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Updated: May 3, 2025
To give an idea of the change in our diet since leaving Dixie, I give the bill-of-fare of a breakfast my mess enjoyed while on this road: Real coffee and sugar, light bread, biscuits with lard in them, butter, apple-butter, a fine dish of fried chicken, and a quarter of roast lamb! On the morning of July 1 we passed through a division of Longstreet's corps bivouacked in a piece of woods.
Great platters of baked beans were placed on the table, flanked by the lumps of pork that had seasoned them. Fried pork, too, was a "main-stay" on the bill-of-fare. The deal table was graced by no cloth or napery of any kind. There were heaps of potatoes and onions fried together, and golden cornbread with bowls of white gravy to ladle over it.
Such soups, derived from one or several vegetables, alone or mixed together, make palatable and healthful additions to the family bill-of-fare. Cut off the woody part, scrape the lower part of the stalks. Wash well and tie in bunches. Put into a deep stew-pan, with the cut end resting on the bottom of the stew-pan. Pour in boiling water to come up to the tender heads, but not to cover them.
The rest of the dinner was catalogued in a bill-of-fare printed on delicate white paper within an arabesque border of green and gold. It looked very good, not only in the English and French names of the numerous dishes, but also in the positive reality of the dishes themselves, which were all set on the table to be carved and distributed by the guests.
"A rich Southern planter and his family!" I said to myself, and took my seat opposite them. "Nothing, Michel," I replied to the waiter's recital of his bill-of-fare. "Nothing but a glass of iced water and bit of dry toast. Only that, thank you, Michel."
Another Biddy, engaged by a friend of ours, having to make a yeast-cake, put it under her bed-clothes 'just to plump it a bit. A third, having been given a bill-of-fare for the day, put soup, meat, and pudding all into one pot, and served them up au pot-pourri.
Being now reassured as to our bill-of-fare for dinner by this unexpected windfall, I kept on walking towards the entrance of a glade, the soil of which, being quite burrowed, betrayed the presence of the moles. Each of us lay down under the shade of a tree. Chance led me under a robinia or iron-wood tree, the trunk of which will defy the best-tempered axe.
About them sat other pallid families, richly dressed, and silently eating their way through a bill-of-fare which seemed to have ransacked the globe for gastronomic incompatibilities; and in the middle of the room a knot of equally pallid waiters, engaged in languid conversation, turned their backs by common consent on the persons they were supposed to serve.
I was satisfied with the smaller quantities of food and I felt better than I had in twenty years stronger, fitter and was better, mentally and physically. After that it was a cinch. I kept along, eating everything on the bill-of-fare, but in small quantities. I didn't vary my diet a bit, except for the eggs at breakfast. If I wanted pie I ate a small piece.
You begin to see that the most desperate economy in lemons will not make you and Leander rich, but that you must make up your mind at the start about beef and about butter. Hear, then, my parting whisper. Disregard the traditions of economy. What is cheap to-day is dear to-morrow. Do not make a bill-of-fare, and, because everything on it tastes very badly, think it is cheap.
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