Page:Diary of a Prisoner in World War I by Josef Šrámek.pdf/109

 They didn't know about dumplings or cakes; their soups were only of bread or vegetables; they ate pork boiled, never roasted; they had boiled poultry and beans for breakfast, lunch, and supper. And they ate a lot of bread for every meal. They didn't eat much potatoes, and if they did they were only baked.

But all cooking is done with good butter, and no beer—just wine morning, noon, and evening. And what wine! When we got home years later, we never liked any wine because it could never be equal to the homegrown south French natural wine. And it was cheap! One chop—approximately .4/10 liter—was for 15 cts., but you didn't even need those 15 cts. They offered you a taste and kept pouring again and again.

There was one more specialty in the coastal areas where we worked for farmers: fish, oysters, and snails. When they first gave us a dish full of snails, none of us would even touch them—we loathed them. It made us sick to see the people eat them and to suck their oysters. It took us a very long time to learn how to open them with knives and suck them out. The snails were boiled in garlic sauce or roasted on tin pans, and then there were things like prawns and other sea beasts that we didn't know. But we got used to it, as we did to the clogs that replaced our leather shoes.

The menu was all the same—very tasty cabbage, beans, pork, eggs, and bread—and