Hardtack (or hard tack) is a type of dense cracker made from flour, water, and sometimes salt. Hardtack is inexpensive and long-lasting. It is used for sustenance in the absence of perishable foods, commonly during long sea voyages, land migrations, and military campaigns. Along with salt pork and corned beef, hardtack was a standard ration for many militaries and navies from the 17th to the early 20th centuries
The name is derived from “tack”, the British sailor slang for food. The earliest use of the term recorded by the Oxford English Dictionary is from 1830.
It is known by other names including brewis (possibly a cognate with “brose”), cabin bread, pilot bread, sea biscuit, soda crackers, sea bread (as rations for sailors), ship’s biscuit, and pejoratively as dog biscuits, molar breakers, sheet iron, tooth dullers, Panzerplatten (“armor plates”; Germany) and worm castles. Australian and New Zealand military personnel knew them with some sarcasm as ANZAC wafers (not to be confused with Anzac biscuit).
History
The introduction of the baking of processed cereals, including the creation of flour, provided a more reliable source of food. Egyptian sailors carried a flat brittle loaf of millet bread called dhourra cake. A cracker called bucellatum is known in Ancient Rome. King Richard I of England left for the Third Crusade (1189–1192) with “biskit of muslin”, which was a mixed grain compound of barley, bean flour, and rye.
Because hardtack biscuits were baked hard, they would stay intact for years if kept dry. For long voyages, hardtack was baked four times, rather than the more common two, and prepared six months before sailing. Because it is dry and hard, hardtack, when properly stored and transported, will survive rough handling and temperature extremes. Dry hardtack is dense and virtually inedible; troops issued it usually made it edible by dampening, or crushing the biscuits
When James VI and I set sail for Norway in October 1589, his provisions included 15,000 “bisquit baiks”. By at least 1731, it was officially codified in Naval regulation that each sailor was rationed one pound (450 g) of biscuit per day.
By 1818, the United States Navy had outlined that each sailor was to be given 14 ounces (400 g) of bread per day as part of their daily ration while serving onboard in the form of hardtack.
During the American Civil War (1861–1865), three-by-three-inch (7.6 by 7.6 cm) hardtack was shipped from Union and Confederate storehouses. Civil War soldiers generally found their rations to be unappealing, and joked about the poor quality of the hardtack in the satirical song “Hard Tack Come Again No More”.
With insect infestation common in improperly stored provisions, soldiers would break up the hardtack and drop it into their morning coffee. This would not only soften the hardtack but the insects, mostly weevil larvae, would float to the top, and the soldiers could skim them off and eat the biscuits. The grubs "left no distinctive flavor behind.
Some men turned hardtack into a mush by breaking it up with blows from their rifle butts, then adding water. If the men had a frying pan, they could cook the mush into a lumpy pancake; otherwise they dropped the mush directly on the coals of their campfire. They also mixed hardtack with brown sugar, hot water, and sometimes whiskey to create what they called a pudding, to serve as dessert.
Modern Use
Commercially available hardtack is a significant source of food energy in a small, durable package. A store-bought 24-gram cracker can contain 100 calories (20 percent from fat) from 2 grams of protein but practically no fiber.
Food That Time Forgot: Ships Biscuits - townsends
How to Eat Like a Pirate: Hardtack & Grog - tasting history
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is a type of dense cracker
dont need to attack me personally wtf
I like these a lot
Pls make these emojis
Incredible
Me when upbear
Me when no upbear
dense cracker
At the Los Angeles protests, a man who entered the United States illegally was out protesting ICE. He said he’s anti-capitalist and wants the U.S. to become a socialist country similar to the Soviet Union
man LA is full of based people
lmao bro said the only real socialism tried was the war communism era of the Bolshevik Revolution
shitting on Cuba
not really that based
lmao
I can’t wait to die while middle aged in a dumber conflict than I could possibly imagine. Gonna die trying to take Six Flag cause the roller coasters still working machine parts and irs near a lake.
Libs going “What about the optics of the mexican flag!” Like listen we live in a hype moments and aura society and that biker with mexican flag photo goes hard.
Why don’t they go out there and shred like a badass and be an absolute icon and fly whatever flag they want then? Who’s going to stop them, a legion of pigs? Didn’t stop that rad motherfucker, seems like a skills issue
Simpsons did the tomacco and it wasn’t as dumb as the real thing
Tobacco and tomato are even from the same family of plant, so idk if hybridisation is possible but
IIRC there are experiments where a tomato top is grafted onto a potato bottom. So in theory you can have the tomato fruits and harvest potatoes when the plant is done. Tricky part is grafting it and (I assume) keeping a close eye on it since its seperate species.
They’re distant cousins so it works. IDK how far tobacco is, but I assume its a bit further and thus harder.
Fun fact, all three have some level of nicotine in them. Just the potatoes/tomatoes have such a low level you’d die of one of the other alkoloids before you could get a noticable nicotine dose.
So in theory you can have the tomato fruits and harvest potatoes when the plant is done.
I saw a guy called kiwigrower on yt published a vid where he did that. Haven’t watched it to see what the results were lkle tho
I’m sure users here are well aware, but just a reminder that there are always massive astroturfing campaigns on places like reddit during increased unrest and to be very cautious with your trust when trying to ascertain any general trends through posts or comments. For example, on BlackPeopleTwitter and other primarily Black subreddits I noticed a large uptick of comments saying something to the effect of “Latinos voted for Trump, they didn’t help us during BLM, why should we care about deportations?” Polls show that majority of Black people are against the current raids and deportations, which should be common sense, why would Black people as a group support Nazis?
So anyone out there protesting, ignore the haters and wreckers, history will absolve all resistance against the current status quo. Even with the bot campaigns, the people fighting back seem to be well supported by the majority in non-rightwing online spheres. This is sort of a reminder for myself because I am almost getting riled by the bullshit I’ve been seeing online, but social media is not real life.
Thought of posting this in a real comm, but fuck it, megathread.
Going to be laid off later this month. There’s a chance I’ll get rehired in July or August (I can’t say much since I don’t want to dox myself), but this shit has me so blackpilled.
Basically, even though the classes I teach at my university are needed (they’re required to graduate for every student!), the school is gutting my department for budgetary reasons. Absolute nightmare shit, and has me incredibly pessimistic about the future of higher education. I’m unionized, so there are rehiring rights (i.e. the uni won’t just purge me and hire fresh meat), but it’s still a reassertion of the precariat life, even as a college lecturer.
I’m applying for contingent work everywhere and the few FT positions I’m qualified for, but anyone have any thoughts on what an over educated college writing/humanities instructor can apply to in the private sector? I’m trying to stay focused on what I can control, but I’m really… really… really scared. The tiny bit of stability in my life has been yanked away through no fault of my own. This system is a system of horrors, and I just don’t know what we can even do anymore (P.S. I’m active in my union, organizing obviously is the only thing that I’m hoping on right now, but it still feels so bleak comrades).
The lib establishment is to afraid to ask the obvious question, what if ICE is Hamas?
It’s over, I’ve already portrayed you as the uncivilized barbarian erect penis, and myself as the civilized Athenian flaccid penis.
Watching these protests and the ones in 2020, I can’t help but feel like domestic government here is barely hanging on by a thread. i have yet to see cops or military anywhere that look prepared for an actual insurrection. They’re only ever ready to be violent against unarmed and basically peaceful protestors. If a couple thousand people across the country decided to take up arms and actually fight the state I could very easily imagine it would cause the whole damn thing to fragment.
I don’t know if that would be a good thing. It would probably look more like the Chinese civil war than a revolution. The the fact that it’s even a possibility is quite alarming though.
Its because theyre dealing with American protesters, who sure once knew how to pick a fight (battle of blair mountain, black panther party, you know the hits), but the new crowds lack the muscle memory and solidarity that comes with constant struggle instead of these big flare ups. Its cool to see cars on fire and cops getting pushed over! Im glad theyre fighting, they just aren’t a disciplined mass.
Plenty of people are willing to kill for what they belive in, but so few are willing to die for what they believe in. I don’t even know if people are willing to live for the cause, if it would mean fewer treats or being subordinate to a cause or leadership.
The old It Could Happen Here podcast has some more realistic scenarios for how tensions might get heightened but it didn’t materialize because we’re dealing with some of the softest, most cowed, least disciplined, most consumer satisfied proletariate in the world in the US. I could see things get worse as the Trump admin keeps tightening and getting more overtly fascistic, but I doubt it ever gets “worse” than the Troubles and not full blown Chinese Civil War - like, bad, its tough to live in, but you still have to go to work even if there was a car bombing downtown
I don’t even know if people are willing to live for the cause,
have to want to live in the first place for that and i think a whole lot of people are ambivalent about waking up any given tomorrow morning.
Big if
is everyone going to pretend democrats didn’t spend the last 4 years getting progressively more racist in a failed attempt to win over the overt racists
I’m seeing posts on the Los Angeles city subreddit that are like “If you’re military you’re being given unjust orders, you don’t have to do this”. Those were the exact words, you don’t have to do this. And I can’t help but think of Woody Harrelson’s character saying that to Anton Chiguhr right before being casually blasted. I’m not trying to be morbid, it’s just…not a great approach, I don’t think.
I don’t think it’d hurt at least.
I realize now that I lazily fell into the liberal tendency to chalk down my own negative feelings to some objective quality of the thing I’m feeling about. You’re right: I don’t think it hurts, or is necessarily a bad approach, so much as it just leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
