v for frequency?

Do you mean when Americans only had 15 different kinds of ice cream flavours?

In the UK, you can buy macaroni cheese in cans or plastic trays to heat. But you have to add the topping (grated cheese plus packet breadcrumbs) before you put it in a conventional oven (or under a grill).

What about cauliflower cheese? Do you eat that?

Not a question of being 'not allowed', but one of various tariffs being imposed on certain products that could be produced within the EU.

Wouldn’t want to harm the vulnerable German banana farming sector, after all.

We are really into Hawaiian buns lately. I make tiny teriyaki burger sliders, and I make her teriyaki purple onion sliders.

I'm a boomer but my parents didn't mention rationing. I think they got a lot of local stuff without much difficulty.

New cars were not available. I was born in an ancient 1936 Ford.

Dark days.

I was at Safeway last week and wanted to get some vanilla ice cream. There wasn't any. There were about 20 weird flavors, mango and banana and worse. I got dulce de leche, as close as they had.

Try to buy plain potato chips. They are hard to find.

I make breakfast sliders. Freeze some for later

Good idea. I'll try that.

The Kraft kits have envelopes of a yellow powder rumored to be dried Cheddar. You add milk or some optional butter and mix it in after cooking the macaroni.

My mother often made macaroni and cheese but it was from scratch with real Cheddar, milk, eggs, flour, butter and macaroni. It was quite a bit different.

Your point that our rationing wasn't as bad as your rationing is taken. However, the U.S. had rationing.

"At the start of the Second World War in 1939, the United Kingdom was importing 20 million long tons of food per year, including about 70% of its cheese and sugar, almost 80% of fruit and about 70% of cereals and fats. The UK also imported more than half of its meat and relied on imported feed to support its domestic meat production."

You guys were in real trouble, no doubt about it.

I'm not that fond of cheese. It's a convenient and quick source of protein, but I don't really consider it improves very many foods.

I prefer cauliflower roasted in a hot oven until it's slightly brown. If I want to get fancy, I chop it up and season it like tabouli, with lemon juice, olive oil, and parsley.

Certainly we did.

One of the family stories told how my father had acquired a 5 gallon tin of motor oil through barter. All was good until my mother went to the garage one day and saw a rat sitting on the can. She hated mice and rats although they went hand in hand with raising chickens. Being a self- sufficient woman she got her 16 gauge and blew the rat to hell, along with most of the oil can.

Footnote: although it has almost vanished today a 16 gauge was considered a ladies shotgun; my father and I used 12s.

Sugar and butter were scarce.

I wasn't born in it but my earliest vague memories were of a pre-war Dodge that was traded in on a '51 Chevy.

If I had to depend on locally sourced produce I would be living on bread and zucchini although the extended Moua family that took over much of the farmer's market seems to have a greened thumb than the Anglos ever did.

Psychology. Early in the game housewives thought of prepackaged cake mixes as cheating. Marketers found that if they were instructed to add milk and an egg, both of which were unnecessary, they felt they were baking from scratch.

Then there were the Chef Boyardee pizza kits. The first thing to take into account is where I grew up Italians were considered to be knife wielding gangsters, barely white. Pizza was only available from disreputable taverns.

My parents and my aunt and uncle would get together almost every Saturday night. Beer and whiskey or gin, depending on the season, would flow freely. The kit consisted in a dough mix and a can of sauce. Bring your own cheese.

First you added water to the dough mix and let it said for a while, supposedly to rise. 'A while' was usually measured in glasses of beer. They came the interesting part. The 'dough' was a very elastic mass that preferred to exist as a lump. Take one slightly hammered adult, add the lump of dough, and try to stretch out to something close to the area of the baking pan. How close a fit was acceptable depended on the glasses of beer consumed. once it was close enough, pour on the sauce, throw on some cheese, and slam it into the over before in contracted again. Bake for two or three more glasses of beer or until the smoke got rather thick. Slice and enjoy.

It was much better when the get-together was at my Uncle's. He lived in the city where there was one of those disreputable taverns on the corner. Phone in the order and go to the Ladies Entrance to pick up a professionally prepared pizza. Much better.

I've got a bottle of balsamic vinegar. I use it straight up, no oil.

It's not bad but it's pricey. Since the brand was sold to General Mills I take the organic part with a pinch of organic salt. My preference is Huy Fong Sriracha Ketchup if I'm putting ketchup on a meat loaf.