Cincinnati Goes To War: War ration book

Other items are also limited such as food, clothing and gasoline. Your mom has learned to be very creative in the kitchen since foods have been rationed. Sugar was the first food to be rationed, followed by fats, meat, and flour among others. Each family has ration stamps that are redeemed when purchasing household supplies. Even Mom's nylon stockings are hard to come by! President Roosevelt set up a national system of rationing last year in order to preserve supplies needed for the War, keep prices down, and prevent people from hoarding supplies.
        "Rationing... Of course, being 13, my thoughts were, "Gee, I can't get shoes until the next stamp is due." You know, you were only allowed so many pairs of shoes a year. That was a big thing for me. Of course, there were other things, like you'd go grocery shopping and you wouldn't say, "How much per pound is this?", you'd say, "How many points?" for the meat, and for the butter, sugar, let's see, meat, butter, sugar...coffee. Dad always said that none of us drank coffee until it was rationed, then we all started drinking it. But being 6 in our family, we had a pretty good quota of points. Not being huge meat eaters-Dorothy, Margaret, Mom and myself, we had plenty of points for meat; and for the butter, because you could get margarine, and none of use were big on eating margarine. But, you learn to accept what you have to."—Helen Hauter
        "We were, obviously, inconvenienced with the rationing. Everything was rationed, from canned goods, to butter, to gasoline, to meat-we just had to learn to live with it! Because what we were doing was for the boys in the service, and we wanted them to come home as soon as they could."—John Mannoia
        For your birthday, your mom made you a "victory cake", which requires less sugar than her usual recipe. It was great, but you sure miss her Double-Chocolate Dream Cake!