Dear Diary,

I think my biggest gripe with fate, or destiny, or whoever or whatever is navigating this shit show of a world? How long everything takes, and how much my blood pressure goes up when I think about everything that could be going wrong.

So yesterday after I finished my day of literally looking for trouble, the family came to Lancaster House. They actually got there in time for dinner. Really nice steaks, and apparently Larry decided to tell his cooks to try the whole 'rare' thing. Either that or Marie clued them in; she still heads back and helps with cooking and serving when we're eating in the dining room. It really feels so weird to me; I see the butler staff, who now have a couple maids who've been dragooned to help them, all in uniform. Lachlan and all of us Cadets are in our Phileo uniforms. The place is totally nice in a classy primitive sort of way, and I think the only reason I think 'primitive' is the roaring fire in the fireplace behind the head of the table.

Then there are the bunch of us eating. Larry and Bonnie probably have the best table manners, although some of that is because they're still at the 'feeding each other' stage of newlyweds. I can't really complain, though, since the only reason I'm not feeding Saffron is because she habitually sits across the table from me.

Why do you do that, Kitten?

She looked up from stirring some butter into her mashed pumpkin. Do what?

Sit across from me rather than next to me?

She chuckled a little, both in my head and out loud. I can't really see you when I'm sitting next to you, and I like looking at you.

That warmed my face a bit. Other spots too, but those could wait. That's definitely chipotle sauce.

What?

Sweet, but also kinda hot. Right back at you, by the way.

She smiled and we went back to the Serious Business of eating our steak while it still retained that perfect temperature inside. Saffron also had the unenviable task of slicing up Isnomi's steak for her. Some inner voice that had not yet grokked the little one's appetite nor her Mor digestive tract wondered if she could safely eat steak, but most of me was buying time for Saffron by alternating between taking normal sized bites for me and yeeting small steak bites at the menace so she'd let her mom cut the damn steak into bite sized pieces. Before you get on my ass about that, Lachlan and some of the Ladies and kids who'd been convinced to eat dinner with us had stabbed their steaks with forks and then started eating it like some kind of demented meat lollipop, just tearing bites off of it, and most of the kids just picked their steaks off the plate and ate it like personal pizzas or something, just nomming away at the edges.

So yeah. Classy room. Classy wait staff. Classy outfits on most of the folks eating, except the kids from the Ladies' Quarters, who had these one-size-fits-all nightgown slash dress things. Then again, they were all at that really androgynous pre-puberty stage, so I guess it worked. So Classy everything except table manners, which ranged from 'a little to the side of standard' to 'straight up feral human'. It was almost, but not quite, Academy gobbo table bad. Then again, something just under half of the folks eating were kids, so lost boys etiquette at least made sense.

The mashed pumpkin wasn't bad, but for whatever reason I'd been jonesing for some actual mashed potatoes. Heck, even mashed sweet potatoes would be good, because while the slightly sweet flavor of the pumpkin reminded me of sweet potato, it just didn't taste the same as a good potato. Fuck me, less than a year into living in a world where magic and gods were real, and I'm thinking like Sam Gamgee. Still, doughty little fucker wasn't wrong. Potatoes are pretty good just baked, but the variety of ways you can turn them into something else, while they still remain clearly recognizable as potato? Fuckin' awesome.

Screw it. What with Isnomi helping, I'd finished my steak, and while I still had a heap of buttered and salted mashed pumpkin on my plate, that just made me want potatoes more. "Hey love?"

After swallowing, because she's classy that way, Saffron said, "Yes?"

Poking at my mashed pumpkin with my spoon, trying to get it to absorb the butter the way I'm sure potato would have, I asked, "does Phileo grow or import potatoes? Or, y'know, now that we're in a much better trading position with them, does New Amsterdam?"

"I don't think so? Why?"

After swallowing my bite of pumpkin, I replied, "they're just really good, and I'm pretty sure they'd grow really well around here. Those and corn."

Everybody kinda gave me a look at that. Larry even broke eye contact with Bonnie, stared at me and said, "you've eaten corn."

I shrugged. "Yeah. Not my favorite plain, but still pretty good if you make them into elote. Popcorn can't be beat as a snack though."

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He just blinked at me. "Why am I surprised? I shouldn't be surprised at this point." He sighed, shaking his head. "The only corn we have on hand is dried, in the storage we use for animal feed."

"Huh. Not great for anything but popcorn then, or maybe grinding into cornmeal, but..." I think by now I'd be used to everyone staring at me. "Look, popcorn is one of the few things I can make without screwing it up." I tried not to think about the fact that I had neither pre-packaged popping corn nor a microwave. I did a quick headcount. "Get me like a quart of that, some cooking oil, some butter, and some salt and I'll show you."

Larry looked at Oscar and nodded, and Oscar then passed the nod onto one of his supporting butlers, who walked out of the room. We went back to eating, mostly, but Lachlan of all people asked, "I don't think you ever told me, but where are you from, originally?"

"It's... really far away. The only times I really think about it are times when I'm missing something that's just everywhere there but isn't here at all. I guess that's why I don't like talking about it that much."

I hoped that nobody'd really heard, or gotten curious enough to hear Lachlan's question or my answer, but then Raven said, "duh. You guys haven't figured it out yet?" When everybody shook their heads, she laughed a little and said, "Jackville. Probably not even Jackville proper, but the Jackville hinterlands. If something's technically edible, somebody in Jackville has half a dozen recipes for it, and their neighbors have another half dozen they claim are better."

I winced, doing my best 'you got me' before asking, "How do you know all that about Jackville?"

She shrugged and said, "the tannery hired a few emigrants from there. The shit they brought in for lunch? Totally fucked up if you thought about what it was, but pretty good if you just shut your eyes and ate it."

I barked out a laugh at that. "Yeah. The best cook in the world isn't the one who can make an awesome meal out of awesome ingredients, it's the one who can take two rocks, some dirt, and random shit from their backyard and make something that will blow your mind."

I felt her more than heard her behind me right before Marie asked, "How?"

Somehow my Marie Translation was on point, because I said, "enough cooking oil that the kernels are all kinda covered, put a lid over it to keep it from going all over the kitchen, then right before it burns you take it out of the pan or skillet or pot or whatever, drain off the oil and shake it with the melted butter and salt."

"Good."

That's about when I realized that Oscar's minion had returned with a small bucket of what looked like corn kernels. I started to stand, but Marie's hand on my shoulder stopped me. She held out a hand to the guy carrying the bucket, then said, "Wait," and headed back to the kitchen.

I belatedly realized what I'd done. "Uh, I think I might have hit a nerve with that 'best cook in the world' comment."

Saffron chuckled at me before swallowing her last bite of steak and saying, "you think?"

Like half an hour later, while most of us were just sitting there talking, Marie and a couple of the Lancaster House maids came back into the dining room carrying a few huge serving bowls of popped corn. The smell hit me first, my mouth watered, and then Marie set the first bowl in front of me. Somehow she'd managed to get that perfectly round pop out of damn near all of them, and I couldn't see or smell any burned ones. I picked one up, ate it even as my fingers registered that it might be a little bit 'scald my tongue' hot, then stopped caring and started shoveling popcorn into my mouth as quickly as I could without spilling any.

"Good?"

I half turned to Marie, nodded vigorously while giving her a thumbs up, never stopping my popcorn nomming. Saffron tried one kernel, and while she didn't seem to have my appreciation for it, made a 'not bad' face and picked up another. The Cadets and Lachlan each tried some, because, y'know, athletes and food, and even though Raven was a little bit tentative, they all started eating while they did the after-dinner conversation thing. The Ladies had more of a Saffron-ish response, tasting it and chewing carefully before offering the kids some.

The kids? Absolutely devoured both of the bowls at their end of the table, then started foraging toward our end of the table. Led by the Menace, of course. "Oi! Menace! No boots on the table!"

Of course she plonked her ass down, pulled her boots off, and tossed them on the floor before continuing toward the next popcorn bowl. I rolled my eyes and said, "You're way too big to be walking on the table!"

She gave me a 'now you tell me' look, shrugged, and said, "Ohtay," before grabbing the next popcorn bowl and leaping to the floor, where the rest of the kids surrounded her and they all attacked the bowl like starving piranha.

My popcorn jones sated for the moment, I turned to Marie and said, "thank you, Marie. This was perfect."

She nodded, content now that she'd shown she could cook anything perfectly, even turning 'animal feed' into snacks.

After dinner, when we wandered back to our room and Isnomi went with the Ladies to pal around with the other kids until morning, Marie stopped me as soon as we'd closed the door behind me. "Elote?" she asked.

I'd actually had enough of everything to get a little sleepy myself, so I said, "tell you what, stick around here tomorrow and I'll tell you all the corn recipes I remember. Other than popcorn, I'm not super-good with any of them, though."

"Good."

After that we all collapsed into bed, sleeping the sleep of the just, weary, and overfed. Shenanigans had to wait for morning.

Of course I'd forgotten that we'd have company in the morning. After bathtime and breakfast, Saffron headed out for a day of Imperatoring, and I settled into my new routine of watching the farmsteads. Over the course of the day, Marie grilled me regarding everything I remembered about how to make corn. I let her know that things like elote and corn-on-the-cob needed fresh corn, not dried, but my mom had made homemade cornmeal enough, and made stuff with that homemade cornmeal enough, that I could clue her in on doing stuff with cornmeal and corn flour.

It was really kind of a neat, fun day, what with me not really conversing with Marie a lot previously. Some part of my brain that had subconsciously labeled Marie as 'not as smart as Saffron or I' took a hell of a beating when I realized how much meaning she could pack into a single interrogative word, and how well she could extrapolate from my guesses about how some recipes worked. Note to self: do not confuse 'doesn't like to talk' or 'only talks when interested in the topic' with 'stupid'.

All in all, the only bad part of the day came in the late afternoon, when I checked on the southern bridge village. Those trails of smoke I'd really hoped were chimneys? Yeah, they had doubled. At least.

Time to earn my pay soon enough, I guess.