POLENTA • E-FREE TRANSLATION.COM • Definition of Polenta

... skilful among the hands can manage to make a decent livelihood. Not very many of the women can earn more than about 4-1/2d. a day, so that for them all the fast-days decreed by their Church are quite superfluous; their fasts last from Ash Wednesday to Ash Wednesday. Even polenta, that very frugal Italian national dish, is for them only a Sunday's treat; the rest of the week nature provides them with turnips and other roots, great piles of which, cooked on an open hearth, greet us in all the streets of Venice, where they are eagerly devoured by the hungry ...

— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various