dreamcrystals | third entry 🌱 in the spirit of gift giving

Sender: Zelda
To: Everyone except Link
Subject: Recipes

To my fellow residents of Reverein,

It seems time has gotten away from me and Goddess Day is already fast approaching. Goddess Day is a Hyrulean holiday that falls around the same time of year as [ What was the name of that holiday from last winter's dreamscape? ] Christmas, where we traditionally share gifts with our loved ones.

This year, I have decided to give a book of cooking recipes to my knight, Link. It seems he has an appreciation for cooking that equals his appreciation for eating! I thought at first to simply purchase such a book or acquire one from the wishing well in trade for one of my baubles, but then I devised a much better idea.

As there are many accomplished chefs among our number, I was wondering if anyone would be willing to share a few of their recipes with me. I am especially interested in recipes that originate from your homeworld; I would love to compile a collection of recipes as diverse as our community. And the more challenging, the better! Link is far more skilled than I knew and I should not like to bore him with recipes designed for beginners.

With kindness,
Zelda, Princess of Hyrule

P.S. Kindly refrain from telling Link about this gift. Thank you.

[ ooc; actual recipes optional! feel free to just describe what kind of recipe your character is sharing, if they're sharing one at all (sharing a recipe is also optional). ]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Tomatoes?? How in the world would someone make a dessert with a tomato?

[ ... ]

Come to think of it, that might be the perfect extra challenge for Link.

I mean, if cakes can be made out of carrots, tomatoes can't be too far behind, right?

...I don't guess it really has to be a dessert, though. Kinda like how a pot pie isn't a dessert but it's still a pie.

You make a valid point. Carrot cake isa delightful dessert. As is cheesecake, and cheese isn't necessarily sweet.

Pies are surprisingly versatile, now that I think about it.

You're right! Really, I think once someone's made a few different kinds of pies, the door is kind of open for just about anything as long as you can figure out a filling.

[She's probably oversimplifying it a little, but she's also the kind of person to eat basically anything, so it's not too far off the mark as far as she's concerned.]

When it comes to pies...I think the dough is the really hard part. Once you get the hang of that, you can do all kinds of stuff with it.

[ Link is that same kind of person—one who will eat just about anything—so Zelda wouldn't be surprised if he thought about cooking the same way Pauline does. ]

Is dough that difficult? It looks so simple, though.

Not that I have had any success making a dough myself yet. My attempts in the past have all come out too soupy.

I guess it's less "difficult" and more "tricky" maybe? Little things can change how it turns out. Like, the first time I tried making pie dough I kneaded it too much and it was too tough. If yours was soupy maybe you needed a little more flour?

[ The nuance between "difficult" and "tricky" is lost on the inexperienced chef Zelda. ]

Too tough? Goodness, I would not have known that "over-kneading" is possible.

Perhaps it is gauche of me to admit, but I am more interested in eating sweets than cooking them. Before Link arrived here, I frequently found myself driven to tears attempting to cook for myself.

I totally get it, really! Eating is definitely the part that's more fun. I mean, I really like cooking but even then there are times when I just don't want to do it. I can only imagine it must be way worse if you're not into it...

It has been a relative 'trial by fire,' I must admit, learning to cook for myself. [ Sometimes literally too. ] I wish I had taken even the slightest interest in it back at the palace, but you know what they say about hindsight.

Although I would have thought I would be better at it by now. Someone once likened cooking to chemistry and I quite enjoy chemistry. But it seems I am doomed to culinary failure.

I'm totally the opposite. Chemistry and stuff feels way too complicated sometimes, but cooking feels pretty comfortable to me. I wonder if they really are that similar.

To be honest, if I wasn't home alone so much, I don't know that I really would have learned to cook myself. If you don't mind me asking, what kind of stuff have you tried making?

I can see the logic in it—introducing heat is one of the most common ways to induce a chemical reaction, and much of cooking is about introducing heat to foodstuffs. But cooking seems so much more imprecise than chemistry. But perhaps I have not spent enough time doing chemistry either.

Well, when I first arrived, I tried on a number occasions to make bread. Bread is such a cornerstone of so many meals that I thought surely it would be easy to make. That was often a disaster. I tried to prepare eggs, but they somehow came out burned on the outside and uncooked on the inside. The same was true of most meats. Honestly, anything more difficult than fixing a salad tended to result in failure. Were it not for Satan, I would have surely starved in those early weeks.

[In this moment, Pauline is really glad this conversation is happening via text because she thinks she's just been told that the devil has been cooking for this girl? Satan? She's really been trying to think beyond her own ideas of what is and isn't normal so she's hesitant to ask her about it, but the very idea is a lot to take in.]

I think cooking is more or less precise depending on what you're making. For example, baking bread needs to be a little more precise than cooking eggs...You should definitely keep trying if you really want to! It's like the saying goes "Bread wasn't baked in a day" or something, right?

I don't know if it would really work, but do you think it would help if you treated it more like chemistry? Like thinking of cooking in terms of how the different ingredients and stuff affect each other?

[ It doesn't even occur to Zelda that Pauline might have such a reaction to Satan, even though he has warned Zelda that humans from many different worlds are (rightly) afraid of demons. Since there is no comparable figure in Hyrulean lore, it has never occurred to Zelda to fear Satan, and thus enjoys a close friendship with him. ]

"Bread wasn't baked in a day"? I've not heard that saying before, but I think I like it. It feels like an important message to keep in mind.

I suppose I could give that a try. Perhaps I have not tried hard enough to read cooking recipes in the manner I would read scientific methodology in a lab report.

third entry 🌱 in the spirit of gift giving

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