I must tell you of a way to cook this Indian corn which Squanto showed
to Captain Standish, and now we have it in all the houses, when we are
so fortunate as to have a supply of the wheat in our possession.
It is poured into the hot ashes of the fireplace, and allowed to remain
there until every single wheat kernel has been roasted brown. Then it
is sifted out of the ashes, beaten into a powder like meal, and mixed
with snow in the winter, or water in the summer. Three spoonfuls a
day is enough for a man who is on the march, or at work, so Captain
Standish says, and we children are given only two thirds as much.
Mother says it is especially of value because little labor is needed to
prepare it; but neither Sarah nor I take kindly to the powder.
The Indians also steep the corn in hot water twelve hours before
pounding it into a kind of coarse meal, when they make it into a
pudding much as you would in Scrooby; but mother likes not the taste
after it has been thus cooked before being pounded, thinking much of
the fine flavor has been taken from it.
Sometimes we make a sweet pudding by mixing it with molasses and
boiling it in a bag. It will keep thus for many days, and I once heard
Captain Standish say that there were as many sweet puddings made in
Plymouth every day as there were housewives.
Next fall we shall have bread made of barley and Indian corn meal,
so father says, and I am hoping most fervently that he may not be
mistaken, for both Sarah and I are heartily tired of nookick, and of
sweet pudding, which is not very sweet because we have need to guard
carefully our small store of molasses.
We girls often promise ourselves a great feast when a vessel comes out
from England bringing butter, for we have had none that could be eaten
since the first two weeks of the voyage in the _Mayflower_.
[Illustration]
Squanto often tells us of a kind of vegetable, or fruit, I am not
certain which, that grows in this country, and is called a pumpkin.
It must be very fine, if one may judge by his praise of it, and we
are looking forward to the time when it shall be possible to know for
ourselves.