Pembroke students tend a Victory Garden at Brown University in 1943.

Journal Archives

Food, family and war times evoke strong memories in people but we’re not always attuned to the fact that those with these vivid memories won’t always be around to share them. A Louisiana museum is seeking to capture some before they are forgotten and share them with the whole nation. “Kitchen Memories: A National Conversation about Food During World War II” is an education project that, it’s hoped, will result in stories and recipes shared from coast to coast.

But the idea to share is something everyone might want to do within their own family.

The National WWII Museum in New Orleans is encouraging members of the Greatest Generation to share memories centered on food as part of a national grassroots program. The museum hopes to gather individual and collective memories of shopping, rationing, growing, cooking, serving and eating during the war from those who experienced these things firsthand. They are encouraging people who did not experience to gather stories from someone who did by talking to a mother, grandmother, a relative or friend in your community who has food stories to share. The goal of the program is to produce a collection of stories, recipes and memories of World War II as a community kitchen project: a way to encourage oral history and talk across generations while these stories can still be collected firsthand.

The questions organizers suggest asking remind us how difficult things were back in those war times. They include:

• What do you remember about food rationing during the war?

• Do you remember using substitutes for unavailable ingredients?

• Did you or anyone you know shop on the “black market”?

• Did you grow a Victory garden?

• What about holiday meals?

• What about working or eating in local restaurants?

• What was your greatest food challenge during the war?

• What was your favorite food during the war?

• What was your least favorite?

• Do you remember any unique recipes (triumphs or disasters) that came out of your kitchen?

Lauren Handley, the Education Program Coordinator for the museum, just sent out the request for memories last week and already she’s had calls from around the country interested in knowing more. Even senior centers have called wanting more information on how to compile the information from those who were there, she said.

She’ll be collecting the stories and recipes right through the spring and hopes to create a downloadable file with all of them that can be easily shared on the Internet.

The museum’s Web site has some of the propaganda posters from the time, including ones suggesting “Food Is a Weapon, Don’t Waste It,” and one showing what a soldier will eat for the holidays while away from home.

For more guidelines on recording Kitchen Memories, visit support.nationalww2 museum.org/kitchenmemories, where you can also find information on submitting your oral history, photos and wartime recipes to The National World War II Museum’s archives.

Similarly, Middleborough, Mass.-based Rock Village Publishing is seeking memoirs, anecdotes and stories about people and their connection to cranberries for a special anthology to be called Cranberry Memories.

Anyone may submit a special recollection having to do with any aspect of cranberries or cranberry bogs: growing or harvesting cranberries, skating on the bogs, cooking with cranberries, favorite recipes, living near a bog, interacting with the wildlife near bogs, working at Ocean Spray or for a local grower, lamenting the loss of an abandoned bog, knowing an interesting person connected with the bogs, experiencing the bogs as a tourist.

Manuscripts of no more than two thousand words (fewer preferred) should be mailed to Rock Village Publishing, 41 Walnut St., Middleborough, MA 02346. Include phone number and e-mail if applicable. Do not send original; send copy only. No manuscripts will be returned. Please state whether photographs are available. Payment for accepted manuscripts will be one copy of the anthology.

In 1999 Middleborough residents Yolanda and Edward Lodi started Rock Village Publishing with the motto “Preserving Our New England Heritage.” Since then they have published more than 50 books by local authors: memoirs, cookbooks, history, folklore, poetry, novels and short story collections, all with a firm connection to New England, and many with an emphasis on Southeastern Massachusetts.