It was now a little over two months since Veronica had built the swamp parkour challenge. Since then, she had been working hard to complete the research for the second floor tavern menu and to stock the kitchen and tavern with the necessary [Items]. During that time, she continued to receive payment for inn and tavern services as well as the standard tributes from adventurers visiting the dungeon.
Room rentals alone had allowed her to increase her dungeon points by 59,410 dungeon points. Meanwhile, tavern sales added up to 81,345 DP and miscellaneous services like massages gained her another 10,055 DP. Repeat tributes were always a bit of a shame since an entire room's worth of tributes could still amount to very little. Still, she was hardly going to complain about another 2,322 dungeon points.
As for new tributes... there weren't that many, even despite how much time had passed and her use of the corkboard in the first floor tavern. It would seem that the Rosefall Empire wasn't directly connected to very many other kingdoms, so most of the variety of resources she wanted had to be shipped in from overseas, which made it difficult to get anything new in. Still, she did have another 420 DP from chicken meat, chicken feathers, cow meat, pig meat, strawberries, palm sap, kecombrang flower, dragon fruit, raspberries, blueberries, cloudberries, and lemons. Most of the Elves tended to hunt and forage for their food, but it wasn't like agriculture was entirely lacking, so it was still possible to get ahold of basic ingredients like these.
Her dungeon point total would normally be sitting at 258,110, but that was only before she considered all of the research she had been doing for the tavern. It was, honestly, starting to feel a bit like Monopoly money because it was such a large amount. Was she ever going to spend this much? What was even the point of continuing to work hard in the tavern kitchen every night to fulfill orders and earn more dungeon points? I mean, sure, she had always wanted to inherit her parents' bed and breakfast, so Veronica was hardly afraid of hard work. However, it wasn't like she wanted to do hard work just for the Hell of it.
Veronica honestly wasn't sure why she even bothered to climb out of bed anymore. She was sick of dying to Bo and it didn't really feel like there was much point in continuing. Was there anything she really needed to work so hard to achieve that was worth all of this trouble? It really didn't feel like it and yet she had still put forth the effort to get things taken care of for the tavern, even if it was at a rather slow pace. The last two months had been full of system message after system message.
Would you like to spend 70 DP to research a large jar of cucumber salad using [Base Resources] cucumbers, onion, white vinegar, honey, salt, black pepper, and red pepper flakes?
Yes
No
Would you like to spend 100 DP to research a box of peanut sesame mochi using [Base Resources] rice flour, coconut milk, sunflower oil, sugar, peanuts, sesame seeds, coconut, cardboard, wax, and paper?
Yes
No
She had also researched crates of sea cucumbers, corn, celery, sugar pumpkins, and limes. Then there was the research for the bag and bin of rice flour, the bottles of maple syrup and coconut milk, and the spice shaker of cilantro. All of that had run her a total of 564 DP, but had been enough to prepare for the light fare portion of the second floor tavern menu.
Veronica was, of course, continuing the Indonesian theme for the tavern menu as well. So, the light fare menu included things like cucumber salad, sea cucumber crisps, corn fritters, peanut sesame mochi, and coconut pumpkin soup. She hadn't really bothered with mirroring the first menu with its two salads and soups because she didn't actually know enough recipes to do such a thing and the ones she did know were too complicated.
While she had gone to college where she majored in hospitality with studies in both culinary arts and management as well as working in a number of hotels, restaurants, etc., that had hardly been the only exposure she had to international cuisine. Veronica had also enjoyed watching traveling shows where they ate food, including short clips on social media. Plus, when she lived in the city for college there were many international markets and restaurants that sold everything from Asian food to African cuisine. There were plenty of opportunities for her to learn about a large number of countries and her now enhanced memory made it a lot easier to recreate them now for her tavern menus. Still, she wasn't exactly all-knowing so there was still a limit to the options she could include.
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
The cucumber salad was something that was commonly included as a side dish in Japanese and Korean cuisines as well, but Indonesia was a country close by, so it was obvious that they would share some dishes in common. Veronica wasn't sure she'd eat pickles as an appetizer by itself, but she was well-aware that plenty of people felt differently, so it didn't hurt to include it as an option. Sea cucumber crisps were prepared in much the same way that one would a potato chip where they'd be thinly sliced, fried, and then salted and peppered. Corn fritters are made from doughy batter with pieces of corn that are also deep-fried.
As she was worried about not being able to run two taverns at the same time, she had chosen to make as many of the menu options ready-to-eat as possible instead of depending so heavily on from-scratch cooking. The mochi could, technically, be made from scratch, but it was much easier to simply pull a few out of a box and serve them. Similarly, she just didn't feel like being bothered with thinly slicing cucumbers and preparing the pickling liquid, even if it wasn't actually that time-consuming. It was even meant to be a quick pickle method, so it wasn't like she had to prepare it ahead of time or anything. However, it would also be just fine sitting in a magic ice box for a few days before being served as well.
As for the pumpkin soup, it would likely be quite labor intensive as the sugar pumpkins had to be oven-roasted before being added to a coconut milk soup base and cooked down even further. It could likely be made in large batches just like any other soup, but the cost to make individual canned mason jars of the stuff was just too expensive mana-wise to skip making it from scratch. Besides, even if the homeless that took up her first floor were unlikely to make it to the second floor, soup was still a cheap enough option that was quite popular among her tavern guests. It would be worth the effort to make a fresh batch every few days.
Of course, the light fare menu was hardly the only thing she had to worry about as there were also the other portions of the menu. The hearty fare menu also required a good bit of research to prepare for.
Would you like to spend 40 DP to research a bottle of peanut sauce using [Base Resources] peanuts, lime juice, soy sauce, sugar, ginger, garlic, and coconut milk?
Yes
No
Would you like to spend 200 DP to research a large jar of mushroom siomay using [Base Resources] flour, egg, salt, water, sesame oil, scallion, salt, black pepper, sugar, and chicken of the woods mushrooms?
Yes
No
Would you like to spend 200 DP to research a large jar of walleye siomay using [Base Resources] flour, egg, salt, water, sesame oil, scallion, salt, black pepper, sugar, and walleye?
Yes
No
Besides those three, Veronica also had to research a large jar of tofu, a large jar of cubed chicken, a jar of wooden skewers, a crate of pineapples, a crate of green cabbage, and a crate of potatoes. All of that ended up costing her 740 dungeon points. Still, it felt like a drop of water in the ocean compared to the amount of dungeon points she had earned over the course of the last two months.
All of these ingredients were actually only for a hearty fare menu with six menu options. Half were vegetarian options while the other half had meat, just like she had done with the first floor. After all, she still needed to consider who her clientele was. The first two options were tofu satay and chicken satay. Essentially, just tofu or meat stuck on a wooden skewer, marinated in soy sauce and some seasonings before being grilled. She already had both the soy sauce and a cast iron grill pan from her previous research, so she didn't have to worry about any of that. The peanut sauce would then be slathered onto the grilled food before being served.
The second menu option was corn coconut rice or pineapple chicken coconut rice. The coconut rice itself was mostly just rice cooked with coconut milk. From there, she just had to add corn or pineapple soy marinated chicken to complete the dish. Both would be fairly simple to prepare on the spot, much like the first two dishes were.
Really, the only, potentially, complicated dishes were the third option. Siomay are essentially just wonton wrapped that hold a filling and are steamed. Usually, they are small and have an open top, unlike wontons, pot stickers, etc., which are crimped along one side to enclose the filling. The process of making them could make one's back sore as well as being extremely time-consuming, which is why Veronica opted for a premade option. Of course, there was still plenty of work involved because the Indonesian version involved serving the siomay with eggs, cabbage, potatoes, and peanut sauce. This would just reduce the work, not make the entire dish easy to make.
Funnily enough, the walleye siomay were actually made with an ingredient that wasn't listed on either the [Base Resources] or [Items] list, but rather the [Critters] list of her system menu. She hadn't been expecting to be able to use it, but she had nothing but time to experiment, so it was worth testing it out. Besides, walleye siomay would likely taste a lot better than anchovies or sardines, which were the only two options she had that weren't from her [Critters] menu.
There was still the dessert and libations menu to take care of, but Veronica simply hadn't gotten around to that yet. She did have the choices written down on her hand-written menus, but she had chosen to save stocking up on the ingredients for them for last since they'd be simpler than the rest.