Chapter 9: Fluvia Enters the Kitchen

There’s rice.

In the kitchen, even.

It’s kind of unexpected.

Somehow I had western fantasy = no rice, or at best rice as animal feed, but there’s rice in the kitchen.

Or rather, rice is cultivated in the middle of the Dellarose Earldom, in the plains along the largest river that runs through Valed – I had no idea.

Come to think of it, even in our world there was Italian risotto, which used a different type of rice than Japanese rice.

So it’s not like ancient westerners never had rice, huh?

Although I only realized it after I reincarnated in another world.

The most abundant rice is the short-grain type, so that’s not too different from Japan, but there’s also Indian-type long-grain rice, although it’s much rarer, though not to the extent that the Hildeich’s House of Healing doesn’t have a small bag of it in their larder.

As for the taste of the common rice, I did properly taste it, and…

Well, um… bread is more popular here, after all.

Valed’s rice isn’t as sweet or tasty as Japanese rice, and they can’t hull it as cleanly so… it’s not fluffy at all.

Well, yeah. The technology here isn’t as good as Japan’s, and selective breeding doesn’t seem to have caught on yet.

Even though this country is into luxuries, it’s all about things that are luxurious as they are, after all.

How to say it… easy-access luxuries?

Rather than exquisitely designed dresses, the amount of expensive materials used is more important.

It makes my stomach hurt to think of those wastes of materials…

Anyway, like that, exotic ingredients are more important than cooking methods, so it’s obvious that something like meticulously breeding plants or animals isn’t a priority.

Well, I can’t be too picky about taste in this age, and especially in this kind of situation where the most important factor is needing food that will stay in the patient’s stomach, and I can always boil the rice in meat broth if I’m really that worried about it, but the real problem is that, even if I make rice porridge, the rice isn’t well-hulled so it wouldn’t be as easy on the stomach as okayu was in Japan.

Can’t be helped.

It will have to be meat broth with vegetables stewed until they fall apart for now, with some salt.

Something like savory bread pudding, too?

Although the bread isn’t as soft as Japanese store bought white bread too, so I give up on the puddings and porridges for now.

As it is, the main issue is nutrients.

It was too much to expect bananas, but there are properly apples.

Potatoes too.

Even though I’m in the House of Healing’s kitchen, of course I’m not allowed to cook, for my health, as well as the mysterious patient’s health!

Instead I give instructions to the cooks from my wheelchair.

Peel the apples, core them, and cut them up, then boil them.

Mash them up when they’re soft enough to make applesauce… but because I don’t know the lady’s capabilities, I instruct them to strain it, then add a very tiny bit of honey to the apple-broth.

Then, repeat the process with meat and vegetables.

The head cook was appalled when I told him to boil the bones of the cow in the broth, since it’s something only the poorest of the poor does, but Mary gave him a chilling look and he meekly bowed his head.

… Even though I’ve already confirmed that Mary is the daughter of a small-time noble’s mistress, which makes her barely better than a commoner, her standing within the House of Healing is something I cannot comprehend.

Anyway, the nutrients from the bones is good, you know?

Of course I have them strain the meat broth, too.

It’s a type of water diet that I don’t envy the lady patient of at all, but it can’t be helped for now.

I don’t want to risk her throwing it back up when she desperately needs fluids and nutrients.

Tonight, after she digests the meal we’re preparing, we can try watery mashed potatoes with the meat broth mixed in to see if her stomach can handle any sort of consistency thicker than water.

Are there any herbs?

Garlic, pepper and salt… that’s about it.

And not that much pepper.

Eeeeh…

I’d like some ginger or parsley, but…

When I mentioned it, they sent me to the medicine-making lab?

So it’s like that.

There are way more herbs than I can understand in the strange-smelling little room.

What is horehound?

A-anyway, I want to make a bouquet garnis to make soup taste better, so parsley, thyme, bay, and sage…

Luckily, after explaining the herbs and smelling and tasting the ones the apothecaries handed me, I found the herbs I wanted.

Why are onions here in the apothecary?

They’re not the big, round onions, but the bulbs of green onions.

When I told them to try folding the greens of the green onions over to make the bulbs bigger, the apothecaries stared wide-eyed at me.

That kind of knowledge is trivia from Japan, you know?

Of course they don’t.

Celery is here, too.

I took some of that with me as well.

Tying them in a muslin bag, I shocked the cooks by tossing it directly into the soup.

“Prescribing herbs without a Healer’s prescription-!?”

“We can’t do this-!”

“No, the soup we’ve been working on-! It will become bitter-!”

After a few minutes a savory smell began to come from the large stew pot, which halted the cooks’ protests.

“As long as you don’t use too much of it, herbs are good for you, and make things taste better too. If you’re really that worried, call in Healer Martin and confirm it.”

I said.

I understand I’m being terribly uncute, but bear with it.

Bland meat soup is… bleh.

Even if our main goal is just to put soup in her stomach, it doesn’t mean we should neglect taste.

It’s already going to be a watery diet, so we should make it at least a little bit tasty.

And besides, I think I understand why herbs=not good for cooking in this country.

With this kind of over-excess mindset, I wouldn’t be surprised if they just used way too much, making the food bitter, inedible, and sometimes making stomachs uncomfortable.

As for the ginger, there were only dried ginger slices, and only a few of them at the apothecary’s.

I have the cooks make a weak ginger tea and add a little honey with some of the apple broth – apple juice?

It’s a little different from apple juice…

The lady’s lunch is herb-beef broth with apple broth for dessert, and ginger-apple tea for after.

I also had some of the broth for lunch, eating it together with the cooks after removing some and adjusting the salt for non-convalescents.

“Tell us what herbs you put in!”

They were ecstatic when tasting the broth.

I was about to do so, when I thought of something.

This… could this help my family?

I’m already regretting not turning the wheelchair and bed-table into something that benefited my house.

Certainly, the cooks could just ask the apothecaries what herbs I asked for – for THIS bouquet garnis, that is.

By the way, I was equally shocked that people eat raw eggs here, when the cooks went to put them in the broth for their own lunch.

Is that going to be okay…?

I mean, I ate raw eggs in Japan all the time, but that’s JAPAN.

I was told as long as they aren’t spoiled, it’s fine.

There are people who get sick after eating them, but it’s at a rate that’s not different from the chances of getting sick after eating anything else raw, so I guess it’s fine?

It’s completely unexpected.

I thought westerners hated raw eggs – although it’s a different world here, so maybe my preconceptions are useless.

I had raw egg over rice for my lunch along with the meat broth, and even though the rice was different, I almost cried from the nostalgia.

It’s a combination the cooks hadn’t thought of before and they also enjoyed it normally enough, although not to the degree of my passion, of course.

In the end, after having an enjoyable time in the kitchen, I resisted making the sweets I was beginning to crave for in favor of writing back home and asking for advice first.

When I told the cooks that I was going to do so,

“Wait a bit! We will petition the Head Healer to also write a letter requesting it!”

It became a bigger deal than I expected.

By the way, it seems like the mysterious lady patient was able to eat, er, drink her lunch without too much trouble, although she had to take it slow.

I’m very relieved.

Alright! I’m going to do my best for her dinner-!

– Is what I thought, but Healer Martin instructed Mary strictly to let me rest for the rest of the day.

Boo.

Although, as soon as Healer Martin left after giving me a check-up it seems I fell asleep.

My mind might be willing, but my body is still unable to keep up.

I will obediently follow the healer’s instructions.

—

The lady apparently has a miraculous recovery ability, now that she’s getting proper nutrition.

After the mostly water-diet, it only took her three days to start eating soft solids.

I taught the cooks how to make egg fluffy, heavily whipped eggs with meat broth that turns into a delicate, souffle-like food, and somehow it’s become a competition in the kitchen among the cooks to see who can make the fluffiest, softest eggs.

When I heard she’d started eating by herself, I also showed them how to make caramel for a delicious bread pudding, and fought them to make hamburgs.

Minced meat is usually only used by poor people who can’t afford good meat, but it’s also good for people who can’t digest well yet, you know?

We used soaked breadcrumbs, a completely new idea for the cooks, to make the hamburg steaks even softer.

Rather than being necessary for the lady’s recovery, I thought the lady would like to eat food that resembled normal food, so that’s why I insisted on it.

Becoming dissatisfied and depressed from sick-food is not something you should underestimate.

By the way, the Head Healer had decided that the health of the lady was much more important than favorable negotiations, so they’d pay whatever was necessary when Father replied about what to do for teaching the cooks my recipes.

The mysterious lady is quite a big shot, it appears.

In the worst case, the Head Healer said, they’d stop making this food at the House of Healing if Father tells them to, but it seems highly unlikely that he’d say that, and besides, that kind of move won’t remove the cooks’ memories.

Anyway, I’d like the country’s care for the sick to improve for my own sake, too, so it’s fine~.

I have those kinds of irresponsible feelings about it.

A week or so after the lady started eating on her own, my presence was requested.

“… I’m a little nervous. They’re still keeping quiet about her, right? Is it okay for a kid like me to be let in on the secret?”

Mary had taken great care to tend to my hair and changed my nightgown before wheeling me down the hall.

Although I can walk on my own without too much trouble now, I still get tired easily, so it can’t be helped that I’m going in the wheelchair.

Mary chuckled.

“Isn’t it too late to worry about that? I think it can’t be helped that the Lady would want to see who was thinking about her health so much.”

Mary is wearing my attendant outfit prototype.

Although my hands were clumsy at first, it took me no time at all to pick sewing back up from my previous life.

Even so, it’s kind of amazing I finished it so fast… no, well, because I wasn’t making it from scratch it went fast, huh?

Or more like, with the attendants also being confined to the rooms, Mary also helped me finish it…

Because she’s a noble’s attendant, and especially because she’s the attendant of a noble’s child, the people of the House of Healing tolerated me dressing Mary up, since it’s kind of similar to the attendants’ actual uniform anyway.

It’s turned out a little bit different from the sketches, as it always goes, but it looks good even if I say so myself.

The more fashionable attendants have been jealously eyeing her dress as we pass them in the hallway.

… Mary, you’re enjoying the attention, huh?

Even though you said you didn’t care before.

I wonder if we can get the House of Healing to adopt this outfit.

It’s definitely more difficult to make than the previous type, but … indeed, the comparison between the current outfit and my version makes it painfully obvious that the previous set was done irresponsibly.

That said, I DO have more attachment to dresses than I do to the recipes that were housewifely common sense in Japan, so if the House of Healing takes an interest, I definitely want that to benefit my house somehow.

Or like, I want it to be obvious that the Dellarose family CAN make good things.

Although, I suppose from Father’s point of view, it would be better for our agriculturally strong territory to come out with new recipes, rather than new fashion… but. Well.

As I was thinking about those types of things, Mary had wheeled me to the front of the door of the room in the South Wing.

She took a deep breath, then, when I gave her a small nod, she knocked on the door.

The door opened a tiny crack, and the face of a woman appeared.

“Who comes to the Lady’s door?”

“Young Lady Dellarose has arrived.”

It’s something I’m getting used to, but when it comes to interactions between nobles, the servants who do the introductions feel like they’re following some sort of script.

Like the above interaction, sometimes the ‘scripts’ make the conversation strange, but that is just the usual.

The woman inside closed the door, then a few minutes later, it opened again.

“Our Lady bids the Young Lady to enter.”

Whoa.

I thought the woman had been an attendant or a maid, but she’s totally decked out in armor.

I guess she could still be a maid, just an armored maid.

I try not to make it obvious, but as we enter the room, I check out the people within.

There are a total of three armored women.

All of them keep their hands close to their swords.

I’ll be making slow movements, then…

There are also four women in aprons and dark dresses, and two of the House of Healers’ attendants as well.

And finally, the last woman in the room was the mysterious patient, lying on the bed.