The Morning Reading: "What They Ate"

"What They Ate"
~Campbell McGrath

All manner of fowl and wild game: venison, raccoon, opossum,
           turkey.
Abundant fishes, excepting salmon, which was ws. found
            distasteful.
Meat of all sorts, especially pig, which roamed free and was fatty.
Also shellfish: quahogs and foot-long oysters; lobsters,
          though considered wasteful.

Wild fruit: huckle and rasp, blue being known as "skycolored"
           berries.
Parsnips, turnips, carrots, onions: these loosely sorted and rooted
            out;
while these were cultivated in orchards: apples, peaches, apricots,
           cherries.
Cabbage - favored by the Dutch as koolslaa, by the Germans as
           sauerkraut -

was boiled with herbs brought from England: thyme, hyssop,
           marjoram, parsley.
Pumpkin, dried, or mashed with butter, where yams grew
           sparsely.
Corn, with beans as succotash; called samp when milled to grist;
in the South, hulled and broken, as hominy; or fried with bacon
          as grits.
Maple ws. not favored; loaves of white sugar worth considerable
         money
were kept under lock, cut with special sugar shears. For honey,

bees were imported, called "English flies" by the Narragansett.


*