You could afford to boil your water? In the winter we had to chew on ice chips.

Seriously - in my family we learned not to ask what was in a meal until the next day. Unless of course we had spotted the sack of live eels that got dropped off, in which case the question was asked suspiciously BEFORE eating anything....

It was kinda hard for mom to disguise the grackles though.......when several naked little birdie carcasses are deposited on your plate....

I suspect some of the "chicken" soup we had wasn't "chicken". I know eel went into stews, spaghetti sauce, etc. a Family shellfish license was $5 a year at that point, so on weekends (when we had time to go shellfishing) we ate a lot of shellfish...mussels (no limit - at that time) quahogs, steamers, whelks, even periwinkles and things like slippershells. The occasional scallop if we could catch the buggers.