Page:Wood - Foods of the Foreign-Born.djvu/66

50 In very recent years only have floors been laid in the country homes, families heretofore going barefooted on dirt floors.

Fish is used fresh in summer and pickled in winter. It is rarely preserved by salting. In some restaurants of the large cities of Poland and Russia there are tanks or aquariums filled with edible fish for the enjoyment of the guests, who desigtiate to the waiter the kind of fish they prefer. It is then taken from the tank and prepared. Fish is boiled or baked, but for special occasions the best cooks prefer to make it into cutlets. Cooked fish blended with a sauce or gravy is shaped into cutlets, which are then fried or baked and served with a sauce or gravy.

Potatoes are served at almost every meal. The preferred grain among all these people is barley. The Poles use corn meal and oats also.

Eggs are the dinner dish on Wednesdays and Fridays in place of meat. Sometimes chickens or ducks are used. When a family arrives in this country, it is confronted by many new and strange appliances, such as agate and tin cooking utensils instead of copper and iron, and "so many kinds to learn how to use"—double boilers, "funny egg beaters that you turn as you do a hand organ," bread pans, and egg poachers. Then there are "stoves with no fires in them and no place for the wood, just holes in irons and if you turn a handle and apply a lighted match fire comes."

The clothing is queer, too. Hats made of straw or felt are such wonderful things compared with kerchiefs. Other clothing seems of such light-weight material, even in winter.

When the man of the family gets his first job, it is as a laborer, sometimes building our railroads, bridges, or