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this post was submitted on 09 Jun 2025
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chapotraphouse
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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 (1189β1192) 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 (1861β1865), 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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when i'm hearing vivaldi winter violin coming 
Doing things that are objectively bad for the garden because my landlord's requirements for the garden demand it :/ Also, I hate astroturf
Roman Anthony is extremely legit
I feel that Biden is going to cark it in the next three days, but we won't find out until five days from now
it is june 10 and stalin saved the world from fascism
Glad we're still fedded to dbzero, otherwise I couldn't get my "anytime a Hexbear user posts in a thread that showed up in their feed and directly insults Hexbear's userbase, that's brigading" nostalgia
CW: joke referencing self-harm
spoiler
Takeout place didnβt provide chopsticks so I just ate sushi with a fork
Nooo don't! Sushi is finger food!!!
I felt uncomfortable with eating the sashimi with my fingers! (Idk what to call it when itβs the veganized version) the rolls I ate as finger food tho.
For future reference, it's actually doable and acceptable to just eat sushi with your fingers
i will never not enjoy Lore Accurate Ganondorf
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
Someone should make a biopic of Zhang Zongchang.
California National Guardsmen will start "requisitioning" people's houses to sleep in instead of having to sleep on the floor, resulting in the first time since the 18th century that anyone has given a shit about the third amendment
we now frostybearOS
This is what a picture of the hexbear would look like if my dad took it.
hello, son. dunno why frosty effect produces white pixels, oh well :(
I saw a video of a short cop and people mocking him. Then leftists were doing the same about how weak and unthreatening he was. Always funny to see western leftists mocking short men when the average height of a revolutionary in the global south is probably the same as that cop.
Slowly trying to get my partner to watch anime with me so I gave him a list to pick from. He says to me "lol the first search query for this anime on google is "is Banana Fish gay?". We both laughed and cringed thinking it was just some anime edgelord homophobia or something for some reason
spoiler
But um, nope, it's pretty gay. Like really gay but a lot of it so far is just used as a tool for power plays between characters but then for different reasons for different characters?? I do not know how to feel about it
Banana Fish like the Salinger short story??
Me emailing a government employee to process invoices that he's obviously forgotten about so I can see which of the mistakes I made need to be corrected before I submitting the next batch to him
Cyhalothrin is some wuss ass bullshit pesticide i tell you what. Google is like "yes it's effective" but there sure are a lot of wasps fucking around this shed that i hosed down. I think it does literally nothing to them
Have you tried the fake wasp nest strateg y? Not sure if it's actually effective but worth a shot
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
Time travelers be like "nooo we cant kill hitler that would change the timeline too much!!!" meanwhile their time machine scared a single butterfly causing a mega death tornado to happen.
I would very much like to heard how to shut the hell up
People do not like verbal processors
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.
If anyone can help donate to my mutual aid post it is very urgent
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.
Very perplexed by facebooks recent whatsapp ad campaign. HEY JUST SO YOU KNOW WE ABSOLUTELY CANNOT SPY ON YOUR CHATS OKAY? who thought that was a good idea?
My "we absolutely cannot spy on your chats" advertising campaign has people asking a lot of questions already answered by my advertising campaign.
Boy i sure love that thing that happens when you're minding your own business doing literally nothing but then you move wrong and all of a sudden it feels like a wooden dowel has been driven underneath your shoulder blade so it just hurts all the time and also hurts when you breathe and it's like that for like all fucking night
Take of the day:
Geographically based electoral representation is bad unless youβre selecting multiple people per district. Like itβs genuinely one of the worst ways you can design an electoral system.
Selecting one representative per district only makes sense if you can assume a level of neutrality on behalf of the rep, if you can expect them to govern representing everyone in their district.
But over here in reality what it actually does is mean that in most districts if half the population contacts their rep to complain, the rep says βYes, I hate you and everything you stand for, you being unhappy with my rule is proof Iβm succeeding.β
As far as Iβm concerned I do not have a representative in the federal government, and I donβt think Iβve ever had one in my life. Every congressman whoβs been designated to βrepresentβ me my entire life have wanted me dead more than my goals accomplished.
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