Skillygallee & Coosh

I WATCHED a bit of Ken Burn's Civil War on PBS this evening, and later Googled up a few factoids. An army marches on its stomach, as Napoleon famously said. How the Blue and the Gray did so during the Civil War amazes me. Both armies largely subsisted on dubious meals that could be prepared quickly. For the Union Army, that meant Skillygallee, a dish made by frying salt pork or bacon with crumbled bits of dry hardtack (pictured above). Behind the Confederate skirmishes, Johnny Reb had to make due with something called Coosh -- a thick mush concocted by frying cornmeal with bacon drippings and water. Sometimes they made a sort of dough, twisted it around a stick and roasted it over an open fire. Yum. And to think I used to complain about Marine Corps C-Rations.