( open mingle ) soup cart quest! yes, soup for you!

[soups]

Who: Jiang Yanli and you and everyone!
Which: Network Prompt + Open Mingle Log (the ❧ symbol indicates a mingle prompt, so feel free to tag around for these!)
Where: The area around the Yunmeng and Yunmeng-adjacent treehouse
When: February 6th
What: A log for the questboard request for Jiang Yanli's soup cart
Warnings: N/A, please label any in thread subject headers

⇢ one.

Hello everyone, I hope you are all well.

I have been making a fair amount of soup due to the decrease in temperature, which isn't abnormal — but I have been toying with the idea of utilizing this skill to not only give myself an activity to commit to outside of the house, but also a way to give to (and barter with) the rest of the community.

Regrettably, it is very awkward to walk through the city with a heavy coup container and the cumbersome utensils needed to eat it. Thus, I have had the idea of creating a card! I've put up notice on the quest board listing the location and payment for helping building and decorating the vehicle.

Otherwise, if you don't have a gift for carpentry or simple painting, I am asking for other help: please reply if you have ideas for other foods that would be popular, or any particular soups you'd like to see. I am not particularly endowed with creativity, so any and all suggestions would be very welcome.


❧ two: building

❰ for those who read the quest board and/or the network post, they'll find there's already what appears to be a sizable lumber yard out in front of the yunmeng jiang treehouse. some wood has been traded with villagers, already sanded and cut. other is obviously chopped and raw from nearby trees.

some of the planks and pieces of wood have a slightly pink tint to the grain, which is indicative of them being chopped from a different tree from the rest. while it's a sturdy and beautiful wood, handling it barehanded subjects you to minute amounts of sap — which may cause an unexpected lightness in one's body.

because the amount is so small (though it's not to say the uncut logs don't have pockets of sap in larger volumes), those handling it will only experience more slight effects: feeling more chatty than usual, an unexpected sense of teamwork, a sense of budding friendliness. the longer the exposure, or the amount handled, the more...loving a person may feel. which may be a possibility, considering they have a whole cart to build. ❱

❧ three: decoration

❰ once the cart is built, it's time to decorate! there's a set of paints there to help fill in the rudimentary sketch outlined on the wood — lines sketching out the name The Lucky Duck Soup Cart and a doodle of a duck underneath.

in addition to the paint, there are also a various amount of other accoutrements that villagers gave jiang yanli while bartering — puffs of cotton, ribbons, cut flowers, iridescent liquids that have a glittery sheen to them...what they actually might be is a mystery.

one such basket of flowers, however, has been a source of contention throughout the day — while it's a beautiful looking milkweed, it's continually attracting a variety of large beetles, ladybugs, ants. so don't be surprised if you have to fend off a giant insect or two while you invade the craft pile! ❱

❧ four: soup

❰ at the end of the evening, once the cart is finished, it's time for payment — not that jiang yanli has let everyone go hungry throughout the day, but the christening of the soup cart doesn't happen until the mission is complete. it's time to rest and relax, and to eat up after a hard day's work.

most notably, a mysterious duck waddles around, expertly caring bowls of full soup on his back to deliver to those who helped out. otherwise, there's a large serving area for milling about, getting refills and lamenting over any splinters one may have. ❱

Comments

Sender: Serah Farron

[mooglebow]

Something portable to go with soups, hm... what about dumplings, or different kinds of sandwiches? Sometimes it's nice to have something to dip into the soup, depending on what you're making.

[Grilled cheese and tomato soup is a good combo, and perfect for dipping! And dumpling? Who doesn't love dumplings?]

What kind of soups are you making, though? We can brainstorm to find something that'll work well, I bet!

[soups]

I've never considered dipping a sandwich into a soup (though I am also very new to the concept of a sandwich). On that note, I don't know how to make one — I believe I learned they commonly contain meat. Outside of that, I'll have to do more research.

Dumplings, however, I do know a lot about!

For soups, I haven't decided how many I should rotate, but I know how to make:

— lotus seed
— chicken ginger
— pork tripe
— beef and vegetable
— black sesame
- oxtail
— egg drop
— mung bean
— fish head
— hot pepper

Though soup is very improvisational, so that's only a rough accounting. It also depends on how hard it may be to find ingredients here.

[mooglebow]

Some do, but not all! There's one that's just cheese, though you can add meats to it if you want. You then fry it and get the cheese melted with a nice, crunchy bread. If you make a tomato soup, it's really good if you dip it into that.

[Man... she's making herself hungry thinking about that...]

All of those sound really good too! Dumplings, bread, anything that can be added or dipped always make for a nice addition to a soup, I think. Add a little garlic and butter to make some garlic bread and that could be a nice companion to the ones with meat, I think.

[soups]

Oh, cheese is also a new type of food for me! I came upon some in a can while I was previously in another world, as well as the flat square kind in the little packages. I found the taste of it to not be so desirable, but maybe the bread will help to enhance it.

❰ do you know how long it took her to get that cheese out of the can...it was a project. ❱

It was also where I discovered a variety of new dessert options, which would be a fun thing to add to the cart somehow. Unfortunately all I know how to make right now are pancakes, but it may jump start me into branching out further.

[mooglebow]

Canned cheese and the packaged stuff isn't quite the good stuff. I wonder if they have some actual cheeses here... you'd probably like that kind a little more.

[Yanli please love yourself, try real cheese and not out of the can!!!]

Oh, pancakes can be a great dessert! The batter is similar to cakes, too. But if you want to make a pancake more dessert-y, chocolate syrup and fruit is a good start, I think. There's also some really fluffy pancakes that almost look like a cake, they're tall enough.

[soups]

❰ it was a gas station, the pickings were slim!!! ❱

I know that cheese is the byproduct of milking animals. Not that I know how to make some myself, but with the floral cows I think that cheese could taste quite interesting!

Making tall pancakes isn't something I've perfected yet, but I'm sure with some experimenting they can come along quite nice. I found some finely sifted and process sugar to place on them in a previous world and that was tasty, if how fast my brothers ate them were any indication.

I just wonder how well they would sell from a soup cart, come to think of it.

[mooglebow]

They would! I don't think it'd be too hard to figure out how to make cheese out of the milk we get from the floral cows— but I do think it'd be really good with the different kinds.

[Well, she does bring up a good point, a soup cart with pancakes may be a little weird, but... what about flans, or puddings? That would be another milk product, but easy to transport.]

Well, it'll use milk too, but you can make puddings or flans, which would probably go well with soup for a dessert. Light like a soup and you can transport them easier if someone grabs food to go, right? Or— there's soups you can make for dessert using fruits, but I'm not sure what may be available here.

[soups]

I'm not immediately familiar with pudding or flan. I can assume it's a sweetened milk substance, but outside of that I'm afraid I have no frame of reference. If it's light like some soups, however, it would definitely be a contender!

It does bring up the issue of ingredients in general, however. For instance, I wanted to make snow fungus soup for the turning of seasons but have no idea if wood ears can be found here anywhere, nor if the version that exists here would be safe to eat, whether literally or in the sense that things can tend to being magical here. At least it may make sense with a specialty ingredient like that, but even basic things seem to be hard to come by here. Leeks, roots, so on.

[mooglebow]

Yeah, sugar, egg yolks, and milk are a pretty basic recipe with a few other ingredients, but that's what you need the most of for a pudding, and flan is pretty similar. They need to stay chilled, but during the summer it would be a nice treat, I think.

I can't say I've seen any wood ears, but I haven't been out toward the forested areas often or at all. I wonder if that's a thing I can help with, but it would take some time.

[Hmm. She does have at least two of the baubles to drop into the well, and she did basically live on a farm in Verens... time to note some stuff down in her non-magical journal here.]

I could probably start getting som obvious basics, but what else would you maybe need?