There were also plenty of vegetables: _cibollen_ (chibbals), _peasen_ (pease), _chicoreye_ (chiccory), _karoten_ (carrots), _artichock_ (artichoke), _lattouwe_ (lettuce), _beeten_ (beets), _pastinaken_ (parsnips), _radys_ (radish), and many others. Pumpkins and squashes abounded, but do not appear to have been in as universal use as in New England. _Quaasiens_ were so easily cooked “they were a favorite with the young women,” says one authority; they “grew rapidly and digested well,” also were qualities accorded in their favor. Under the name of _askutasquash_, or vine-apples, Roger Williams sung their praises. Musk-melons, water-melons, and cucumbers were grown in large number and excellent quality. Whether they cooked the _Duyvel’s broodt_, the picturesque Dutch name for mushrooms, I know not, but the teeming woods of the Hudson valley offered them rich and abundant store of this dainty food. The Swedish naturalist, Kalm, visited Albany in 1749. He has left to us a very full account of Albany food and fashions of serving at that time. He found the Albanians faring as did their great grandfathers in the Netherlands, who were sneeringly called “milk and cheese men,” and he found them rasping their cheese as had their far-away forbears in Holland, and as do their descendants in Holland to this day. He writes thus:-- “The inhabitants of Albany are much more sparing than the English. The meat which is served up is often insufficient to satisfy the stomach, and the bowl does not circulate so freely as among the English.... Their meat and manner of dressing it is very different from that of the English. Their Breakfast is tea, commonly without milk. About thirty or forty years ago, tea was unknown to them, and they breakfasted either upon bread and butter or bread and milk. They never put sugar into the cup but put a small bit of it into their mouths while they drink. Along with the tea they eat bread and butter with slices of hung beef. Coffee is not usual here: they breakfast generally about seven. Their dinner is buttermilk and bread to which they sometimes add sugar, and then it is a delicious dish to them: or fresh milk and bread: or boiled or roasted flesh. They sometimes make use of buttermilk instead of fresh milk to boil a thin kind of porridge with, which tastes very sour but not disagreeable in hot weather. To each dinner they have a great salad prepared with abundance of vinegar and little or no oil. They frequently eat buttermilk, bread and salad, one mouthful after another. Their supper is generally bread and butter, or milk and bread. They sometimes eat cheese at breakfast and at dinner: it is not in slices but scraped or rasped so as to resemble coarse flour, which they pretend adds to the good taste of cheese. They commonly drink very small beer or pure water.”