember many of the recipes included here and for old times sake, I plan to give many of them a try. This book is a must for anyone interested in food or food history. We may not cook this way today-- we don't have to. But these old make-do recipes can teach us all a lot.

I am writing a book sent during WW2, and I needed a good sense of day-to-day life in the era. This book provides that with authentic recipes and loads of other information about food purchasing and cooking tips that help to explain the era. I think this would be a useful and fun book for students of the era, regardless of their age.

Recently I served as a cook at a weekend training event. The cook staff tried 7 recipes in this book and everyone loved them. We made several cakes, muffins and the No Knead rolls. The Crybabies were a great hit. The other cooks on the staff are planning to get their own copies.

I just purchased this book for my mother as a Christmas present, as she was born just before the USA's involvement in WWII. I gave it to her yesterday at our family gathering. Once she saw the cover, it was VERY difficult to get her to stop looking through it...she had to force herself to put it away!

I did check it out before I wrapped it...like Mom, I enjoy reading cookbooks in general, as well as being an American history buff. I don't know if I would actually try any of the recipes in this book (just not the kind of stuff I usually eat these days) but the chapters on food rationing and wartime entertaining (usually just glossed over in most books about the era) were very interesting! I just gave this book three stars since I would have liked more historical photos, as well as pictures of some of the completed dishes. If you enjoyed this book, I would also recommend the "Culinary Arts Institute Encyclopedic Cookbook" which was first published in the 40's, as another view of American cookery at that point in time.

This is a wonderful history book. And it is quite beautiful, and could well sit on your coffee table. However, what were "cheap" ingredients in wartime, are extremely expensive, often "gourmet" foods in peacetime. I gave this book to my daughter, an avid cook, and she has not made one recipe in it. However, having said that, she has read every sentence of the "non-recipe" history parts, of which comprise a good portion of the book.The actual recipes are not practical. Buy it for the historical value of it, but not necessarily the recipes, and you should do just fine.

This book brought back many childhood memories for me. I found recipes that my grandma used to make and I enjoyed. I thought of our victory garden and the canning that my mother and grandmother did. We made lots of sacrifices and didn't complain. I wonder why we didn't have to make
any sacrifices for this present war? --like gasoline!

This book was extremely well done. The balance between recipes, history and reminiscence was perfect, whether you're looking to relieve old memories or get a glimpse of the past before your time.

The recipes were versatile, inexpensive and different than most of what I've seen in similarly themed books. The organization was good, everything was easy to read, and it was user-friendly all around. I would definitely recommend this to anyone.

Probably the most unique thing about this book was the focus on nutrition; with some items in short supply compliments of wartime rationing, finding ways to balance nutritional needs was of paramount importance. This book includes many of the tips, tricks and ideas women used to ensure their families were getting properly balanced meals despite the lack of steak and other muscle meats.

As a cultural historian of the World War II home front, I find this book, as well as Lamb's companion piece on wartime baking, significantly flawed in numerous ways. For example, in her discussions of the the home front and rationing she twice writes that meat rationing began in late February 1943, when in fact it began on March 29. She asserts that there were never shortages of poultry, eggs, milk, or pork, when numerous articles in Business Week and in advertisements by food producers like Swift and Borden make it very clear that there were periodic shortages of these meat and dairy products. She often contradicts herself or what she quotes; at one point lamb asserts that the government's new nutrition program took all American housewives by storm, yet just a few pages later she quotes a contemporary source that found most war workers were sent to work by their wives with nutritionally-poor breakfasts.

As for the recipes themselves, Lamb variously implies or outright states that most have been modified for the modern cook and kitchen, so in fact many of the recipes in the book are not truly representative of home front cooking during the war at all.