Reading over the food restrictions, one does not get a very clear
idea of what we really ate in Germany, so I have made out a menu that
was possible in the month of April, 1917. April is, of course, one of
the hardest months of the year because it is just before the green
vegetables come in and the winter supplies are gone. In this month,
however, we could buy canned goods which were forbidden during the
winter months, and each person was allowed two and one-half pounds of
canned goods a week.
The menu as I have written it includes only things which are bought on
a card or without a card, but no restricted food that has been bought
underhand without a card as everybody does. It does not include any
of the expensive articles like chicken, goose, or fresh vegetables
which the better middle class have, and it does not include the canned
vegetables, fruit and meat which all German families have in their
supply cupboard.
When we kept house, we obtained many things from friends, and when my
mother came back from a trip to America, she brought with her forty
pounds of meat, bacon, ham and sausage, eighteen pounds of butter,
sugar, coffee, canned milk, chocolate, rice and flour. Some of this
she bought in Denmark, and the rest she brought over from America. In
January, 1917, I made a trip to Belgium, and while the Germans were
allowed to take only ten pounds of food out of Belgium we had special
permits, and I brought back a lot of food. Most people had crooked ways
of getting things, and we were all as crooked as we had a chance to be.
Nothing was allowed to be sent from Poland to Germany, but a Polish
girl I knew made a trip home to Warsaw, and going over the frontier
she made "a hit" with the man that takes up the "louse tickets." You
cannot go from Warsaw to Berlin unless you show a ticket stating that
you are not lousy. The girl's mother in Warsaw sent the "louse soldier"
the food, and he relayed it to Berlin. Once the soldier came to Berlin
on a furlough and he called on the Polish girl. He was an awful-looking
specimen, but he was served the finest kind of a dinner.
In April we still had 1900 grams of bread, but I have made out the
menu with 1600 grams as it is now. Sixteen hundred grams of bread is 32
slices of 50 grams each, but I have allowed five slices of bread a day,
for the bread at supper was always cut thin and often weighed only 40
grams. Most families weighed the bread for each person and then every
one got his share. People who ate in restaurants always watched their
bread rations, for the waiters were liable to bring short weights.
If you were in doubt whether you were getting enough in a restaurant,
you could demand to have the bread weighed before you. This sometimes
stirred up a lot of trouble, and rows often occurred.
We had five pounds of potatoes a week. This makes 2500 grams, and in
the menu I have allowed 300 grams of potatoes seven times a week. As
this makes only 2100 grams, this leaves 400 grams for the peelings.
The omelet for Monday's menu could be made out of real eggs, but the
pancakes for Sunday would have to be made out of egg substitute.
As we had 750 grams of meat a week, I have allowed 130 grams four times
a week which makes 520 grams, and this leaves 230 grams for sausage.
_Graupen_ that I have mentioned is a large coarse barley, and when I
say turnips I mean what they call _Kohlrüben_--we sometimes call it
rutabaga. We ate this vegetable constantly during the spring of 1917.
Most people hated it, but it was fine for filling up space. Dogs were
fed almost entirely on it. When I was in Dresden I went to the Zoo, and
there they had packages of carrots and _Kohlrüben_ for sale for feeding
the monkeys. The monkeys were hungry and they gobbled up the carrots,
but they absolutely refused to eat the _Kohlrüben_, and when they were
handed a piece they threw it down in disgust.
This menu was typical of the German pension or boarding-house, where
the landlady stayed well within the limit of the cards because the
things on the cards were cheap. For breakfast we always had the same
things--coffee substitute, two pieces of bread, four times a week two
pieces of sugar, and three times saccharine, four times a week butter
and three times marmalade. Even in peace times Germans eat only coffee
and rolls for breakfast. At 11 o'clock they have a second breakfast,
and this consisted sometimes of oatmeal with salt and once in a while a
piece of bread with jam, then they could not have so much for supper.
In the afternoon at 4 o'clock they always have coffee substitute and
cake, generally made without eggs or butter and sometimes without
flour, using oatmeal or white cornmeal for flour.