What Does Cooking for Victory Mean in 2022?

"Come into the garden dad!"
Propaganda poster printed around 1918
Canada Food Board, via Archives of Ontario
Found on Wikipedia

We're fortunately not at war. When writing the term 'Victory,' I am not thinking of a victory against another country or another head of state. I am thinking of the 'victory' of humanity against the scarcity of resources and the worsening of our global climate.

It is strange to watch television shows that revisit the 'Home Front' during World War I and World War II in Europe, and in the immediate aftermath of the war, however, and to find lessons that seem appropriate to our time and our current challenges.

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The cost of food is high as I write this. Inflation has risen at 10% in some countries due to scarce gasoline supplies that make food transport more expensive. To a lesser degree, lingering supply chain problems are also reducing supply. It is not submarines sinking supply ships that are causing it, but causes as banal as a container ship sticking fast in the Suez Canal.

Gas is theoretically (we have imported gas from other sources, reaching the level of winter reserves we want at this time of year) scarcer in Germany due to the shutting off of the Nordstream 1 pipeline this week. Officially it's due to a faulty turbine that requires repair. Unofficially, we're all pretty certain it is linked to Germany's governmental support for Ukraine against its being invaded.

For middle-middle class citizens like me, cost of food is not yet a problem. My family has been using coal stoves to heat our apartment. But we do cook with gas. We also feel the excessive heat in summer, and might smell the smoke of forest fires in the woods of Brandenburg.

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I want to be a more thoughtful consumer because of the big picture. Reckless consumption not only worsens poverty and hunger. It also forces our government into allying with questionably democratic governments and becoming more timid about defending civil and political rights of fellow world citizens. It also destroys our planet.

It's true that governments and multinational corporations will have the most meaningful impact if they change their behaviour. 'Blaming' citizens doesn't always make sense.

Malthus and others may also have framed the debate of land, resources, and the land's tenants, in a way that treats humanity as an undesirable teeming mass. Whom does this kind of cold-blooded thinking help?

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But I'd still like to record techniques we can use to help in our daily lives, cooking and baking, shopping and maybe also gardening.

I believe we can use tips and tricks from the early 20th century and other periods in history: growing and buying food locally, cooking seasonally, applying low-energy cooking and baking methods, eating less meat but truly enjoying it if you do, being aware of packaging while buying groceries, and more.

These will help at least the little corners of the world in which we live. To apply again the famous quote of Voltaire, we must cultivate our garden.

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I'd recommend these British television shows, as they paint a picture of past challenges in an entertaining and thought-provoking format:

- Further Back in Time for Dinner (BBC) [Wikipedia]

- The Supersizers... (BBC) [Wikipedia]

- Wartime Farm (BBC) [Wikipedia]

Radio Corporation of America (RCA Victor, National Broadcasting Company) advertisement
for the beginning of regular experimental television broadcasting from the NBC studios to
the New York metropolitan area on April 30, 1939 [...]"
Found in Wikimedia Commons