There is a decided tendency among modern housewives to take a hostile view of the ever recurring task of preparing food for the family; but if these housewives were compelled suddenly to revert to the method and amount of cooking of colonial days, there would be universal rebellion. Apparently indigestion was little known among the colonists--at least among the men, and the amount of heavy food consumed by the average individual is astounding to the modern reader. The caterer's bill for a banquet given by the corporation of New York to Lord Cornberry may help us to realize the gastronomic ability of our ancestors: "Mayor ... Dr. To a piece of beef and cabbage, To a dish of tripe and cowheel To a leg of pork and turnips To 2 puddings To a surloyn of beef To a turkey and onions To a leg mutton and pickles To a dish chickens To minced pyes To fruit, cheese, bread, etc. To butter for sauce To dressing dinner, To 31 bottles wine To beer and syder." We must remember, moreover, that the greater part of all food consumed in a family was prepared through its every stage by that family. No factory-canned goods, no ready-to-warm soups, no evaporated fruits, no potted meats stood upon the grocers' shelves as a very present help in time of need. On the farm or plantation and even in the smaller towns the meat was raised, slaughtered, and cured at home, the wheat, oats, and corn grown, threshed, and frequently made into flour and meal by the family, the fruit dried or preserved by the housewife. Molasses, sugar, spices, and rum might be imported from the West Indies, but the everyday foods must come from the local neighborhood, and through the hard manual efforts of the consumer. An old farmer declared in the _American Museum_ in 1787: "At this time my farm gave me and my whole family a good living on the produce of it, and left me one year with another one hundred and fifty silver dollars, for I never spent more than ten dollars a year, which was for salt, nails, and the like. Nothing to eat, drink or wear was bought, as my farm provided all." The very building of a fire to cook the food was a laborious task with flint and steel, one generally avoided by never allowing the embers on the family hearth to die. Fire was indeed a precious gift in that day, and that the methods sometimes used in obtaining it were truly primitive, may be conjectured from the following extract from Prince's _Annals of New England_: "April 21, 1631. The house of John Page of Waterton burnt by carrying a few coals from one house to another. A coal fell by the way and kindled the leaves."[85]