Silver Buckle Cooking Party for the Rohden Alliance

[RollinsCat]

The Silver Buckle Announces: A Preparation and Cooking Party to address food shortages in Tilmar and Corsain, to take place Satari, Febra 14, 1485*, at the Inn in Mariner's Hold.

In lieu of True donations, we ask for raw meats, sage, salt, pepper, oats, rye, corn, rice, milk, butter, fruits of all kinds, sugar, eggs, corn oil, wheat, barely, and other raw foodstuffs.  

The Silver Buckle will provide storage in the kitchen and the wood for the cooking fires, as well as provisions from our own food stores.

We intend to prepare** meals and flours, salted roasts, hard tack breads, pies, and other foodstuffs that can withstand travel.

All foods and materials created will be donated to the Foundation for transport and distribution in the Islands.

There will be entertainment and the gambling hall will be open for those who would donate but not cook.  No donation too small to come join us!


[SIZE=10]//*Thursday, the twenty-eighth of July, starting at eight-thirty.[/SIZE]
[SIZE=10]
//**Cooks, this is a great chance to practice for free for a good cause.[/SIZE]

[RollinsCat]

Additional information is posted at the bottom.

The largest need right now is for:

-blueberries
-blackberries
-pecans
-cherries
-all grains (rye, wheat, rice, oats, barley, and corn)
-salt
-sage
-sugar
-milk or butter
-pepper

Empty boxes for filling are available on a shelf in the Silver Buckle kitchen; just ask Michael, Edward, or Paddy!

Bring your filled boxes to the party and drink free all night!  All proceeds to go to the Foundation in Port Hempstead.

The Silver Buckle reminds up and coming cooks that recipes will be shared for everything from grinding barley to making pie, so come and learn (or teach)!

[RollinsCat]

Boxes start to trickle in; a red-bearded dwarf is seen entering with multiple packs leaking grain, and leaving with none; a slight elven woman, hooded, lugs in six boxes and leaves empty-handed.

The list is updated:

-blueberries
-pecans
-cherries
-all grains (rye, wheat, rice, oats, barley, and corn)
-salt
-sage
-sugar
-pepper

[Chazzler]

*Görmungard, hearing of this, packs his lion and malar bags with foodstuffs and heads to the Buckle*

[RollinsCat]

A muscular, kilted dwarf as wide as he is tall walks into the Silver Buckle.  He is barely visible under a mountain of red and black bags.  Upon his leaving the Silver Buckle main stage is filled with wrapped meat, pouches of sage, bottles of milk, bushels of fruits, and bags and bags of corn.

The proprietor is heard singing cheerfully as the foods are put into storage or put in ice boxes.

[RollinsCat]

With a week to go, the "still need" list is updated again:

-blueberries
-cherries
-apples
-pecans for pies, other nuts for roasting
-all grains (rye, wheat, rice, oats, barley, and corn)
-salt - at least two boxes
-sage
-pepper
-hickory branches for smoking salmon

It is noted that not all grains will be made into bread or flours; some bags will be sent as animal fodder or to start the next planting season.

[RollinsCat]

Crates are dragged up from the basement and filled with grains and fruits.  Donated meats are pulled from cold storage to thaw.  Bundled herbs are tugged down from hanging bunches and ground; some milk is churned to butter, but not all of it.  That technique is something that can be taught to a novice.

There is a lot of meat to cook, a lot of breads to bake, a lot of grains to grind - and a LOT of corn.  The whole kitchen and into the tavern smells like corn, light and sweet and a little earthy.

The booze is stocked.  The kitchen ready, floors, bowls, stations and utensils washed to gleaming.

Tonight, a party.

[RollinsCat]

He woke late in the morning.  Minu shifted on the bed next to him; she'd slept in as well.  She did that quite a bit since she'd been affected by the dragon sickness, with reverie more like meditation for her, or maybe he was misunderstanding what he saw.  It sure seemed like sleep though.

She certainly had been when he'd dragged himself out of the kitchen in the wee hours of the morning and scooped her limp form off the Resident's Hall couch on his way to the bedroom.  He'd been so tired he'd barely been able to even with the help of the war donations reward necklace he wore.  Bleeding handy, that.  All the way into the bedroom he had only one thought; don't drop Minu, don't drop Minu...

Slipping off the mattress without waking her, he threw on comfortable, worn clothes and headed downstairs.  Paddy and Ty had left early for the market per his instructions of the night previous, and Michael was in a fine mood due to some cute thing his baby boy had done.  Heloise was stalking the tavern with broom clutched spear-like in her hands, eyes sweeping the floor quadrant by quadrant.  She refused to enter the kitchen and was making Edward get anything she needed from there.

"Andy!  It left prints!  In the flour you left all over!"

He knew what "it" was.  "Helly, it's just a mouse.  It won't bite...well, much."

"A mouse!  In our Inn!  A MOUSE!"  Shrill voiced with wide eyes...not like her, but phobias did strange things to people.

"I'll take a look for it.  Just ask if you need anything, I'll be boxing up the food and supplies."  He had no intention of actually looking for the mouse, of course.  He had to get the rest of the sacks and bags into crates, and the mouse could wait until Ty and Paddy came back from the market.  With the Inn's new cat.  That got a grim smile from him.

Still, to appease her, he put on his spectacles - what a wonderful thing, after a year in a jail cell without them, to be able to see properly - and crouched, examining the grain-dusted floor.  Huge boot prints, Steel's; large boot prints, his; flat-soled prints from large feet, likely Kian's; medium-sized and small booted feet, Gel's and Minu's as she'd been wearing her white boots last night; and a cluster of very small prints, some flat, some booted, that would be Symphony, Emwonk, Iri, and Pimpernell.  At least three scorch marks that he could see, left from Em's attempts to zap the creature into the Big Grain Sack in the Sky.  And...along the baseboards, skirting the butcher block and the crates...tiny, tiny sets of paw prints, three toes forward and two flanking.  Mouse prints.

I hope you feasted well, rodent.  You'll have a new friend soon.

The cleaning would have to wait.  Symphony, in her usual efficiency, had done something amazing with the roasts and he had to fight himself not to worry off pieces for snacking.  Minu had made cherry pies - digging around in the butcher block drawers for package twine, he found a suspicious mound of cherry pits.  He'd be bringing those up when she woke, if only to score a teasing point...

Em and Gel had been making deer jerky and smoked salmon, and a pile of hickory branches still jumbled in the corner by the bucket shelf.  Iri had roasted nuts, and in the torchlight the salt from that venture and from the meat preparation made the room shimmer like it was studded with a fine layer of diamond chips.  Flour and meal was, well, everywhere.  Bits of stem, leaves and fruit were scattered; there were smushed blackberries and blueberries on the floor, his fault.  He'd been on a pie-baking jag that he should have resisted as the Shelf of Shame, housing a Corathite-like selection of misshapen and burnt pies, could attest.  It was that jag that took him into the small hours, and his exhaustion no doubt contributed to the motley collection of baked goods he would be eating by himself.  He'd been so out of it he swore that a chest had attacked him; silly, stupid even.  The lid had stuck was all, but he ended up punching it in jelly-brained frustration and by the Muse if it didn't seem the lid popped open and slammed shut on his hand a few times...no, couldn't be.  His mind playing tricks was all.

It had been a great night.  And now for the pain; loading up the results and getting passage to Port Hempstead.  He started making up a song about Vanishing Suitcases as he hefted the first few sacks into waiting transport crates.  A great night, indeed...