[Gutenberg 56223] • Oat Meal: The War Winner

Excerpt from Oat Meal: The War Winner

Now what had those men for breakfast that morning. Certainly not beefsteak, ham and eggs, toast, or biscuits. N 0, they had a large bowlful of borose. Each man takes. His large wooden bowl and puts into it three or four handfuls of oatmeal, a big pinch of salt, then pours boiling water on it, stirs it with the handle of his spoon, adds sweet milk, and eats his breakfast. When the noon hour comes he goes through the same process; and after the work is finished for the day he generally has a bowl of oatmeal parridge.

The whole time occupied is probably ten minutes. Then after smoking a pipe for ten minute more he is ready for a day of strenuous work. Each man possesses a half-gal lon tin bucket, and that is filled at the dairy every morning before breakfast with sweet milk, ' and that lasts him for the day. No labor is too hard for those men. They can stand any strain put before them and never complain of being hungry. I never heard the least complaint of indi geston, and the doctor would have starved to death if he had depended on these ploughmen for patients. The al lowance of meal is seventy pounds every four weeks, and that is all you require to give them. Often these men don't see a piece of meat in months and very seldom do they eatwheat bread. Scotland has been called the Land '0 Cakes from the fact that an excellent cake can be made of oatmeal. The cakes are rolled thin and toasted before an open fire until they are quite hard. I have eaten oatmeal cakes in Virginia that were baked in Scotland, two or three months previously and after being heated through they were as crisp as if newly baked.

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