SC - Children's homework weirdness

[harper@idt.net]

Hullo, the list!

I thought I'd share this with you all as a possible topic of conversation.

The other day my nine-year-old, a fourth grader, came home with a
passage from a history text and an assignment to either summarize or
otherwise write an essay on the topic covered in the text, to wit, what
the Pilgrims ate.

What leaped at my eyes from the page was the assertion that the Pilgrims
(for the non-Americans on this list, this refers to members of a certain
Puritan-like sect leaving England due to a combination of religious
persecution and the opportunity for a profitable business venture on the
part of certain shipbuilders and owners -- it is immensely more
complicated than this, but this is what most children in the States are
taught-- seeking safe haven for a brief period in the Netherlands, and
finally crossing the ocean to colonize certain parts of Massachusetts in
1620, give or take) ate no vegetables to speak of. It was further stated
that these people would often use vegetables to ornament their tables,
but did not actually make a habit of eating them.

Now, I don't believe this at all; too many English cookbooks of the
period suggest at least some vegetable eating, perhaps not in as great a
variety as we have today, between fewer individual growing seasons,
difficulties in shipping, and a lack of acceptance of certain New World
vegetables. Add to that the likelihood that vegetables might have been
scarce on board ship, _and_ that they had difficulty with their first
couple of harvests of such seed crops as they did bring with them, and
it might be said with at least some justification that they went for a
period of time without serious access to vegetables, except perhaps some
kind of wild herbs. However, none of this would suppoort the idea they
didn't eat vegetables at all.

What I am wondering is if I'm missing something obvious here that might
explain the assertion that they ate no vegetables, other than a simple
bunch of posts asking what kind of moron wrote that... . Could there be
some kind of Puritan religious restriction I haven't heard of? Any other
reason? Are we in agreement that there are enough recipes calling for
vegetables in, say, pottages, tarts, pickles and salads in sources such
as Markham to refute the claim? Gerard certainly seems to suggest that
many of the plants he writes about in his Herbal are not only edible,
but eaten. Any other onions to add to this pot?

Adamantius     
- -- 
Phil & Susan Troy

troy at asan.com