Iris wiped the sweat from her forehead, glancing back as she heard Ash come in to deliver the next order. This one was quite large with several orders of nearly everything on their order and several substitutions or requests to leave things out to make them more herbivore friendly. Iris knew right away that it must be the order from Fern's group.

Iris was kind of glad that Fern didn't ask to bring his sister out every week to try the new menu. Most of the people in their city were willing to eat the food as it was, without overly complicated orders. It wasn't like those who had herbivorous or carnivorous beast forms could only eat that type of food, it just dictated their preferences. So, others from the Rabbit Tribe, including Fern, would tend to just order the food options that had a large amount of veggies, but wouldn't request special changes to their order.

Of course, Iris realized she didn't have much room to speak since she was also a picky eater. She just tended to not want to inconvenience people too much. So, she would order the tea sets at Holly based on what she knew she would like or pass the food off to her mates. That kept things simple both for those serving and those cooking while ensuring she could eat the foods she preferred.

As she had quickly found out, working in a kitchen was a lot of work. This project of hers was actually the first time she had done the cooking to order in the beastworld. Normally, she was only cooking for banquets where she didn't have to do so much time management and could cook things in batches. Honestly, this certainly gave a good bit of perspective to just how hard Holly's mates and the single males she hired to cook for festivals had to work. She certainly didn't feel like she could do this long-term, not with how difficult it was.

Basil brought the tablet Ash had written the order on in charcoal over to Iris and read it off. Nodding to confirm the order, she immediately got to work. This week, they decided to go with an Irish theme with shepherd's pie made from lamb, beer, mashed potatoes, lamb gravy, and a mix of finely chopped veggies.

There was no cheese since Iris didn't know how to make that and the people she signed a contract with to research it were still struggling to produce results. A similar team had been put to work to figure out how to make beer. The process was still being refined, but they had quickly produced something usable using the wheat from their fields. Fermentation was something simple enough to figure out, since they had done something similar for wine, and the rest had just kind of branched off from there.

Alicia's table had ordered a vegetarian version of the shepherd's pie, which Iris really couldn't recommend. The fact that Ash was making particularly nasty quips at Basil when he delivered the order suggested it was likely Alicia had been too frustrating for Ash to deal with, though. Oh well, Iris was hardly going to argue with someone's food choices, even if she doubted mashed potatoes baked with chopped carrots, peas, and onions would be that good.

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Many of the other menu items were already vegetarian. For example, they had a dish called 'colcannon', which was basically mashed potatoes with cabbage, wild onion grass, garlic, salt, and pepper. Usually, Iris would also add butter and milk to the dish, but it wasn't hard to skip that step, just utilizing some extra starchy water to maintain the consistency.

There were also potato pancakes, which were just mashed potatoes mixed with egg, flour, and seasonings before being fried in oil. There were certainly a lot of potato dishes, but, well, there was a reason why Ireland and its potato famine were so well known. It was a bit of a stereotype that most Irish cuisine was just potatoes cooked in a bunch of different ways and it wasn't honestly that far off.

There were also other meat dishes like bangers and mash, a dish shared between the United Kingdom and Ireland. Basically, it was just sausages served with cheesy potatoes and a side of peas and tomatoes. There was cream cheese in their mashed potatoes rather than something like cheddar, but it was otherwise a good rendition of the dish. Of course, Alicia and her mates didn't want the sausages or the dairy, so it ended up just being plain mashed potatoes with peas and tomatoes served on the side.

Well, Iris had told Fern he could invite his sister out for a free meal this week. She supposed it was a good thing for them to be ordering the dishes without the more expensive ingredients. It would certainly mean they wouldn't have to worry about running out of ingredients as quickly. Something that wasn't all that rare as the restaurant was quite busy and they had only prepared a certain amount of food, just enough to cover the two days.

For dessert, they had a few different cake options. An Irish tea cake that was dusted with powdered sugar and topped with berries instead of iced made for a super simple way to mix things up. Meanwhile, bread pudding required a bit more work and its texture took some getting used to. This dish, much like the shepherd's pie, would normally be cooked using alcohol, primarily Irish whiskey, but Iris skipped that step. She wasn't sure that beer would replace the whiskey all that well and it was easier to just make it without worrying about finding a replacement.

Luckily, the desserts could be served as they were. Despite also being made with dairy, Alicia seemed to not mind its addition when it came to sweets. Iris couldn't help but wonder if her sister-in-law didn't actually dislike dairy, but rather just disliked the idea of it. That wouldn't be entirely surprising since she had likely grown up without it. Trying new things was likely even more difficult when you had a beast form that made anything but plants sound off-putting.

Despite Alicia's particular tastes, Iris didn't actually dislike her. She was spoiled, but she wasn't nearly as bad as Ivy had been. Alicia mostly just kept to herself, not really acting problematic or particularly friendly whenever they spent time together. So, Iris could only feel that the relationship was fine as it was. They were sister-in-laws, but they didn't have to be friends.