The Diary of Anne Frank by Anne Frank

Dearest Kitty, It might be amusing for you (though not for me) to hear what we're going to eat today. The cleaning lady is working downstairs, so at the moment I'm seated at the van Daans' oilcloth-covered table with a handkerchief sprinkled with fragrant pre-war perfume pressed to my nose and mouth. You probably don't have the faintest idea what I'm talking about, so let me 'begin at the beginning'. The people who supply us with food coupons have been arrested, so we have just our five black-market ration books -no coupons, no fats and oils. Since Miep and Mr Kleiman are ill again, Bep can't manage the shopping. The food is wretched, and so are we. As of tomorrow, we won't have a scrap of fat, butter or margarine. We can't eat fried potatoes for breakfast (which we've been doing to save on bread), so we're having porridge instead, and because Mrs van D. thinks we're starving, we bought some milk and some cream. Lunch today consists of mashed potatoes and pickled kale. This explains the precautionary measure with the handkerchief. You wouldn't believe how much kale can stink when it's a few years old! The kitchen smells like a mixture of spoiled plums, rotten eggs and brine. Ugh, just the thought of having to eat that muck makes me want to be sick! Besides that, our potatoes have contracted such strange diseases that one out of every two buckets of pommes de terre ends up in the dustbin. We entertain ourselves by trying to work out which disease they've got, and we've reached the conclusion that they suffer from cancer, smallpox and measles. Honestly, being in hiding during the fourth year of the war is no picnic. If only the whole stinking mess were over!

To tell you the truth, the food wouldn't matter so much to me if life here were more pleasant in other ways. But that's just it: this tedious existence is starting to make us all disagreeable. Here are the opinions of the five grown-ups on the present situation (children aren't allowed to have opinions, and for once I'm sticking to the rules):