Chapter 18: Chapter 18: Kinky Martha Stewart

Nay and Nom had returned to Quincy’s Lodge at mid-morning with a hand cart full of produce.

The Moonglum Farms vendor, whose name ended up being Don, met her shortly after with a wagon haul of meat near the kitchen exit that would serve as a loading dock.

Quincy had wandered outside to watch the exchange as Don and Gracie rolled barrels of beef, poultry and pork into the kitchen.

“You spent how much on how many pounds of meat?” Quincy said, concerned.

“Before you worry about the numbers,” Nay said, “just know that this is the best quality meat we’re going to find in town. I had to make a deal with Don if we wanted to start with the best ingredients.”

“You spent a nearly half a month’s budget on, if you’re lucky, a week’s worth of meat!” Quincy couldn’t hide his worry. “I say lucky because most of it might rot! We are not getting that many customers who can justify this purchase!”

Nay winced and turned towards him. “Trust me. Give me two days, two dinner services before you start worrying. If I have leftovers, I can dry age and freeze it to make it last. So either way, it will be put to use.”

“This is a bold move, Renee Favreau,” Quincy said. “For your sake, you better hope it pays off.”

“Fortune favors the bold, sir,” she said.

Quincy walked back inside, shaking his head.

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[Quest Detected]

[Quest: Prove Quincy Wrong and Sell All The Product]

[Accept Quest [Y/N?]

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Nay accepted the quest and the opened the menu for Vigor Points.

Collect Vigor Points to cultivate your vigor! Collect enough Vigor Points and you will ascend in Rank!

Current Rank: Base

Progress: 5%

Don reappeared and shook her hand, “That’s everything. Glad to be in business with the Lodge. It’s about time Quincy got someone sensible to make a deal with me. Same time and amount next week?”

Nay smiled. “You bet.”

He climbed back into his wagon, which was pulled by actual reindeer. He waved as the animals pulled the wagon back onto the street.

Gracie emerged and sidled up next to her. “What did Quincy say to you?”

“He has doubts about handing me the reins of the kitchen for a week.”

“Aye,” Gracie said, “he does get nervous about the budget. Can I let you in on something?”

Nay nodded.

“He’s been a bit of a mess since ‘Ol Pat passed.”

“How did she pass?”

“The Thief of Time finally caught up with her. She’s been running the kitchen since the beginning.”

“And she didn't prepare a successor? She didn’t have a sous chef or second-in-command?”

“No, can’t say that many people were ever interested and she liked to do things by herself. She never liked people in her space when she was cooking. She was always shooing gals away.”

“What about recipes? Did she write them down? Keep a record of them somewhere?”

“Aye, I’ll show ya.”

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Once back in the kitchen, Nom had slinked away into the shadows when Gracie wasn’t paying attention. Nay had given him instructions to start prep on the vegetables for dinner service. She gave him the tasks of peeling the garlic and washing and cutting the blue-hued tundra peppers and the icebite cilantro and the other stuff on the list.

Nay only knew it was a matter of time before Gracie stumbled upon him. There was just no way to have him perform sous chef duties in the kitchen while also hiding from another member of the kitchen staff. But she would deal with that as it happened. Best to give Nom a head start before the inevitable occurred.

Gracie led Nay to one of the storerooms and there was a stool and table hidden in one of the corners behind some stacks of crates. There was a candle-holder on the table. She opened the drawer revealing a small battered notebook bound in leather. There were pencil nubs and Ol’ Pat’s last hand-rolled cigarettes and some wicks. “That’s it there,” Gracie said.

Nay picked up and opened the small cookbook. Ol’ Pat’s handwriting was best described as a runic scrawl, but Nay was able to read thanks to her Rosetta Stone ability passive. There were recipes for various appetizers, including the cucasalat she had last night. There were different recipes for bread and methods to prepare roast chicken and winterquail. Also various tarts. It was hearty peasant-like cooking and Nay was sure she had seen variations of some of these recipes in high-falutin French cookbooks. All those dishes were based on simple farmland meals. She closed the book and would come back to it later to read in more detail.

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Nay put Gracie in charge of the lunch service, which was just dried fish, a bit of cheese and more bread. Gracie’s lunch station was on the end of the kitchen closest to the doors that led into what Nay called the expo room, a small anteroom where there was a table to set the dishes and trays for the servers. It was a buffer between the kitchen and the tavern, and Nay was glad to see it because it would mean less front-of-the-house staff wandering into her kitchen. She was a stickler for only having back-of-the-house staff in her kitchens, and she wasn’t going to break the tradition and standards just because she was in a different world.

So, the stitchgal stayed on this side of the kitchen, transporting her pre-made lunches into the expo run.

Nom was on the opposite end of the kitchen, closer to the pantry and the cool storeroom where they stored produce. This room had one of the magic amenities Alric had mentioned. The walls were constructed by a gnomish Marrow Eater and they had designed the room to keep a cool climate, which was perfect for keeping goods that needed to be chilled.

Nay thought of it as her walk-in fridge.

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Nom had blown out some of the candles on this end so there was more darkness here, so he could go about his tasks without calling too much attention to himself. If someone did wander into the kitchen, there was enough shadow to give him a few moments to retreat into the pantry or larder. Or even hide under a table if need be. Nay wondered if she could eventually get the Lodge to warm up to the idea of a sous chef tentacle. Maybe one day the town would accept him. But, baby steps, she reminded herself.

One cannot rush tentacle acceptance.

Nay had taken a blank page out of the back of Ol’ Pat’s cookbook and one of the pencil nubs. As she began writing down ingredients, magic prompt appeared in her vision. Tabs appeared, marked with the words:

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[Chef’s Delight Recipes]

[Nay’s Garlic Knots] [Base Rank Recipe]

[Goatkick Tacos] [Base Rank Recipe]

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Her Chef’s Delight ability seemed to be naturally combining with the ideas she already had for tonight’s dinner. As her eyes scanned over the ingredients like garlic and tundra peppers, they pulsed, indicating they were ingredients in these recipes. She opened the menus for each one.

Nay’s Garlic Knots are tasty treats for those carb-loaders who love fluffy, buttery bread. These will both satisfy and stimulate the appetite for more. The more they eat, the more ravenous they’ll become. The perfect appetizer for preparing a customer for the main course to come!

Imbues the eater with a Hunger Debuff.

Goatkick Tacos are the perfect bite for the man or woman who has come to dinner with a major appetite. The goat is stewed to a melt-in-your-mouth tenderness in a salty and sweet consommé of broth and peppers. Will leave each eater feeling renewed. The only thing they’ll want afterwards is to wash it down with a hearty brew.

Imbues the eater with a Strength Buff and a Thirst Debuff.

She automatically knew every ingredient she needed and she could combine that with her knowledge on cooking techniques.

“Magic food recipes,” she said in awe. If these recipes meant what she thought it meant, then she could use her Chef’s Delight ability to manipulate the sense of hunger and thirst in a customer with these particular debuffs. Which meant she could essentially create addicts. She would be able to get them to eat and drink more. Hopefully that would also mean, if it really worked, that word of mouth about how good the food was would spread. All she had to do was figure out some sort of desert, and she had her menu for tonight’s service.

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The first thing Nay got started on was making and preparing the dough for the garlic knots. She had two ways to do it, and for this first batch, she was going to have to use dough that Gracie had previously made. It would take a day or so for the yeast to rise, so she would make her personal recipe today and leave it to sit overnight to rise. But for tonight, she was just gonna take some of Gracie’s pre-made dough so she could just shape it, cover it in the garlic butter and oil, and bake it.

For the batch she would use tomorrow, she used the flour she picked up from the market that a vendor had imported from the Peninsula, which was where most of the wheat in Stitchdale came from. Wheat grew abundantly on the Peninsula because of the soil and conducive climate. She combined it with sugar, yeast, salt and water. She covered the dough in olive oil and then covered the pans with towels so the dough could rise overnight.

Nay showed Nom how to prepare the pans of garlic and olive oil so they could make the garlic-infused oil they would use on the garlic knots. They set the pans filled with garlic soaking in olive oil over the fire.

As Nay prepped and cooked, she was aware of an aura around her. Although others couldn’t see it, it appeared in her vision and the tab to a menu appeared.

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[Marrow Ability Log]

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She opened it up and text scrolled by in her sight HUD.

Chef’s Delight [Base Rank] in use.

Nay’s Garlic Knots being created.

The next time-sensitive thing they had to prepare was the consommé for the Goatkick Tacos. This was essentially the stew the goat meat would boil in. Nom had already chopped the onions and tundra peppers, so these they roasted with snowdew seeds and tomatoes Ol’ Pat had stored in the walk-in. Like wheat, all the tomatoes came from the Peninsula as it was too cold for them to grow in Stitchdale.

After they were done roasting in the pans, Nay had found some tins that turned out to be magic-operated gnomish blenders. They reminded her of the handheld bullet blenders from back home. They took their roasted veggies and seeds and they blended these with some of the spices Nom had identified as having some heat to make a puree. They poured all batches of the puree into a big cauldron. Nay added water and a clay jug of snowapple cider vinegar she found in one of the pantries.

Chef’s Delight [Base Rank] in use.

Goatkick Tacos being created.

She seasoned the goat meat heavily with salt, pepper, cumin and dried tundra pepper and then added it to the cauldron. She hung it over the firepit in the center of the kitchen and it would boil there all day and afternoon until costumers started trickling in for dinner. By then the meat would be falling apart in a velvety sauce.

They then found what appeared to be cornmeal on one of the shelves. As Nay ran it through her fingers she tasted it, and the texture was much like corn or something more wild like maize. She combined this with globs of lard and salt and water to make the tortilla batter. She showed Nom how to roll the batter into balls, which could then be smashed with the bottom of an ale bottle and fried on a pan to turn into a tortilla. When Nom tasted the first one he turned a reddish color, indicating delight.

She showed him the ingredients for the pico de gallo, which they made out of chopped tomatoes, onions and some of the icebite cilantro. The garnish would add some winter chill to the spicy tacos.

With the appetizer and main dishes cooking or either ready to be cooked, and with Nom busy prepping all the ingredients, next on deck was figuring out a desert. She looked through the pantry again and when she scanned over the sugar another menu prompt appeared for her.

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[Chef’s Delight Recipes]

[Sinsucker Blondies] [Base Rank Recipe]

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Sinsucker Blondies are the divine desert for those with a sweet tooth. The combination of brown sugar and white chocolate is strong enough to make an ogre weak in the knees.

Imbues the eater with a Stamina Buff and a Dexterity Buff.

Nay chuckled to herself. “Eat your heart out, kinky Martha Stewart.”

She wasn’t sure if she should make it though. It sounded like the baked good version of Viagra and she wasn’t sure if she wanted to fill the Lodge with randy customers.

Although, on the other hand, it could fill rooms on the second floor and it would mean more business overall for Quincy. It might make for a night to remember at the old Lodge.

She started to collect the ingredients, white chocolate from Delicatessa City and brown sugar from the island of Amoa, when a shrill scream came from the kitchen.

“Help! It’s a monster!” Gracie said. “Quick, grab the cleaver!”

She hurried out there to see Gracie holding a wooden spoon, waving it at Nom, who stood there with tortilla batter covering his protuberances.

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