In drinking and in eating and in everything that one needed at a meal, it was so skimpy, that to us it should seem impossible, if we would have to make do now with what seemed to them to be a great abundance….
Folks used to fast on Fridays to the foods allowed during fasts. And the young sisters, who were 13 years old, they had to fast on Fridays as though it had been a full fast [not just a semi-fast]. And then the sisters would get watery vegetable peels to eat. Sometimes one put oil and mustard on the peels — and if the sisters got that, it was so great, like a royal feast!
And they also used to eat a spicy broth porridge for days on end, and it was so poor and thin — pathetic really — because one used to make it with thin beer and stewed onion tops with oil and vinegar.
It happened at one time that there was a good sister in the kitchen named Griete te Baerle who had compassion on the community, and therefore she went all secretly and fetched some better beer out of the vat with a tap, and she wanted to put that in the porridge instead of the thin beer.
And in that same little while mother Beerte came into the kitchen and became aware of it. And then she scolded her severely, and said: “Should you feed us all such a thing, which you have not found here [in this kitchen], and which is also not usually here?” And when she had thus scolded sister Griete, she had to drag that beer away again and not put it in the porridge.
Also, one used sometimes to give the sisters a mush that was made from grated crumbs of rye bread. And this one used to make with mustard and oil; and there was nothing else in it than large, yellow roots which one calls ‘parsnips.’