Patricia B. Mitchell > Quotes

“I believe the average Southerner would rather be found singing “Yankee Doodle” floating on ice in the Arctic Ocean while eating whale blubber with a fingernail file than taking his rolls or biscuits or bread or cornbread other than hot. Hot”
― Patricia B. Mitchell, Biscuits and Belles: Official Biscuit Manual and Guide to Southern Bellery

“Thousands of bushels of grain would ferment and rot at one station; hundreds of barrels of meat stacked at another, while the army starved because [of] ‘no transportation!”
― Patricia B. Mitchell, Confederate Camp Cooking

“Rats were eagerly eaten, and hard cabbage-stalk, with raw potato-peelings, which had been thrown into the sewers, was used for food.”
― Patricia B. Mitchell, Yanks, Rebels, Rats, and Rations: Scratching for Food in Civil War Prison Camps

“French imported salmon, green peas, and sardines were thought to be more appetizing than American goods such as canned condensed milk, meats, oysters, and vegetables.”
― Patricia B. Mitchell, Confederate Camp Cooking

“It was a very common thing to find rat-dung cooked in the rice; our pea soup, made from a kind of black pea cultivated abundantly through the South, and fully ripe when gathered, was always covered with pea bugs, which floated on the top; cabbage soup was sometimes substituted for the pea soup, and this was worse, if possible, than the other, as only the outside leaves, covered with worms, were used in making it. The peas, or cabbage, as the case might be, were boiled with the meat, — either corned beef or bacon, — which was put into the mess kettle without being properly prepared and cleaned, and frequently our meat rations consisted of ham and shoulder bones from which the juicy parts of the meat had been cut before they were issued to us, as though they had been refuse from the town or from our own guards. The water in which everything was cooked was taken from the Dan River and was very muddy, so that the soup always contained more or less grit.” {37}”
― Patricia B. Mitchell, Yanks, Rebels, Rats, and Rations: Scratching for Food in Civil War Prison Camps

“Because the hardtack was packaged in boxes marked “B. C.” (probably for “brigade commissary”), the men took to saying that the crackers were so hard that they must have been baked “before Christ.”
― Patricia B. Mitchell, Confederate Camp Cooking

“Bread made of inferior flour, which was occasionally sour, was issued. The meat was rusty bacon or beef-neck. Twice in one year we had good cuts of beef, but it was so far decayed as to be offensive. Occasionally we had a few worm-eaten peas, and twice I saw some small potatoes . . . . Rats were caught in and about the sinks, and sold freely. The slop-barrels were raked, and bread-crusts were fished out, to be dried in the sun and eaten.”
― Patricia B. Mitchell, Yanks, Rebels, Rats, and Rations: Scratching for Food in Civil War Prison Camps

“Often and again, the troops around Richmond were without beef — once for twelve days at a time; they were often without flour, molasses or salt, living for days upon cornmeal alone! and the ever-ready excuse was want of transportation!”
― Patricia B. Mitchell, Confederate Camp Cooking

“An Ohioan added that the soup was made in four kettles, but in order to stretch the soup to make enough for 4,000 men, it was then diluted with “freezing water” brought in pails directly from the river. “The quality of the last mess was decidedly thin, after undergoing so many dilutions; and there is no doubt that the addition of some eighty pailfuls of cold river water detracted somewhat from its flavor.” {38}”
― Patricia B. Mitchell, Yanks, Rebels, Rats, and Rations: Scratching for Food in Civil War Prison Camps

“It was not referred to as hardtack until 1861. Tack is a contemptuous term for food. It was merely a thick, virtually imperishable square cracker made of flour and water. When fresh, it is not unappetizing, but when boxes of hardtack sat on railroad platforms or in warehouses for months at a time before being issued to the men, the foodstuff hardened and often became insect-infested.”
― Patricia B. Mitchell, Confederate Camp Cooking

“At times baking soda and yeast were not to be had. Individuals were issued rations, including flour, to utilize as best they could. Because of lack of equipment, especially when men were on the march, bread-making was sometimes accomplished in the manner described by Timothy Mitchell, writing home to southwest Virginia from Tennessee: “Our flour we make up in an oil cloth, back of a dirty shirt, or towel; roll it ’round a stick and hold it before the fire.” [26]”
― Patricia B. Mitchell, Confederate Camp Cooking