Parsnip
Parsnip
Admiral Biscuit
Parsnip unclipped her market wagon from her harness and stepped out from between the shafts. Her saddlebags were hung over the front board, and she draped them on top of her harness, shifting her shoulders until they sat right.
Two additional clips on her belly band held the saddlebags in place.
“Good evening, Lou.”
“Evening, Miss Parsnip.” The rent-a-cop tipped his hat at her. “Busy day at the market, seems like just about everybody was out.”
Her ears drooped, then perked back up. “I’m sure I’ll find something.”
The best selection was in the morning. That was when the food was the freshest, when it was as farm-fresh as it could be in the city. Some of it was from the city, grown in micro-gardens and community gardens in parks or on rooftops. Other food was trucked in from farms in the outlying areas.
The widest selection and the best-looking produce were available in the morning, but that wasn’t what Parsnip was interested in. She wanted the food that wasn’t selling, the unsold food that might go in a dumpster rather than be trucked back to the farm.
Sometimes when the crowds were sparse, some of her regular salespeople would call out to her. When they weren’t—it was easy for a pony to get lost in the crowd.
They’d look for her, just the same. Every day, she was at the farmer’s market right around closing time.
Already some booths had packed up for the night, the ones that had done well in sales. Some of them left business cards for people to take, others were stripped bare.
Parsnip weaved her way through the diminishing throngs of people, visiting each booth in turn. Cora sold her peppers, Andy sold her Indian Corn, Dwight had several loaves of bread. She got onions from Maggie and asparagus from Armando, trotting back to her market wagon every time her saddlebags got full. Lou always kept a close watch on it. Nobody at the market had ever tried to steal anything out of it, but some people were very interested in it.
That had seemed strange to her; back home, market carts were so ubiquitous they faded into the background, but here in the city, she might have had the only one.
She visited Woodrow last. While one of the younger Chandlers handled the sales, the old man was nearly always at the market, sitting on a cheap folding chair with his cane leaned up against the seat. He was never distracted by customers, and that gave the two of them time to chat.
They’d bonded over her cart harness, of all things. Woodrow had spent much of his youth behind horses in harness, and she privately thought he missed those days.
Parsnip nuzzled him and let him run his hand through her mane, and then she settled down on the concrete and accepted a cup of burned coffee.
“How was your haul today, young lady?”
“Good . . . nobody had any tomatoes left, though. I’ll just have to do without. How’s the farm?”
“Our new tractor’s broken again. Once Fred gets the fool thing fixed, I’m going to sell it. At least the Oliver is reliable.” He sighed. “I should have taught my kids better, maybe they wouldn’t have gotten taken in by a slick salesman convincing them that all the computers on it were a good thing.”
Parsnip nodded in sympathy. “Tried and true technology is better. Some of my friends told me that I should get bicycle wheels on my wagon with rubber tires. They’re lighter and it would ride better, but those wheels are flimsy and a pneumatic tire might get a flat.”
“Heavier wheel will keep you in business for a long time,” Woodrow agreed. “I hope you don’t mind, but I brought you something.” He reached around behind his chair, finally locating a plastic Wal-Mart bag. “Celery, stuff we can’t sell.”
“How much?”
“Just take it.” He opened the flap on her saddlebag and tucked it in. “I know you’ll get good use out of it.”
“Thank you.”
•••
She had her own parking spot for her cart, an alcove behind a support pillar in the underground parking lot. The building didn’t even charge her for it, which was nice. To get a car-sized space would have cost her an extra hundred dollars a month.
It took three trips to get all the food up to her studio apartment and, by the time she’d finally unloaded her saddlebags and taken off her harness, she was already tired.
Parsnip took a quick shower, mostly just to rinse the day’s grime out of her coat, then settled on her floor pillow to dry off and relax. The floor pillow had been meant as a dog bed, but there was no rule saying a pony couldn’t use it.
The Walnut Street Library, only a few blocks from her apartment, had plenty of books to loan; she was currently reading through Night Probe. Dirk Pitt reminded her of Daring Do, even if he was mainly a seaman instead of an archeologist.
Three chapters later, her coat was dry, so she put a bookmark on her page, set it aside, and went to bed.
•••
Parsnip was up at 4 AM, and the first thing she did after getting out of bed was arrange all the produce she’d bought at the farmer’s market on the kitchen counter, everything lined up in a neat rank.
Once she had everything fixed in her mind, it was time for a morning shower. She could plan in the shower, that was a good thinking place.
Sometimes that was also a good singing place, although her neighbors didn’t always think so.
•••
Instead of drying off on the floor pillow, she draped a towel across her back and went into the kitchen to go to work. All the produce needed to be cleaned and some of it needed to be cut to size, and, once that was done, there were plenty of other ingredients to prep.
Parsnip kept staples in her cupboards and grew herbs on her tiny balcony. She’d decided what she was going to make when she was in the shower.
There was also breakfast to consider; some days she got so focused on what she was going to sell for lunch that she forgot to eat. More than once she’d only remembered on the way to her food cart, and had to weigh the convenience of eating a few bites of what she intended to sell or stopping at a fast-food restaurant for a quick snack.
When they were left over, eggs went cheap at the farmer’s market, and she had a decent stockpile. Most of her breakfasts wound up either being egg-based or oat-based if she was out of eggs.
She was still prepping ingredients when the eggs were cooked, and she slid them on a plate before they could burn, took the opportunity to get her Keurig to make her a cup of coffee, and then went back to prep work.
•••
By the time the sky had lightened, her eggs were cold, her coffee was tepid, and her saddlebags were crammed full of Ziploc bags full of produce, with more on the counter. She ate a few bites of scrambled eggs, sipped her coffee, and then put on her harness.
Only after the last buckle was fastened did she remember that she hadn’t curried her coat after getting out of the shower. Whatever. Parsnip wasn’t going to take her harness back off to do her coat; she ran a brush through her mane and tail and that was good enough.
Finish eating breakfast, wash the pan and plate, along with her cutting board and her knives. Rinse out the coffee mug. Coffee stains in the mug were added flavor. Everything on the drying rack, and then hoof everything down to her cart.
She had a pair of Yeti coolers bolted to the front of the cart. The first set had been stolen while she was working; some people couldn’t be trusted. Now they were held down with four carriage bolts each, screwed through the deck of her wagon, and she’d flattened the threads on the bolts with her shoes to make the nuts nearly impossible to remove. Someone who was determined and who had a toolkit could still take them, but so far, that hadn’t been a problem.
•••
The morning commute was about an hour, sometimes less if she wanted to disobey the traffic lights and risk getting a ticket or getting squished by a car. Parsnip ran over the ingredients she had two more times before crossing the river, and then stopped thinking about it. There wasn’t time to go back to her apartment and get something she might have forgotten. She could further improvise, if the need arose.
•••
Her food cart was right where she’d left it.
Back home, she might have towed her cart to and from whatever spot she chose to set up. That was one of the advantages of a food cart versus a restaurant, after all. Here, there were all sorts of regulations about that, about where she could have her cart and where she couldn’t. There was really no point in complaining, it was too heavy for a single pony to tow very far and anyway she’d gotten a good clientele with her current location. The curious locals who worked nearby had come first. Then word-of-mouth–and word of TV and word of internet–spread, and she had as much business as she wanted. Parsnip couldn’t remember the last time she hadn’t sold all her food.
She couldn’t have a proper wood stove, she had to use a propane one. It was easier to get going and came up to temperature faster, but it wasn’t quite as good. She’d had to adjust a few recipes. Which was fine; making human food had required adjustments anyway. Many of her favorite dishes had hay, and she’d substituted rice instead.
She twisted the gas valve on the propane cylinder open, unlocked the door, and backed her market cart into position. A couple latches on her tugs and the shafts dropped away, followed by the singletree.
Her first order of business was to open the big shutter over the counter to let in the light. She had LED fixtures inside but they were harsh and it was too expensive to replace them. In the winter, when it took a long time for the sun to rise, she hung a pair of oil lamps for light and the illusion of warmth.
Containers of veggies made their way into her food cart, neatly stacked into her tiny food prep area. When she’d first started, she had come out to the cart early and prepped everything there, but it was foolish when she had so much space at home that she could use instead.
Once that was finished, she pushed her market cart out of the way, set a pan on the stove to get it heating, and started measuring out rice.
•••
Parsnip had long since gotten used to the noises the city made as it woke up. There was always road traffic, of course, sirens rushing in the early hours, horns honking in indignation, but the tempo changed as the sun rose. She usually beat the first wave of morning traffic and was behind the stove when the second started, when the business-people started arriving for another day’s work in their shiny towers.
A few of them, her best customers, would greet her on their way in.
“Morning, Parsnip.”
“Morning, Billy.” She looked up from her stove as he walked over. “No, I’m not telling you what I’m making today, you’ll just have to come down for lunch and find out.”
He chuckled, and tipped an imaginary hat to her, before continuing on.
•••
When she’d started her business, she’d been worried about the lack of foot traffic during the day. After the morning commute, the sidewalks emptied out of all but the tourists. Her first couple of days had been constant worry about how much food she was making, how much she might sell, and if the first trickle of customers would become loyal, or if they were just curious about the pony-run food cart and once they’d tried a meal or two, move on to something else.
•••
“Hello, Lilian!” She looked up from the stove and waved a hoof at the woman walking by.
Lilian didn’t reply for a moment—she was looking down at her phone. Parsnip could see the stress etched on the woman’s face, and then it fell away as she slid her phone back into her purse and walked over to the cart.
Parsnip perked her ears. “Bad day?”
“Our client completely fu–” She took a deep breath. “It’s fine, it’s what I get paid the big bucks for, am I right?”
Parsnip nodded. She wasn’t entirely sure what Lillian did, but it revolved around contracts and a lot of money and people who weren’t always trustworthy.
It didn’t sit right with her that some people would lie and cheat to get an advantage when it would be better if they all just got along. Especially in a city that claimed to be filled with brotherly love.
“I hope it works out,” Parsnip said.
“Thank you.” It was hard to read humans sometimes, but Parsnip thought Lillian had a little more bounce in her step as she continued on to her office.
•••
She’d had to adjust her prices a couple times as she learned the market. Too cheap, and nobody trusted her food. Too expensive, and she couldn’t get a good crowd. Too variable, and customers just got confused. She’d settled on a nice, even ten dollars: it let them pay with a single bill if they wanted to, and it kept her from having to keep a bunch of change. Fifteen on Saturdays, at least for the tourists. They’d pay it.
They’d even give her extra money sometimes, which she’d spend on pricier ingredients, the things she could never get at a discount. That way, people’s generosity made the food better for everyone, which was as it should be.
•••
Her ears perked as she heard a familiar rumbling exhaust, followed by the squeal of brakes. Parsnip slid the pan off the burner and then turned the flame down. Faiyaz came by every morning with big plastic packs of bottled water for her cart. She thought they were stupid, but people wanted them with their meals.
He had a nearby store and, after he’d helped her load her wagon a few times, he’d offered to just bring the water to her food cart every morning. He’d also taught her about all kinds of spices and dishes she’d never heard of, and told her where to get the ingredients he didn’t sell.
Faiyaz was willing to stock the water in her cart for her, but she didn’t like the idea of him doing all the work for little more than he would have been paid for the water if she’d just bought it at his store, so they’d worked out an arrangement where he passed it through her door and she piled it–and the ice he’d also bring her–in her ice chest.
She always set aside a meal for him. If he could get out of the store for a lunch break, she’d give it to him then; if not, she’d carry it back to him after she closed.
•••
There was no menu; each day’s meal was whatever she cooked. Ten dollars a plate, with a single bottled water, and people just lined up to get what she had to offer. She opened at 11:30 every single day and closed when she ran out of food. Regulars would start queuing up ten or fifteen minutes before she opened, and she usually made it through the lunch rush before closing up for the day.
Every now and then, tourists would grumble about her being out of food, or complain that she didn’t deserve to run a food cart that didn’t always have food for sale.
She’d considered that one night on her way to the farmer’s market; she could buy more fresh food but it might go bad before she could sell it. Or she could get it frozen, in bulk–a lot of it she could even get pre-prepared if she wanted to. Food supply stores sold bulk bags of pre-diced frozen vegetables, or flats of canned food. Some of them would even deliver to her apartment or her food cart, and it wouldn’t go bad if it stayed in its can or its bag for days, or even weeks.
She could make a regular menu, sell the same things every day of the week–a few people had asked her when they could get a favorite dish again, and she honestly didn’t know. When the right ingredients were for sale at the right price at the market.
What was the point, though? If she’d wanted to have a boring restaurant that always served the same things, she’d have started one. Her talent was in improvisation, in getting the food that nobody wanted, the food that might wind up in a dumpster at the end of the day, and turning it into food that people did want. Eating the same meal every day was boring, and most of her customers knew it.
•••
When she’d gotten her cart, it had been boring. Unremarkable. It had cost more than she wanted to pay–especially for something so mundane–and she’d had to pay for it to be towed to its location, and she’d had to pay more for a permit to operate it. She’d had to deal with inspectors nosing through it, as if she didn’t know how to safely cook food. She’d had to fill out forms and then fill out more forms, and she got to know a few bureaucrats on a first-name basis as a result. Some of them now came by for lunch when they could.
After all of that was settled, she took several bus rides to hardware stores and lumber stores and craft stores and started customizing it. A shingle by the serving window with her cutie mark on it had been the first thing added, then she’d painted the cart in bright, cheerful colors, working into the night after she’d finished sales and cleanup. Just like her menu, the cart had changed every day until it had evolved into its current form.
A few little windowboxes filled with hearty plants and succulents made it even more cheerful, and while the health regulations wouldn’t let her paint the inside, that didn’t really matter all that much. She had a nice view out the ordering window.
Last solstice, she’d made Summer Sun Celebration food as closely as she could replicate with foods which were both available on Earth and edible for humans, and she’d given it all away to her customers, a tradition she was going to continue this year. She’d already started ordering some of the more exotic ingredients, the ones with a decently-long shelf life.
•••
Near her opening time, people passing through would sometimes stop and try and order food, and today was no exception. She was finalizing her prep work, all the burners on the stove going, pans piled high with food.
“Whatcha got for sale?” He sounded like a tourist, although she couldn’t place his accent.
“Open at eleven thirty,” she said. “You can order then.”
“You don’t got a menu.”
“Don’t need one.” Parsnip bent her head and gave the veggies a stir. “It’s whatever I make. Today it’s a biryani with peppers, asparagus, celery, corn, and toasted sourdough bread on the side. Ten dollars a plate, and that comes with a bottled spring water for free.”
“Never heard of a biryani. What if I don’t like it?”
She shrugged. “Don’t buy it, go somewhere else and get what you do like.”
“Seems like a bad way to do business.”
“Could be.” She heard that a lot from people who didn’t like the idea of a menu that varied every day. “But it’s my business.”
•••
The first time she’d been asked about a menu, she’d been confused. Not at the idea of wanting to know what food was being sold, but at the idea of a food cart selling many different things instead of just one or two.
And human food carts usually didn’t sell that many different kinds of things, either; a lot of the variety came in what kind of toppings you wanted.
Parsnip could hardly get a new menu printed every morning once she’d decided what she was going to cook. She could have gotten a chalkboard or one of the clever white markerboards that humans had . . . but that meant giving her creations a name, and sometimes she didn’t have one. Sometimes it was a dish inspired by, sometimes it was a dish in homage, and sometimes it was something she put together because the flavors worked well or it brought out the color and scents of the food. It might be a stir-fry or a curry or a salad or maybe a combination of those things. Maybe hash or pilaf or stoofpot.
For people who knew, or people who were willing to take a chance, they could get a meal that was different every day. Tasty and hoofmade and only ten dollars.
Most of her regulars wouldn’t even ask her what she was serving, although she was always happy to tell them if they wanted to know.
She watched as the annoyed tourist walked off, no doubt looking for the nearest Burger King or Chipotle. Maybe a hot dog cart that had a sign that said it sold hot dogs with and without condiments.
People were already coming towards her cart, some familiar faces and some new ones. They formed a ragged line, one that she serviced as quickly and cheerfully as she could. Each regular customer and old friend was greeted, and each new one welcomed—it was easy to know who was new, because they’d ask if she had a menu.
•••
Some people needed a cheerful face as much as they needed lunch. A few moments to talk, a smile, maybe even a hoofbump. Parsnip watched her stock run out, all but a single portion she’d saved for Faiyaz and would deliver on her way by his store.
Some people had to be turned away, but that couldn’t be helped. She had food until she was sold out, and that was that.
That was another thing people had complained about, maybe thinking that she could somehow make more food materialize in her food cart. Unfortunately, she could not.
Doubly unfortunately, since the first person to not get food was another one of her favorite customers, Melody Love.
A name that was more pony than her own.
“Sorry, Melody, I’m all out.”
“Nothing in your super secret stash?”
Parsnip shook her head.
“Your super super secret stash?”
There was Faiyaz’s meal, but she couldn’t sell that. He’d brought her the water; as far as she was concerned he’d already paid for it.
“Nothing at all, not unless a baggie of chopped-up peppers or an asparagus spear got free and hid in one of the Yetis.” Parsnip leaned over the counter for her OPEN sign, and Melody passed it over.
“That’s too bad. Although now I don’t have to feel guilty tying up the line.”
“Do you need to talk? Or do you need a hug?”
“Well.” Melody reached into her purse and pulled out a card. “I hope you don’t mind that I didn’t put it in an envelope. Figured it would be easier for you this way. Me and Max are getting married. And you’re invited.”
“Really?”
Melody nodded.
“That’s so awesome.” She leaned over the counter and gave Melody a big hug. “Nopony’s invited me to a wedding before. Are human weddings like potlucks? Do you want me to make something for it?”
“All the food’s provided, it’s real low-key. You won’t have to do anything.”
“What if I want to?”
“Tell you what, how about the bridesmaid’s dinner? Once I know if anybody has any allergies, or anything they just won’t eat, I’ll give that to you so you can plan something.”
•••
If there was a low point to her day, it was cleaning up after work. It did give her a chance to focus back and reflect on how the day had gone, to think about if she had any staples or supplies she needed to get from a big grocery store.
And propane–her cart could hold two tanks, and as soon as one of them ran out, she got it refilled. She’d tried to tap them with a hoof to see how much was in them, but they sounded almost the same when they were mostly full or mostly empty.
Sometimes it would leave a ring of condensation that showed the level, but that wasn’t a sure thing.
Parsnip piled the trays on the counter as they were washed–that should have been a sign to people that she was closed, too. Every couple of days, somebody would ask her if she was still selling food, once even asking as she was lowering the awning over her cart to close up for the night.
So far, nobody had run after her while she was towing her market wagon away, but it was only a matter of time.
•••
Her cart was clean and everything was put away. Parsnip took one more look, just to be sure, and then closed and locked the back door. Fiayaz’s dinner was balanced on top of one of the Yetis, and a bag of trash was in the back of her cart. There wasn’t much; she didn’t like making trash since it was wasteful. Everything she had to buy was something that someone had made, that she’d bought, and then decided to discard. Unfortunately, it was just unavoidable with some things.
She backed between the shafts and once she was in position, kicked the shafts up.
It took her a moment to get the appropriate buckles fastened, and then she had it in position and started to walk down the street.
•••
Traffic was heavier in the afternoon. People on the sidewalks, cars and buses and sometimes trolleys crowded in the streets. On some blocks, she could feel the subway rumbling under her hooves; other places in the city it ran above-ground.
All the public transportation was nice on Sundays when she wanted to see the town, but when she was on hoof, it wasn’t so great.
Sometimes she got yelled at for not being in the bike lane, where there was one. She’d also gotten yelled at for being in the bike lane and getting in the way of bicycles—people had forgotten that the streets were supposed to be for them, not the stinky cars or screeching buses.
She reached an intersection and tapped her hoof on the button to make the lights change in her favor. Cartless, she might risk trotting across the road in a break in traffic.
Parsnip sighed and shifted her weight until the light finally changed. A crowd of people swarmed around her, some of them familiar sights on her journey. She wasn’t the only one who had a routine in her day.
A small purse on the front of her harness held a few small bills for the street musicians she’d encounter. She didn’t like waiting for traffic, but didn’t mind pausing to listen to them, sometimes singing along if it was a song she knew.
Another red light; she waited for the light to change in her favor and then a moment longer as a bicyclist zoomed across the intersection in defiance.
The streets were full of a baffling number of stores, selling an insane number of products. It could be overwhelming, all the shelves full of shiny items that weren’t very useful, preserved foods and junk foods, an almost unimaginable wealth of clothing for sale at cheap prices or expensive prices.
Buying junk food on Sunday was a guilty pleasure. Just one thing to try while sitting in the park, a bit of the human experience. Foil bags of potato chips covered in fake flavors, or waxy-wrapped ‘pies.’ Pre-made cheese and crackers, chocolate bars and delicious ice cream sandwiches, perfect for a hot day. Bubbly colas and ginger ales, refreshing sports drinks and energy drinks that made her skin flush and her heart feel funny.
•••
By the time she got to the farmer’s market, foot traffic had dwindled, but the streets were as clogged as ever. Now it wasn’t people leaving work so much as people going out to the movies or the store or restaurants—could she buy more food and also cater to the evening crowd? The afternoon could be used for prep, too.
Parsnip shook her head. That wasn’t a new idea, she thought it about once a week, and she could, but then when she was finally done the farmer’s market would be closed, and she’d have no food for the next day.
Food was supposed to mean something. It wasn’t just sustenance, it should be an experience, have a story. A potato dragged out of the ground, machine-sliced, and factory fried had no substance; by design it was the same every single day in every single package, delivered by uncaring trucks to every single store in the city. It was a formula.
Not so her food. As she made the final turn to the farmer’s market, she didn’t know what she’d find or what she’d serve tomorrow.
•••
“Good evening, Lou.” She reached back and started unclipping her wagon from her harness.
“Good evening, Miss Parsnip.” He tipped an imaginary hat at her. “How was business?”
“Can’t complain. How’s the market been?”
“Not as hopping as it was yesterday.” Lou turned to wave at another regular, someone that Parsnip recognized but had never spoken to. “You hurry in there, you might come away with something nice today.”
She shrugged. “Everything’s nice if you know how to treat it.”
“Ain’t that the truth.”
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In fiction, the Dismas Hardy books (Lescroat) have a restaurant near the courthouse called "Lou the Greek's". They serve only one dish per day, often yeanling (lamb or goat) cooked in weird ways.
Questions about ingredients or cooking methods will often get you kicked out & they don't do special orders for anyone.
Voice of Experience
Denture cleaning powder is fairly good at removing coffee stains. Soak it overnight.
It's exclusive! /smuggrin
Once again, a working class pony on Earth fic that is engaging and entertaining.
Order up! One plate of heaping good pony fic, served hot.
11391273 Why in the world would you want to remove the thick black residue of former coffee properly enjoyed? You're probably somebody who puts the cast iron skillet in the dishwasher, too. Heathen! (Of course, I don't drink coffee, so that's a decaf heathen curse, which doesn't really count.)
11391319
Owned some cast iron skillets back in the mid 1970s & didn't know you shouldn't wash them. They were eventually ruined.
You oil them & store them in a warm dry place. If you have a gas stove, the oven is perfect.
If you must clean them then use a little oil & salt for scouring then wipe them clean. Properly cared for, they can last for decades.
Learned that from Lescroat's books. (Dismas had a giant cast-iron skillet. He would occasionally fry up & eat everything in the fridge. His wife disapproved.)
I don't know if this is an error, or a play on words that I didn't get.
There’s a good reason for her to list ingredients out in front of her cart on a board: the existence of people with allergies and a wide variety of dietary restrictions. She could eschew that crowd as customers—for instance, her food could be reliably vegetarian but not vegan. If she neglects to mention an ingredient when someone asks and that person goes into anaphylactic shock, that’s a potential lawsuit right there.
Also, Parsnip being related to Radish Root (CocktailOlive’s OC) would be hilarious.
Even before I read this I knew it would be a Favorite.
Yknow there’s a good number of actual restaurants that work off this principle. Yknow you’re Bout to get some good shit when you can’t pick it or you can only pick from 1 of 3 things
Ponies and food, two of my favorite things!
Have the bat ponies on earth discovered Mango Pepsi yet?
Jeez if she’s going away with that much everyday, that’s not a farmer’s market, that’s a clearinghouse. I used to work farmers markets on the weekend (summer’s over) and if it’s not shelf stable (honey) or materially dirt cheap (bread), no one brings anywhere near that much stuff. And that assumes it’s not spoiled (I’ve seen farmer’s markets where entire packs of strawberries were deflated from mold and bulbs of garlic were black)
That said, nice story if a bit naive sounding.
Beautiful, simply beautiful
(Also: now I'm hungry - darn it)
And this story came to be, just because You and I found that poffertjes food cart in that park in Zeist during the convention. XD
Enjoyed this story.
Thankyou.
The Equestrian food be bussin
11391367
I imagine that anyone with an allergy would ask if today's meal contains *insert allergy triggers* and would simply head elsewhere if there was an issue with that day's offering. Keeping in mind that Parsnip improvises each day's meal from scratch and is rightly proud of it then she knows exactly what is in the offering, pretty much a negligible chance of forgetting an ingredient as opposed to more conventional places who use commercially prepared ingredients.
Not that difficult to work out.
I myself dislike spicy food so I always ask first and know that if most of what's on today's menu is spicy then it is my concern not the venue's.
An extremely comfy story, thank you for sharing it.
<3
Even if it's just tossing borderline-rancid stuff from the back of the fridge in a soup pot for mulligan stew, cooking for yourself is a basic life skill, and people who subscribe to the old mentality that cooking and cleaning are for girls are on the fast track to incelhood.
Using the microwave steamer with diluted vinegar in the reservoir is a good way to kill rancid smell and any pathogens.
That said, Shokugeki no Soma is the most manly, epic shonen series I've ever seen.
Much of traditional human cuisine descends from either methods of preservation, or finding uses for stuff that's about to go bad, or both. Squeeze every calorie out of what you have, and survive to see another winter.
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLoQjqpg_6bCOItkKvTdGsK6xYQw1IwAKE
https://www.farmersalmanac.com/recycling-because-you-had-to-27082
I love me some lutefisk, and even the most trendy hipsters don't realize that sushi was originally just a method to preserve and transport fish and vegetables, and early in it's history, the rice was frequently discarded.
And I'd quite proud of the history behind Minnesota Hot Dish. Imagine Lutheran grandmas collecting potato peelings in the church fellowship hall and pressing them into the progenitor of tater tots, taking government-rationed frozen veggies, canned condensed soup in place of gravy, and ground beef (with the grease drained off to donate and make shells to kill the krauts), all baked together for a quick and dirty, but hearty meal to feed the family, and neighbors if there's enough, after a day working the fields, or mill, or observing a new procedure for medical school at the Mayo Clinic.
Goddamit, I sound like Ironmouse and Koefficent cussing out and lecturing Gordon Ramsay about pegao.
Ooh, that's a neat idea for a food cart. I don't think I'd be brave enough to try it, though.
One Plate Only.
Lovely work. Your pony on Earth stories are always delightful slices of life, but this one is especially engrossing and well-crafted, from the full-circle structure to all the bits of Parsnip's journey thus far sprinkled throughout. I sincerely wish I could visit this food cart now, even if Philly is quite a ways to go just for lunch. Thank you for another delightful dish.
I'd sell my soul to live in the Ponies-on-Earth universes you've created. You really do a bang-up job showing how having them around would objectively improve the human experience.
Ironically she's probably as successful as she is exactly because of this psychology.
This story is so good.
Those stories are delightfully cheesy and unabashedly fun to read.
PresumableI guess ponies like convenience just as we do, but I would have thought the whole Keurig setup and business model would be rather distasteful (if not downright anathema) to them what with things like "single use plastic waste" and "coffee DRM".
There is probably some Business 201 and/or psychology 201 class discussing this sort of thing. There are plenty of other places that boast steady consistency and whatnot. She is not competing with them. I would say part of her long term draw (after the initial "Ponyponyponypony!!!" novelty wears off) will be her varied and random menu. For me personally, I would love to frequent a cart like Parsnip's; Significant Other and I have been frequenting a little meat and three near our workplace for the last decade(!). They have a random plate meal special option on the menu which is lovely if you are an adventurous foodie.
11391509
Never mind the bat pones, I just now discovered that is a thing
11391202
Some places say that the customer is always right. Other places are more sensible.
I suppose you could, but why would you want to? That's extra flavor.
11391277
Working class ponies are my people!
11391319
The best kind!
I'm with you on this.
11391341
Tugs are a part of a harness, they're also called traces. It's the part of the harness that connects to the load--in her case, the wagon.
upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b5/Skidding_harness_diagram.png
Part 22 in this image; this isn't a cart harness but the principles are essentially the same.
11391367
She'll tell people what's in her food if they ask; she just doesn't have a menu because she doesn't know what she'll be serving every day. Her food would be reliably vegetarian, I think. Like, I can make the case for pegasi eating fish, but I don't think that tends to be very popular with the other tribes, and I don't think that Parsnip would bother to try and get meat when she's got so many options without.
I feel like I've heard the name around, but I'm not familiar with CocktailOlive's work.
11391374
Thanks!
11391430
The story's based on a real food cart in Philly that doesn't have a menu 'cause the owner cooks whatever he feels like on that particular day. I have been to a restaurant that only had a couple items on the menu, and it was good food.
11391508
Just can't go wrong with that combo.
11391509
That's a good question. Maybe.
derpicdn.net/img/view/2018/6/20/1761771.jpg
Source
11391519
I legit haven't spent much time at farmer's markets (we've got a little local one in the summer time, once per week), but my reasoning was that people would want to bring enough food that they wouldn't sell out too fast (and miss out on profits) but not so much that there would be a high amount of spoilage/wastage.
Also, I don't even know if there is a daily farmer's market in Philly. DIdn't bother to research that.
11391542
Thank you!
The curse of reading about a pony cooking food
11391569
This actually predates that--although the idea of a pony selling poffertjes really fits in with my headcanon, too, and it's also a canon fact that ponies love pancakes.
Especially Twilight
derpicdn.net/img/2015/4/14/873703/large.gif
11391619
You're welcome!
11391660
Darn right it is!
11391703
Agreed--anyone with an allergy should ask, especially since Parsnip doesn't have a menu. And she is more familiar with her menu than people at most restaurants would be, likely even some chefs, since virtually all of her food is home-made with simple ingredients.
The only place she might get tripped up is when she gets bread or something like that, although it should have ingredients on it.
A good restaurant will be more than happy to tell you. A couple years at Trotcon, a group of us has gone to a very traditional African restaurant, and of course none of us have any idea what the dishes are--the workers have always been happy to tell us if it's spicy, what's in it, etc.
11391812
You're welcome!
11391819
11391871
Like, I'm not a great cook by any means, but I can follow directions on a box and know how to make a bunch of different foods as well. Mostly pretty basic stuff, not gonna lie, but it gets me by.
I'm also willing to do some amount of experimenting with ingredients I've got. Doesn't always work out like I hope, but it's always a learning experience.
Vinegar is a useful kitchen cleaning too for coffee makers, too. Just remember to run through a couple pots of water after, or else the next pot of coffee will taste very bad.
I don't know much about shonens, but I can agree from that clip you posted.
That was glorious
11391902
AFAIK a lot of traditional types of foods/spices/whatever are based upon ways food was preserved/used when it wasn't at its freshest, and that falls into Parsnip's skillset, maybe not so much the long-term preservation, but the improvisation of 'this is what we have, what can we make with it?'
It would be interesting to do a deep dive into all the various improvised dishes from different cultures and different time periods. I've watched a few cooking videos on YouTube for Depression-era cooking, and some of Townsend's videos also cover cooking the most basic ingredients into something at least edible.
11391944
It's the kind of thing that isn't for everyone--I know people who don't want to experiment with food, they want to have something known every time. And then I also know people who are always interested in something new . . .
The story's based on a real food cart in Philly which serves whatever the chef feels like cooking, so it's at least a plausible way to make a living.
11391994
With a side of spring water (in a bottle)
11392048
Thank you!
I also wish I could visit her food cart . . . ponies make everything better.