Food and Coffee in the Civil War

Learning about the civil wars diet was very interesting for me to read about. One of the biggest problems I have is that I eat way too much. However, I don’t know how the soldiers could survive off small portion sizes. Having to eat food that was flavorless, but not even having a choice because that’s all there was to eat. Or, the fact that sometimes the cook didn’t even know how to cook properly, but you still had no choice but to eat the raw meat. I appreciate what James M. Sanderson did for the military because these men and woman deserved a nice meal every day. They were working hard on both ends, the least they could be rewarded with is good food. The fact that he went out of his way to make sure a cookbook was created, and to train some soldiers to cook good is amazing. Also, learning that coffee was so important to solider was funny to me because whenever I drink something with caffeine in it, I feeling amazing. It’s as if a rush is flowing through my body, and keeping me going through the day. I can only imagine how soldiers who are out all day marching, and fighting can only feel about a hot pot of coffee. To know It was so important to them to the point where they felt they couldn’t function without it. Or even using substitutes to make coffee even if it didn’t have caffeine made me laugh. It made me appreciate the foods I have available to me every day that I take for granted. My food would have to be chicken. Every meal I eat, if there’s not some sort of chicken in it, I feel as if I can never truly be full. Weather its fried, jerked, baked, steamed, or barbequed, I still can’t keep my heads off it!