For many years now I have been buying vintage furniture and something I have learnt in this time is that most pieces will need some form of love and attention to bring them back to their former glory. 

This example is of a 1930s display cabinet I bought a couple of months ago. I managed to get the cabinet for a bargain price of £15 and managed to have a day out in Northamptonshire and then pick up the cabinet on the way home. 

When I got the cabinet home it was in quite good condition but the wood was a little dull and dirty, but the main issue was lots of staples in the back panel where someone had clearly stapled in some type of modern wallpaper in the past. 

So the first task I had was to carefully remove all the staples using some pliers, someone had done a thorough job in the past because there must have been well liver 100 staples. 

Once this was done the only thing left was to give the cabinet a dust, polish the wood and clean the glass inside and out. And ta da the cabinet was ready to use. Due to limit space in my current living arrangements I could not just use this as a display cabinet in the living room, however I did have spare space in my bedroom and was in need of more shoe storage. So for now this cabinet been repurposed as a very ornamental form of shoe storage. 

Stay tuned for more vintage furniture restorations and purchases in the future. 

So this week I found the time to try out another wartime recipe from the Victory Cookbook. 

I was feeling ill and therefore craving vegetables, which suited what I had in the fridge, so I found a suitable recipe, scalloped vegetables with bacon. 

The recipe is as follows: 

Now, as I do with most recipes, I adapted it slightly to my own needs and tastes. So instead of weighing out the vegetables I just used what I had, which was 1 large potato, 1.5 large carrots, half a red cabbage, 1 leek and 1 onion. 

Looking at the recipe the 2 main things I changed were, firstly, to add in some softened white onion, onions always go well with most meals, however this is an extravagance that not all could take during wartime. Onions were hard to come by in most shops, so unless you grew your own these were not used as frequently in cooking as they are today. 

The second adaptation was to use a thicker white sauce than suggested, and this was because personally I prefer thicker sauces (this also goes for things like gravey and custard 😁).

So here we have the stages of preparation: 

And the final product:

During the cooking process I definitely learnt that this recipe works best done in the oven first and then finished under the grill. Cooking it this way should prevent the breadcrumbs from catching and burning. Luckily I caught this before it could carbonise too much. 

So to conclude this was not only a very filling and tasty meal, but also relatively easy to prepare and healthy. I will definitely be keeping this recipe in mind for the future and I think it would also work really well as a side to other dishes, such as roasts. 

So it’s a 10/10 from me. 

Let me know if there are any wartime recipes you would be interested in me trying out next.