"In slavery times they had all kinds of meat--more than they have now--,
vegetables and fruits too. They raised them themselves. There wasn't no
food issued. Didn't need to be. One cook cooked it all in one kitchen
and they all sat around the same big old long table long as a house. All
the hands ate at the same table and in the same room and at the same
time.
"The way they fed the children, they took pot-liquor or bean soup or
turnip liquor or the juice from anything they boiled and poured it out
in a great big wooden bowl and let all the children get 'round it like
so many cats and they would just tip their hands in it and eat what they
wanted. Of course they had all the milk they wanted because everybody
raised cows. I didn't have to undergo this myself, but this was what
they had to undergo at the places where my grandmother took me to visit."