65 points

Fun Fact! Soldiers during the Civil War often boiled their hard tack in their morning coffee, both to soften it (as it was often hard as wood), and to boil out the worms and weevils that worked their way in! How lovely!

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44 points

If you let hardtack sit long enough, it naturally takes on more protein. It was a time of great innovation, that way.

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19 points

Tasting History with Max Miller on YouTube has a video where he recreates a US Civil War soldier’s meal, and it was basically a pan fry of some sort with bacon grease and hard tack (he also has a video where he makes hard tack, and he uses some in the CW video).

Hard tack wasn’t really meant to be eaten like bread, you were supposed to wet/cook it down to soften it and make it more palatable (and, well, to kill the bugs).

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12 points

clack clack

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13 points

At least they had coffee.

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25 points
12 points

That’s a fantastic writeup there!

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22 points

And I bet it’s just as edible today as it was back then

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21 points

Oh cool a protein bar.

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18 points
*

Carb bar.

Edit: dammit, I forgot the worms! Need some coffee with my hardtack.

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16 points

I can’t even read that word in text anymore without imagining Max Miller clinking two pieces of it together.

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11 points

I love that he puts that clip in every time he mentions hard tack lmao

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9 points

clack clack

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9 points
*

I mentally do click-click every time I hear it. Oh and his little clip he does each time :D

He has conditioned us

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13 points

Dawg, that’s Snack Bread, Wheat.

Second only to Vegetable Crackers, which pair nicely as a crumble with a vegetarian MRE.

Great share as always, Pug!

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10 points

lmao, I have relatives who were in the military in the 90s and they swear to me that the crackers in the MREs back then tasted exactly like attic dust, and there’s no proof that they weren’t made of just that

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-3 points

Ok and so wtf does “attic dust” supposed to taste like?

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6 points

MRE crackers

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6 points

Go up to your attic and see.

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Historical Artifacts

!historyartifacts@lemmy.world

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Just a community for everyone to share artifacts, reconstructions, or replicas for the historically-inclined to admire!

Generally, an artifact should be 100+ years old, but this is a flexible requirement if you find something rare and suitably linked to an era of history, not a strict rule. Anything over 100 is fair game regardless of rarity.

Generally speaking, ruins should go to !historyruins@lemmy.world

Illustrations of the past should go to !historyillustrations@lemmy.world

Photos of the past should go to !HistoryPorn@lemmy.world

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