The everyday diet

Bread was the everyday plate, in Galilee, bread with fish: the boy’s “five barley loaves and two fishes” was a poor family’s food, barley being the cheaper bread. Edersheim sketches the rest of the table: fish “a favorite dish, and never wanting at a Sabbath-meal”; eggs “a common article of food, and sold in the shops”; the poor living on bread with cheese, fruit, or vegetables, cucumbers, lentils, beans, peas, onions; locusts, John the Baptist’s food, eaten fried in flour or honey; meat (young goats, lambs, calves) mostly a food of the better-off. Wine was drunk mixed, two or even three parts water to the wine. The Mishnah takes milk, cheese, eggs, and locusts for granted as everyday foods, prescribing each its blessing.