Hey! thanks for the clicky - I didn't take the notes very well sorry (it was initially just for me), and the "hard times" reference comes later in the journal, within the paragraph

"Cooking, beyond what is done by the ship is not an easy matter; a
small frying or stew pan would have been very handy. We had some
strange messes to avoid eating the biscuits. What would some of our
honest Scotch folk that can always get plenty of flour, think of a
mixture of flour, thick pea-soup and steeped biscuits, baked into
scones and without baking soda. Verily I may sing with a vengeance,
for I have good cause "Hard times come again no more".
Ana