There was sothing infuriatingly adorable in the act of feeding Selia.
The way I would prepare each bite by pressing it against the surface of the sauce, dipping it against the edge of the sauce bowl to stop it from dripping and then raising it up...
Only to watch how Selia readily pried her lips open, allowing to gently stuff the toasted piece into her mouth. The way her white teeth bit into it, the way her mouth collapsed upon the bread to stop the crumbs from falling all over the bed...
’So this is what bliss looks like,’ I thought, only now—three pieces of toast deep—just how much I was grinning.
"Tasty."
Still tired, half-asleep, Selia made a small comnt before readily opening up her mouth again, before I could even prepare another piece.
Which, obviously, sent scrambling to grab a toast, dip it in the sauce only to then hurry it up as I brought it to Selia’s opened mouth.
This hurry, however, ca at a cost of a single drop of sauce spilling over Selia’s mouth, giving an opportunity to reach out with my other hand and, while using my thumb, gently wipe the excess sauce from the corner of Selia’s mouth.
Then, pushed by nothing but feeling, I brought said thumb over to my mouth before stuffing it in and sucking the sauce away.
"Indeed, it really is tasty," I smiled.
Hearing this, Selia chuckled at the sa ti as she bit at the toast, sending herself coughing and scrambling for sothing to flush her throat of the bigger chunks of the food.
"Here," I quickly passed her the cup with milk, big enough to soften four tis the amount of coffee that I brought.
"Thanks," Selia quickly grabbed the cup and took a few sips, stopping when her eyes suddenly shot up and landed on the huge mug of coffee before reluctantly pulling her lips away from the cup’s edge.
"Just drink away. If we run out, I can just fetch another cup. It’s not like milk is THAT hard to co by here."
Selia’s eyes shot up to my face before relaxing a little as she brought the cup back to her lips and took a few, now much bigger gulps more.
"Aaaah..." Selia put the cup down and leaned back, careful not to tip the stuff off the platter sitting on her lap. "That hits the spot!"
Once again, all I could do was just keep that stupid grin on my face as I smiled with nothing but pure, raw joy in my heart.
Even though it was an extrely simple pleasure, just so good, makeshift food eaten straight from the bed for Selia, and an opportunity to both spoil her... and watch her act all spoiled for .
"Is it just , or did you make two kinds of toast?" Selia suddenly asked, her eyes locking in on the slightly more golden-brown piece of bread that distinctively lacked the support of lted cheese.
"I sure did," my smile only widened as Selia discovered my small ploy. "But let’s leave that only for when you had your fill," I gave her a knowing, confident nod, "only in this way would this surprise show its true colors!"
There was a very specific order in which one should eat food. Obviously, such order heavily depended on purpose.
If one wanted to get their fill? Then they would often end up with so watery gruel or thick soup. And while it was sothing born out of necessity, one could go quite far tricking their stomachs by eating food with huge amounts of water in it or, better yet, food that would bloat when in presence of water.
Then ca a different order, one designed to let people eat as much as they possibly could and often experienced amidst the higher classes, where soups would only ever be in the last place—so that they could only fill the space in the stomach left behind by more solid chunks eaten prior.
The order I had in mind today, however, was much simpler, focused on the idea of splitting the al into the nourishnt phase and then adding a pleasure phase on top.
It didn’t matter whether those cheesy toasts were quite the expensive food in the economy of this world. It took both good, white bread—sothing an average person would only eat on occasion—but also cheese, sothing that grew more and more expensive the bigger the city one wanted to buy it in.
Adding up vegetables, greens, all the ingredients I used for the sauce or even milk and honey, and this all-you-can-eat buffet of toasts I’d prepared could easily cost several tis over a proper dinner for a family of four!
Then ca the coffee, which in itself was one of the most expensive dishes in this world due to the extre scarcity of its supply. In fact, with coffee being an otherworldly plant that people from earth and earth-like worlds were absolutely addicted to, its price was likely to rise beyond any reasonable number!
For now, however, I continued to feed Selia the toasts while snacking on so myself.
And on that point, I had to admit.
While I never really went through any cooking education, the few years of living on my own taught more than enough to turn the raw ingredients into an actual, well-tasting sauce.
’It’s missing a bit of salt, but...’ I took a bite, feeling how the toasted bread crumbled underneath my teeth, the sweet, llow taste of the slightly fried cheese exploded in my mouth and then the red sauce adding in a slightly tangy, fresh accent.
’Not bad at all.’
"Okay," Selia crushed the last of her toasts in her mouth before hurriedly swallowing it only for her eyes to already lock in on the different kind of bread I’d prepared. "I’m ready. Hit !"
’If soone is standing on the other side of the door right now...’
I rolled my eyes over the possibility of what they would end up thinking were they to hear Selia’s request.
"Hello?"
Selia waved her hand before my eyes, pushing to focus back on reality rather than so potential for trouble later.
"The toasts you’ve tried so far were designed to be tasty, but most importantly, to fill your stomach. Now, those other ones?"
I reached out and pulled a piece much closer to gold in color with a visible layer of sothing slightly crusty on top.
"You can consider them a prototype," I introduced as I raised the piece up to Selia’s mouth. "Bread covered in honey then seared to remove the moisture and caralize so of the honey’s sugars."
In the back of my head, I already had a new, budding idea.
An idea for building an empire that spilled not blood but coffee and crushed not countries and nations but honey-glazed cakes.
For now, however, all I had in my hand was a thin piece of bread dipped in honey and then dried on a hot plate up until the point where its surface lost all of its stickiness.
"That’s... quite an interesting creation," Selia muttered, squinting her eyes as she took over the piece of the toast and closely inspected it.
The very mont sweet snacks ca into play, her whole deanour changed, turning her from a spoiled princess relaxing in her bed while being fed various delicacies into nearly a food inspector here to grade the quality of my creation.
Honestly, though? I didn’t really mind that at all.
What I did mind, however, was the mont when she finally brought the piece up to her mouth and took a bite.
Her jaws moved as she munched on the sweet snack and then...
Then, her eyes flashed up a little with the sa kind of joy that I saw in them when she got to taste a dinsionally imported crepe.
"Good?" I smiled.
Selia smiled back.
"Tasty."
At this point, feeling the dry elent of the snack, Selia reached out and poured so honey into her coffee mug before adding in a considerable amount of milk.
Yet, rather than going for a drink as soon as she stirred all the ingredients together, she instead turned her eyes to , silently urging to follow her example.
With a slight chuckle, I poured quite a lot more honey into my own cup before using whatever milk was still left to llow the whole thing down. Finally, grabbing a piece of a honey-glazed toast, I raised the cup and gently struck it against Selia’s own.
"I’m not going to lie or hide it, but seeing all of this..." I waved my toast-holding hand over the platter before taking a bite and then quickly flushing my mouth with the coffee.
"I’m starting to consider the idea of settling down and opening up a cake and coffee shop," I revealed, raising my eyes to the ceiling as if it was the sky. "Can you imagine it, a place where you can buy sweet treats and drink this precious, precious coffee?"
For a mont, I allowed my dreams to take over my head.
Only for Selia to then kindly bring a wrench to the inner-workings of my plan.
"It’s a good and fun idea, but..." she leaned her head over her shoulder before taking another bite of the honey-glazed bread, "how do you plan to get more coffee? Because even if it only takes a few beans to make a cup of it, that lone bag we brought will run dry pretty damn quick!"
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