Sumerian Food
The food that the sumerians ate was sold in markets owned by wealthy merchants. The foods varied from fruits, vegetables, meat, dairy, eggs and spices. For the meat they ate, they hunted pork, wild game such as fowl, gazzel, and even birds. They raised cattle sheep, goats, and pigs, and they used oxen as their transportation and ways for transporting objects They also hunted sea and freshwater animals, such as fish, turtles, crustaceans, and shellfish.
The vegetables they ate varied by season, the ones they grew are barley, chickpeas, lentils, wheat, dates, onions, garlic, leeks, mustard, and lettuce. The same for fruit. Though they mainly ate date palms, apples, pears, figs, pomegranates, grapes, bulbs, roots, and mushrooms. They were also aware of seasonal herbs. They often had cereal made out of barley that they sweet tend with manna, which is much like sugar or honey, that they drained from various types of trees.
The growing of fruits and vegetables highly depended on the use of irrigation. Irrigation was acomplished by the use of channels shadufs, canals, wires, dykes, and reservoirs. They constantly required repair, in which they had to remove silt, a granular material that is often found in a body of water. At around the first day of print the farmers flooded their fields then drained the water. Then they made the oxen run throughout the fields and stomp the weeds. The they dragged pickaxes through the field. Then, after it dried, they plowed harrowed and raked the ground. Then after they they planted the seeds. Then, still during the spring, they had a three person teams, that required a reaper, binder, and a sheaf handler. Then the farmers used threshing wagons to separate the threshing wagon to separate the cereal, from the stalks. They then used threshing sleds to disengage the grain, they then winnowed the grain mixture.
They preserved their meat, fruit and vegetables by preserving them by drink them with salt. They cooked with items made by clay and bronze, they eventually made domed caverns which added a moist atmosphere allowing doughs and levanted bread.
