Deer Country Network

[While some people were making important life announcements, and others were currently busy trying to figure out what was going on with the horrors of the month, Vira-Lorr had a somewhat different intent. She was currently in her kitchen, and by the looks of thinsg, she had a large bowl in front of her. There were crushed and broken up button mushrooms filling the bowl to the brim.]

So, I had a thought that came to me after I heard a bit of good news. It was just a little something. But, one of the things that makes life anywhere more bearable is good food. Well, that can be tricky around here. The meat's sometimes dodgy, and it can be hard to get quite enough. And what does that leave us with?

[She held up a cute little baby bella mushroom and gave the camera feed of her omni a rueful smirk, raising an eyebrow.]

I'm pretty sure most of you are getting a little sick of these. They can taste bland if you don't put some effort into it. Mushroom flour. Mushroom wine for those who drink it. Mushroom everything. But, you can get more flavor out of them if you know what you're doing. So, I thought I'd show a little something I picked up over the last year. Mushroom Ketchup.

[She winked and crushed the poor little fungus that never did anything to harm anyone into the pot and started to ad a heavy helping of salt.]

This isn't hard. You need to get a lot of them into this, cover them and mix them up with a whole lot of salt, let that sit under a cloth overnight. Then you're going to cook it down for a few hours, add in ... well, whatever spices you really want. The world is your oyster mushroom, hah. [She swears she thinks she's funny.] Boil it down some more with the spices added in and then strain and simmer the liquid you've made until it's thick enough. Bottle it and seal it, and you've got flavor for whatever you're cooking.

Keep it up and eventually you won't realize you're still eating just mushrooms. It's little things like this that make it feel like you're actually living in a place, instead of ... you know, surviving a horrible situation that you never intended to end up in and can't seem to get out of.

[Sometimes, it really was apparent that Vira-Lorr had gone native in this place after this many years. Plagues of mosquitos were harassing people, and she was just talking about mushroom ketchup. But was she wrong? Good food did make a day better.]