monday, april 3, 1944

my dearest kitty,

contrary to my usual practice, i'm going to write you a detailed description of the food situation, since it's become a matter of some difficulty and importance, not only here in the annex, but in all of holland, all of europe and even beyond.

in the twenty-one months we've lived here, we've been through a good many "food cycles" -- you'll understand what that means in a moment. a "food cycle" is a period in which we have only one particular dish or type of vegetable to eat. for a long time we ate nothing but endive. endive with sand, endive without sand, endive with mashed potatoes, endive-and-mashed potato casserole. then it was spinach, followed by kohlrabi, salsify, cucumbers, tomatoes, sauerkraut, etc., etc.

it's not much fun when you have to eat, say, sauer- kraut every day for lunch and dinner, but when you're hungry enough, you do a lot of things. now, however, we're going through the most delightful period so far, because there are no vegetables at all.

our weekly lunch menu consists of brown beans, split-pea soup, potatoes with dumplings, potato kugel and, by the grace of god, turnip greens or rotten carrots, and then it's back to brown beans. because of the bread shortage, we eat potatoes at every meal, starting with breakfast, but then we fry them a little. to make soup we use brown beans, navy beans, potatoes, packages of vege- table soup, packages of chicken soup and packages of bean soup. there are brown beans in everything, including the bread. for dinner we always have potatoes with imitation gravy and -- thank goodness we've still got it -- beet salad. i must tell you about the dumplings. we make them with government-issue flour, water and yeast. they're so gluey and tough that it feels as if you had rocks in your stomach, but oh well!

the high point is our weekly slice of liverwurst, and the jam on our unbuttered bread. but we're still alive, and much of the time it still tastes good too!

yours, anne m. fran

k