Breakfast usually consisted of two pieces of bread with salt sprinkled on them and with hot water poured over to form a porridge.
Lunch was made early in the day and carried to the fields. It was sometimes a fried dumpling containing bits of pork and apple but more often it was more bread and a piece of cheese and a pickle.
On Saturdays, Mary would take a piece of meat down to the baker and he would roast it for her and on Sunday after church, the family would crowd around the table for their favorite meal of the week. The rest of the time, the evening meal was generally a stew cooked over the fire. The leftover meat and drippings from Sunday’s roast would be put in the iron pot to simmer and the stew would be topped up each day with vegetables and a handful of barley. Towards the end of the week, there would be little if any meat left and the boys would be looking forward to it being Sunday again.
Mary kept a kitchen garden and the girls would help her drag water to it on the driest days and to keep the weeds out of it. The littlest ones would be charged with keeping the birds away once the vegetables started to ripen.
Their new house was larger than their old one and there was room for all of them to gather around the table in front of the fire place. There were two ladders to get upstairs now; one for the girls bedroom and one for the boys. Thomas and Mary still slept in their pallet in the corner of the main room.
