Chapter 2: Food
If there was one thing for which he was grateful about his last job, it would have been introducing him to a world of food heād probably never have tried. Or considered trying. His fondness for sweets wasnāt exactly a secret at this point, though he still drew the line at that one confection in Faedin that he was pretty sure was somehow made of mushrooms. That was going by the vendors cagey smile and refusal to tell the outsider what was in it.
Heād try a lot of thingsā¦ if you werenāt cagey about it. That made him feel like a child someone was trying to sell boiled Brussels sprouts and it was bound to end in a similar poker faced stand off and not one taste.
He had to admit he just generally wasnāt a big fan of eating mushrooms. Something about them summoned images of the cheap tins of brown, slices that his mother would pour out of a can and into a pan with leftover bacon and onion. It always filled the small apartment with the most indescribable smell. The bacon and the onion made his mouth water, but the slightly damp, distinctly fungal smell and the lingering note of canned goods made him want to go for a long walk no matter what the weather was like.
No amount of money was going to convince him that ācannedā wasnāt a distinct flavor and smell of itās own.
He also remembered her annoyed complaints that sure; they were eating cheap but āat least it wasnāt cabbageā. He still wasnāt sure what she had against cabbage, though if it was anything like his feelings about mushrooms he couldnāt exactly complain. Heād been convinced for some time that Cabbage was basically an evil lettuce that was somehow worse than tinned mushrooms.
Heād been employed by The Team for maybe a year before heād found out otherwise. Been introduced to things like sauerkraut or serving it with corned beef. And Kimchi. Theyād gone to a place uptown to, as his mentor had explained, drop him cold into a situation and train him on trying stuff with a straight face so heād be able to pass as comfortable. His poker face had gotten damn good over the years, even over caviar. Caviar was like mushrooms. Overrated and something he wasnāt convinced people enjoyed, just pretended to on principle.
Something about Kimchi had been the official springboard to him actually looking forward to those outings, even the one where heād ended up at a fancy business dinner pretending to be an employee and trying to not full body cringe because a well-intentioned caterer had wedged a pencil thick slice of ginger inside beaten thin bits of chicken.
Watching someone else smuggle theirs into a napkin and stash it inside an enormous vase had been so gratifying it still made him smile.
But not as much as the Kimchi which had somehow escalated food from āthe thing you do to surviveā, to āvery small things can be amazing and entirely in reachā.
Kyanoko had reformed him on Sāmores. He didnāt like marshmallow on itās own, and had never had much call to camp let alone incinerate a marshmallow on a stick and make it a graham cracker and chocolate coffin, but much like Kimchi was not -just- a variety of cabbage, Sāmore were more than their component parts.
Made him wonder if sheād had grilled cheese or something. Thatād be a fun bit of sharing, anything from the ones of his childhood with flimsy white bread and processed cheese to cheese with names he stumbled to pronounce and things like pepper or thin sliced fruit. (He wasnāt sure it technically counted as a grilled cheese at the point that it wasnāt primarily bread and melted cheese butā¦ he got the idea.)
Though he wanted to find someplace with a good Kimchi again. There were enough portals out there one of them had to have something like he remembered from his home portal.
Food was a fantastic adventure. Food was survival, but also home, and friends, and wonder. He liked that. And maybe heād reconsider those sketchy damn sweets in Faedin.
Met my wife and now cooking and seeking flavor palettes and spices that go well together is fun. Eating is something I do to enjoy eating.
It was nice seeing another character's journey on it eating to survive to eating for enjoyment.
My mom was legitimately kind of an awful cook and hated to cook too so she also didn't really teach my twin and I, we've spent a chunk of our own lives learning to cook and be comfortable experimenting with recipes. <3 Unfortunately I'm still in a questionable relationship with vegetables after what she used to do to them. -brr-.
I spent -years- thinking rice was just... gross. Because she'd make minute rice for stuff and it always hit the plate looking like tiny maggots. She hated cooking SO MUCH she couldn't even follow the directions on the easiest rice I've ever set up, so it was overcooked and all exploded. Otherwise: lots of canned or limp frozen stuff. It was just... unpleasant.
Shit I love mushrooms. I never heard of canned mushrooms before. That sounds like hell.