You can trade the cigarettes, vodka, half the meat and half the sugar in the black market to get more of everything else.

Worst part about rationing in most systems (including this one) is that you still have to pay for the rationed goods - so black market trading at a profit is difficult.

Which, one supposes, is half the point, after all.

And as an Indigenous person … my parents grew up with very little. But you could live for months if you had good supply of flour, lard, sugar and tea. There is even a drink we made called tea ploss where you just made really strong tea, then mixed in flour, lard and sugar to make a quick energy drink without much fuss in the cold wilderness. Supplement all that with wild food and you had a healthy long term diet.

Honestly sounds like the same basic idea behind pemmican. High calorie density foodstuffs like that astounded the Europeans when they started actually talking to the Native peoples in the Americas. Both pemmican and jerky were considered indispensable innovations, and such energy-dense foods are really underrated as indigenous American contributions to modernity.

That being said, as someone who doesn’t like tea, lard, or even modern energy drinks, I think I’ll pass on the tea ploss… XD