Making food

'But it has nothing to do with me. I cannot go around town screaming that he has slaves, since I will be questioned on why I know this.'

With that thought in mind, and the horrendous smell coming from the inside, Daron abandoned his search into the merchant's secret passage and closed it off before putting back all the sacks on top of it exactly the same as before due to Sirious' recording capabilities.

He then put back everything in its place once more, as though he had not been here in the first place. Next, he locked the door and left the place, with nothing out of place, not even a hair, except the missing items.

He even made sure to clear up any footprints left by him on the floor, but left any that were not made by him.

Soon, he was gone from the location, and had returned to his room on the ground floor without alerting anyone.

'A perfect robbery~'

Currently, it was entering the end of the year, and the temperature was falling. This world had almost the same sense of time as Earth, except its months were named slightly differently. But all in all, it was the same, with 12 months, or 365.2422 days a year, 24 hours in a day, 60 minutes in an hour and 60 seconds in a minute.

The temperature should be nearing around 10 degrees in the afternoons, and around 5 in the nights.

In this temperature, nothing would spoil, and butter was highly unlikely to melt. Daron had decided that he would be selling his products the very next morning just to make sure that nothing would spoil, or get found.

For this however, he needed to make certain preparations.

After hiding his loot near his bed, which was actually just come hay stuffed into a cloth bag with certain leaves to make it less hurtful to sleep on, Daron quietly unclothes his black clothes before hiding them away inside a crack in the wall of his room where he had previously hidden them, and wearing his normal clothes. These normal clothes were actually donations from the church's believers, which were still rather loose for him.

Slowly creeping out of his room, he went upstairs to the kitchen and quietly went back and forth between his room and the kitchen to bring all the necessary utensils for the his 'preparations'.

He took the eggs and used a spoon due to the lack of a better alternative, to beat it a little in the smallest bowl there was, which was incidentally his own bowl from which he ate.

Using the same spoon after washing it a little with water, since he did not need another spoon for his preparations, Daron put flour and a pinch of salt into another bowl. Next, he began to stir, but the dough quickly became stiff, and following the recipe his mind had somehow remembered, and Sirious had somehow extracted from his mind, he added a few spoons of water, and within moments, the dough became perfect.

Quickly, he moved to the kitchen which was the cleanest place around, and began to use his just forming muscles to knead the dough.

'Those people on TV make this look too easy!' he thought to himself as he finished kneading it for 3 minutes, drenched in sweat and with slightly sore muscles.

'What kind of useless training have I been doing so far? I should just devote myself to cooking!'

[We did not take this approach due to the lack of ingredients.]

The cold truth was pressed onto him my Sirious, who was a serious as always.

A few minutes of rest later, Daron took out the Rolling pin, which was not like the normal one that spun freely, but a solid wooden block that had been rounded off into a cylinder.

After the dough was flat, he put more flour over it to prevent it from sticking and used the sharpest knife he could find to cut the dough into thins and long noodle strips.

After 10 minutes, he had finally cut all the dough into noodles. The amount he had created should be enough to serve 3 people, maybe 4 if he gave them a little less. He still had ingredients to make another 10-15 servings. He could not make the sauce as of yet, since it would spoil quickly if not fully frozen right after taking it off the gas.

At this moment, a sudden thought struck him.

'How will I sell this? I will need plates and other utensils, which all cost money…'

[You could give some to the head priestess, and tell her that you intend on selling this stuff, if she can offer you some utensils temporarily…]

'Genius! Why did I not think of that before?'

[That is because you did not think of that. I did. And also, because even if we wanted to show her before, we could not since we did not have ingredients to make something.]

Daron simply ignored Sirious and checked the time. It was currently around 4 in the morning, and the Joanne and the head priestess should be waking up in half an hour.

'I should just start making the sauce now! I can then serve it to the head priestess when she wakes up!'

With that thought in mind, Daron got chopping the onions and garlic and putting them on the fire along with some butter. While this was sizzling away, he got to peeling the tomatoes and crushing them into a paste, before adding this to the mix on the fire as well, and finally added some water.

Finally, he added salt, and let the mixture cook on the fire. Over the course of 5 minutes, the entire kitchen was filled with delicious smell, and so he opened the windows to let the air out and prevent chaos from occurring in the children for his food.

He had enough ingredients to make enough for them to eat, but the problem would then arise on how much he should sell his food for. The total cost of making all the roughly 18 servings, including the firewood used for cooking, and depreciation on the utensils, was about 180 copper. The salt alone cost around 40 copper for the two handfuls that he took.

True, he had gotten greedy and took a lot more than he needed, but as long as salt was kept dry, it would not spoil for a long time. So that was not a problem.

The problem would be that he wanted to sell his food at a price of 15 copper to make it affordable to others. In this world, the currency was rather simple. 100 copper made 1 silver, and 100 silver made 1 gold. An average person would spend about 12 copper on a meal, and so his food would be rather expensive already. However, if he wished to make some profit at the end of this, he needed to price it at 15, since the total cost divided by the sellable goods was 11.25 copper. Since he might not be able to sell all of the food, he needed an acceptable profit margin per meal sold, to make a higher profit and get better ingredients.

Soon, while continuously stirring the mix of sauce which should be enough to serve 2 people, adding firewood into the fire below the pot of sauce, he noticed that it was about time for the head priestess to wake up and take her rounds of the church before waking Joanne up.

"Who is in here!?" a harsh voice said as the door was swung open.