Rasp was very much used long ago and is still.
It is made by grating raw potatoes on a home made rasp or grater. The rasp is made by boring holes in a piece of tin with a wire nail. The grated potatoes are mixed with flour and baked.
Boxty is like rasp except that the liquid of the potatoes is strained off or pressed off.
Bread - Oatmeal cakes were made by mixing oatmeal with water and sometimes milk and were baked on a griddle: a flat round shaped piece of metal. Before the time of griddles they were baked by standing on edge against the back of a low stool before a red turf fire on the hearthstone.
Wholewmeal cakes made from wheaten meal were baked on a griddle. Sometimes oatmeal and Indian meal mixed with flour were used to make bread. Oatmeal bread was carried in the pocket on a long journey to keep away the ''fear-gorta'' or hunger-weakness.
Meat - veal - ''cruibins,'' fowl, wild fowl and bacon were used. These were cooked on a ''spit'' that is suspended from a chain and hung before a glowing fire.
Vegetables - cabbage, nettles and ''samsogs''
Three feeds of nettles in Spring were eaten to keep away disease during the the year.Mary Geoghegan