And finally, to complete the list of holes in the Sicilian bill of fare, they use potatoes about as much as we do macaroni. Meat costs as much or more than it does in the United States under the trust prices of the last few years, so one can imagine how much of it the Sicilians eat. T HEY eat soups and salads, all kinds of vegetables, fruit and fish, deliciously fresh and amazingly cheap. Spanish mackerel is six cents a pound I have known it to run to forty in New York lobster is eight cents, and all kinds of Mediterranean fish average four cents. If it storms so that it is unsafe for the local boats to go out, there is simply no fresh fish in the city.
None comes from a distance.
Of course there is never a month in the year when there is not fresh fruit. There is seldom more than one fresh fruit and vegetable at a time, and everybody is eating exactly the same things at the same time. When artichokes are ripe, everybody eats artichokes and no other vegetable. Then something else comes along. Lemons were three cents a dozen, oranges four and five cents.