The Pilgrims table manners were different from ours. Important people ate first and best.The Pilgrims table manners were different from ours. The food that was eaten at the harvest feast would have seemed fatty to us, but it was probably more healthy for the hard working pilgrims than it would be for us.
Pilgrims table manners called for the adults to sit down to eat first and the children and servants waited on them. The pilgrims didn't use forks--they ate with spoons, knives, and their fingers. They wiped their hands on large cloth napkins which they also used to pick up hot food. Salt would have been on the table but pepper was only used for cooking. In the seventeenth century, a person's social standing determined what he or she ate. The best food was placed next to the most important people. People didn't usually sample everything that was on the table, they just ate what was closest to them.
(Click here to learn how to make a Thanksgiving Cornucopia craft) All of the different types of foods were placed on the table at the same time and people ate in any order they chose. Sometimes there were two courses, but each of them would contain both meat dishes, puddings, and sweets. Our Thanksgiving dinner is centered around the turkey, but that wasn't so with the pilgrims. Their meals included many different meats. But Vegetables didn't really play a large part in the feasts of the seventeenth century. Depending on the time of year, many vegetables weren't available to the colonists. The pilgrims used In the seventeenth century, cooks did not worry about teaspoons and tablespoons. They just improvised. The best way to cook in the seventeenth century was to roast things. Someone was assigned to sit for hours and turn the spit to roast the meat. Since the Pilgrims and Wampanoag Indians had no refrigeration, they dried a lot of their foods to preserve them. They dried Indian corn, hams, fish, and herbs. The biggest meal of the day for the colonists was at noon and was called noonmeat or dinner. The housewives would spend part of their morning cooking that meal. Supper was a smaller meal that they had at the end of the day. Breakfast tended to be leftovers from the previous day's noonmeat. The foods that the colonists and Wampanoag Indians ate were very similar. But while the colonists had set eating patterns—breakfast, dinner,and supper—the Wampanoags ate when they were hungry and had pots cooking throughout the day. Mimi was fascinated by Pilgrims table manners and the idea of eating noonmeat's leftovers for breakfast the next morning. McAveler was fascinated by, well, everything!
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The colonists were more active and needed more protein. Heart attack was the least of their worries. They were more concerned about the plague and pox. 
People weren't served their meals individually. Foods were placed on the table and then people took the food from the table and ate it. 
