Food

In New France I miss the variety of food available in the mother country. The beans, corn and squash of the Natives cannot make up for a good French diet of cheese, milk and butter, the latter for the sauces I love so well. Eggs I can get irregularly when the fowl we bring over from Europe survive.

I do enjoy the abundance of meat available in New France from the game so readily available. Of course, this is not true in the winter when famine is a constant threat to the Natives and settlers if the winter is unusually harsh and long.

I have endeavoured to plant gardens in all the settlements in New France and to stock the little streams and lakes with trout, even though the rivers and waters of the New World abound in fish. I have even seen the Montagnais at Tadoussac catch seals and other large aquatic creatures in the St. Lawrence River.

As Catholics we need large amounts of fresh, smoked and salted fish as we are enjoined not to consume meat, eggs or poultry on Fridays and all Holy Days, which amount to well over a hundred. Thank God we are close to the great cod fishery of Newfoundland so that we can get an unlimited supply of dried cod. However, I do admit to adhering to those rules very little while I was exploring the lands to the west.

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