Project 52: Rationing - Week 14 - Sandwich Fillings

     This week is another week of sandwich fillings! Like I said in last week's post, there are a lot of interesting sandwich fillings from America's 1940s wartime era. Sandwiches were an easy option for making for a lunchbox, but if you're anything like me it would be hard to come up with new sandwich ideas day in and day out. Housewives were encouraged to "not make lunchtime boring" and to change the sandwich filling every day to keep things interesting. Westinghouse published a great many sandwich filling recipes to help with this challenge. 

Lunchtime, as all the meals of the day during wartime, was considered very important. In the 1944 Westinghouse Health-For-Victory Year 'Round Meal Planning Guide, they have a few paragraphs talking about the importance of lunchtime:

"Lunch is a mighty important meal... About one third of the day's intake of food can easily be taken care of at lunch, say the authorities. Workers need a good lunch to ward off that "midafternoon slump". Many an accident is caused by the carelessness due to fatigue. School children, too, need a nourishing noonday meal. Perhaps most of all, the woman in the home should stop for a really nutritious lunch, because housework needs to be supported by good food, almost as much as anything a woman does. 

If you pack a lunch box keep these things in mind -

A Good Lunch Must Nourish... it has a big job to do

A Good Lunch Must Taste Good... or it may not be eaten

A Good Lunch Must Carry Well... or it will be unappetizing"

I really love that part talking about how the woman at home needs a nutritious lunch because "housework needs to be supported by good food". It's really a good point, actually. 

Now on to this week's sandwich fillings. 

First up - Bacon-Cheese Sandwich

This one sounded really tasty. Cream cheese and bacon? How could you go wrong?

Bacon, cream cheese, horseradish, Worcestershire sauce, milk

This recipe was super simple. You just blend everything together...

Everything in the container

Blended together! It smelled and looked awesome.

Next up - Cottage Cheese-Cucumber Spread.

This one sounded nice and refreshing.

Cottage cheese, onion, salt, pepper, cucumber

The recipe was a little more involved as it involved carving the seeds out of the cucumber, chopping it up, mixing in the salt and the letting it drain for awhile.

Hollowed out cucumber

I minced up the onion and cucumber together in my food processor.

Salted cucumber and onion draining

The recipe does call for moist cottage cheese, but I'd recommend draining the cottage cheese for awhile too as today's cottage cheese is almost soupy sometimes.

Added pepper to my mix.

And now for the taste!

Bacon-Cheese on the left, Cottage Cheese-Cucumber on the right.

They were both delicious! The Bacon-Cheese tasted exactly like a cheese ball you'd eat at a party. It's really yummy on bread! As a family for lunch we just ate the rest of it with crackers. :-) I was a bit nervous about adding the horseradish, but I didn't end up tasting it at all because the cream cheese covered the taste up. I might add more next time for more of a kick.

The Cottage-Cheese Cucumber was very nice and refreshing. I think I'd drain the cottage cheese more and amp up the onion though.

So glad this round of sandwich fillings were so tasty!

Here are the recipes:

Here's a bonus recipe! I didn't end up having time to make this one, but you should give it a go and see what you think!

The numbers after the recipe title are the food groups that the recipe covers.
See the photo at the top of the post.

Enjoy!