Station: [22] Storage, nutrition and cooking

“Simple folk have simple meals: mainly oat or barley mash. Apart from that, they eat dark rye bread, complemented by lard, onions or cheese. The vegetables they eat are those they can grow in their own gardens; fruit, however, is a rare thing, meat even more so. Pork and beef are reserved for holidays or special occasions. Those who fatten a pig of their own normally just about make it through the winter months after having butchered the pig and made appropriate provisions in the autumn – that is, if the meat has been well cured or smoked, processed for sausages and of course kept safely out of the reach of hungry mice ...

There are two to three meals a day; breakfast is not eaten everywhere, but craftsmen and field workers normally take a lunch break around midday to have a light meal. The main meal of the day is the warm dinner eaten at night with the family. The cooking and roasting are done on an open flame – there are no chimneys in modest houses, so they quickly fill up with smoke.”