Ship Full o' Pirates

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In which I find books I forgot I own…

Have I mentioned that I LOVE books?   I love books too much.  I buy books too much.  I bring way too many books into our home.

So now my home is cluttered up with too many books.  Even I am tired of so many books everywhere.  You know this is bad now, huh?  So, I started culling today.  Culling hard!  There are boxes of books on my front porch right now, waiting for a ride to the Goodwill drop off.

Don’t tell me I should list ‘em on paperbackswap.  I might cry.  I don’t want these books hangin’ around my house in a box marked “waiting to be wanted by someone through paperbackswap,”  besides, I can’t afford to ship 752 books.  And if there’s a thing in this world I don’t need right now, it’s 752 credits from paperbackswap.

So if you are in town and know where I live, feel free to come and rummage around on my porch.  Take all you want, just leave the chairs.

So while I was culling I ran across a book that I forgot I had.  It’s a book that I have wanted for a long time.  And, it just so happens that it fits right in with the other books I am reading to the younger half of my crew.  It’s titled Eating the Plates: A Pilgrim Book of Food and Manners by Lucille Recht Penner.

So I set it aside to put on the coffee table.  I finished filling the boxes I was working on and decided to sit down and read to my littles from Wisdom and the Millers.  (If you don’t have any of those Millers books, stop right now and go order a few.  You won’t be sorry.)  When I finished with that, I  picked up Eating the Plates just to flip through and have a look.  Cannonball Jack asked for a chapter, so we just started right in.  We are so loving this book.  I love her writing style.  Every book about this time period should tell how hard it was for these people.  I mean, well, here, let me just quote a bit from chapter 1 which, by the way, is called Bugs for Dinner.  (This chapter tells about the voyage.)

But sometimes it was better not to look. Rats and cockroaches were all over.  Little insects – weevils, maggots, and grubs – chewed tunnels into the ship’s biscuits.

Some of the Pilgrims preferred to eat at night.  In the dark, they couldn’t see the bugs crawling on their food.

So now that we’ve read this today I can serve anything at all for dinner and it will be received with gusto.  I know someone is going to mention the lack of insect infestation among the biscuits.  I know, because it will probably be me.

Nothin’ like a little History lesson to whet your appetite, huh?

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