Misshapen bread? Just cut it up and turn it into dumplings, no biggie. Isn’t it funny how stew always tastes better a day later?
Meowjito
So lets write it down here The Meowjito will at one point be THE summerdrink … but noone will know it was invented by a scrubby Cat working at a Tavern missing home….
1A cinnamony Tabuleh
So to answer the question how does catnip taste to humans. For sure not as wonderful and elating as it does to me and my fello Tabaxi friends! But it still does have a nice mint note and subtle cinnamony herbal flavours. So it fits into a lot of foods. For example this Tabuleh.
First cook the Quinoa … totally oversalt the quinoa … be forced to cook even more Quinoa mix the all of it together and get a perfectly salted quinoa mush. Then chop and grill some aubergine and zucchini and add them to the quinoa. Add a lot of finely chopped catnip and cilantro. give it some lime juice and olive oil . Mix in chopped tomatoes, cucumber, red onion and dates. Then grill some peach and coconut flakes add them to the whole mush and add a little cinnamon to taste. Summerly freshly yummness.
1Chicken & Potato Gumbo
Gumbo is fun. Firstly, it’s cooked with beer, that’s a plus (admittedly, the alcohol cooks out). Secondly, making the roux for gumbo feels like an elaborate dare just how dark you can make it before it starts to burn.
Takes me back. We used to have enchanted jars to keep hot food with us, they were prized as much as a good pickaxe. I sold mine to buy my first lute. It wasn’t all that good, but it was a lute… Hm, I’m sure one could muse about selling your past to dream of a future…
But those were the times. A hard day of work, a hot bowl of stew, a quiet place deep underneath the earth.
That’s the thing, people often don’t know how quiet a mine can be. You see, if you’re feeling pompous and vain you carve big mountain halls. Large spaces, square angles, flat walls. Sound will bounce around like a tireless child. But when you’re mining, you don’t care about aesthetics. You don’t negotiate with the mountain about which path would look pretty, you choose the softer stone and avoid the harder bits. Some natural cavities here, a mined vein of ore there, and you end up with a ragged network of spaces where no two surfaces point the same way. And the way sound bounces there, not knowing which way to go, makes it sound unusually quiet and muted, like no other place in the world. A hard day of work, a hot bowl of stew. I remember I started to sneak away to find a secluded place, eat my food and hum melodies of fledgling songs. The birth of a bard, in the quiet of the mountain.
When the world is all weird angles, you don’t know which way to bounce, heh…
1Grilled Cheese Sandwich
To complete the trifecta of square bread creations.
Bread, cheddar, an amount of butter that would give a lich heartburn, and a hot pan, not too hot, until it all fuses into a cheesy, gooey and crunchy singularity. I think I need to take a nap now…
1Croque Madame
Leaving Niflheim and the monotony of mining opened my eyes to how the world is such a dance of people coming and going, each person passing by being a deep well of stories waiting to be told.
One of my earlier exposures to that was when I was working as a dishwasher to get by, my skills as a bard still hopelessly underdeveloped. There came this woman, human, 50-ish years of age if I had to take a guess, and she began to tell stories from her home country far away. I only caught bits and pieces between the work, but she radiated life. Within minutes she commanded people’s attentions.
Where she was from, they’d call a tavern not “tavern” but a “bistro”, and she recounted how they’d sit leisurely in the sun and enjoy coffee and a snack in the company of good friends. One of those dishes being a so-called “Croque Madame”, which supposedly translates into “crunchy lady” or something…?
Ham and cheese between two slices of bread, a hint of mustard, a fried egg and some more cheese sauce on top. Not a mere sandwich, but a layered symphony of comforting tastes.
Here’s my try. I would hope to capture some of that “schwoa… schoi…” – dammit, my pronunciation sucks, but I think it’s spelled “joie de vivre”… – I’d hope to capture some of that sometime, in my cooking, or my music.
1BLT Sandwich
Structural issues aside, the bread still made for a good sandwich. I’ll take it.
1Goodberry Deliciousness: Travel Edition
It is actually amazing. We’re roaming around north of the middle of fucking nowhere and the food is better than at most inns. It’s surely not mum’s cooking level, but definitely at the top of what I had since leaving home. And it keeps getting crazier:
Somebody – I’m quite sure it was Harf – started with baking! Initially I wondered how that should work out. Seeing that we left civilization far behind us, we have no oven and ingredients are hard to come by. But after coming back from a round of foraging there it was: A full on DIY oven made from stone. I suspect that was a collaboration between Harf’s knowledge around stones, Nim’s engineering skills and Einarr’s strength, or flex or whatever it is that powers that guy, to put the stones in place… And that whole thing actually works too!
I’m not good at baking myself, but here is this one recipe for this delicious berry cheese cake my mum always made, that I know how to make. Okay, I only watched her make it, but it was often and I thought I’ll give it a try. The hard part was getting the ingredients though. Berries naturally are easy, but the remainder is mostly made from various dairy products which first go bad rather quickly – especially when you run around and your bag is getting crushed and what not all the time, and second you need animals to produce it. Well, let’s say that much, milking a fucking owlbear borders on suicide. But, in the end we succeeded. There will be scaring though. And not only the physical kind…
The final product didn’t turn out half bad, so I’m pleased. I did come up short of berries in the end, so I had to “liberate” some of Quiz’ goodberries. She only carries them around until they go bad anyways, so no harm in putting them to good use. Also, she seemed quite distracted by the catnip…
Fun fact: The goodberries loose some of their healing power when baked. They now only heal psychic damage taken from name puns. Sou far so good, but only harf as useful… *uses-bonus-action-to-hide*
11The Geometry of Dwarven Bread
Dwarven bread should reflect the qualities inherent in dwarvenkind. Sturdy and square. No frills nor adornments should interfere with the basic structure and stability of a loaf of dwarven bread. In fact, if one were to swap out a keystone of a bridge with a well baked loaf, and you couldn’t tell the difference, I’d consider this good bread.
Glorifim Berlgranite, Baker
I’ve come across the writings of Glorifim and if you ask me, that guy is a bit nuts. But I can’t lie, the nostalgic comfort of a nice square loaf is something I can’t deny. I decided to take some inspiration from my travels and try for something softer and fluffier. Got something tasty, but I think I messed up my shaping and timing and ran into some, shall we say… structural problems. Grumph… this is trickier than I thought…
2Roasted Cauliflower Pt. 3
Decided to go the other way around and take it low and slow. I honestly lost track of time, was it one and a harf hours? *Glug* Two and a harf? *Glug* But I felt like I was on the right track. Decided to not go for the mayo and went for a big dollop of miso butter instead, and whooo… I think I’m onto something. Now I’m getting ideas of brightening it up with some fresh lemon zest and juice and serving it on a flaky pie crust like a galette with some sugar snap peas… hmmm…