Vegetable foods were also prepared in a number of other ways and combinations. Whole corn was boiled—with or without beans.[105] Corn ground into meal was an important item in the diet of the Wampanoags. Corn kernels were dried and parched in the coals of the fire. Ashes were then sifted out of the parched corn, and it was ground fine with hand milling equipment. A woman then sifted the meal through a basketry sieve to catch out unground lumps, and the result was a meal called _Nocake_. Nocake was the food of anyone when on a journey away from home. A few spoonfuls made a meal; it was taken with water to facilitate swallowing.[106] For use at home, the parched meal might be mixed with water and boiled into a porridge.[107] In a more elaborate recipe it was mixed with crushed strawberries, made into dough, wrapped in leaves and baked in the ashes to make a kind of bread.[108] It was also made into small cakes that were boiled. Williams mentions a dish made by mixing corn meal with powdered dried currants, “... which is as sweet to them as plum or spice cake to the English”.[109] He also says that clam juice was used as a seasoning for bread.[110] Of the nuts used by the Wampanoags, acorns required additional work, since the bitter tannic acid had to be removed from them by some sort of leaching process before they could be eaten. This was done by boiling.[111] Oil was extracted from walnuts and used for a variety of purposes.[112] FOOD CONSUMPTION The diet of the Wampanoags, because of their seasonal cycle of resource use, varied considerably. While many kinds of food were preserved for use beyond their season by drying, the supply was probably not so great that the diet was identical throughout the year, if only in terms of the relative quantities of the kinds of food eaten. The diet of the Wampanoags included several varieties of land animals,[113] of which deer were probably the most important. Fresh and salt water fish, shellfish, fowl, and marine mammals, such as were available, were also eaten. Corn, beans, and cucurbits, which they raised, plus various wild nuts, roots, and fruits made up the vegetable part of the diet. While there is evidence that the Indians in Maine used maple sugar, there seems to have been none used in southeastern New England aboriginally.[114] Altogether, according to Bennett, who has made a study of the diet of the Indians of southeastern New England, the Indian diet included more vegetable products than the diet of Europeans living in the same area today.[115]