Britain returning to wartime frugality?

Over the weekend, I stumbled across this article:  Britain urging return to wartime food frugality.

There is growing concern that affordable quality food will become scarce, not due to war, but due to the rising costs of both food and energy.  Of course, this is a problem around the world, but until this article, I hadn’t thought about the fact that this will have a bigger effect on places like Britain, where so much of the food has to brought in on ships or planes, rather than simply by truck.

The article quotes a few people who vividly remember life during Britain’s wartime and post-wartime food scarcity, and it’s interesting to see their points of view.  I particularly like this quote: “I know it’s old fashioned, but some old fashioned things are worth doing.”  I think we’re really seeing a return to this with the rising prices of food and energy.  More people are growing their own food and learning how to can vegetables.

I had to laugh at the references to baked hedgehog and squirrel-tail soup.  I grew up in the rural midwest, and while I have never eaten hedgehog or squirrel, I do remember friends talking about the random animals that they had eaten, in stews or soups, because it didn’t matter if the meat came from a cow or from a possum – it was still protein to help feed a family.

At least, I don’t think I’ve ever eaten hedgehog or squirrel…

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This would buy me a house in the D.C. area.  Nothing too huge, but depending on how far I went from D.C., I could probably get a little house with a bit of land, enough to make me happy.