Almost large enough to be considered a theme park while remaining free to the public, Terrace Park is rumored to have been the site of the Grand Hollowheart's defeat, leading to the Hollowhearts first accepting a pact with humans. (+2 Fame, +2 Endurance)

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Re: Rest and Recuperation [self; L]

Postby crow » 09/30/2017 8:43 PM

He opened the basket to inspect its contents. He’d packed it well; nothing was out of place or too badly shaken up, though he hadn’t paid as much care to how he held it as he probably should have while he was walking here.

It was almost entirely store-bought food. Fabio wasn’t much of a cook himself, and it wasn’t like he had anyone else to do it for him. Despite the fact of Melanie’s pervasive vocal companionship, for all practical intents and purposes, essentially he lived alone.
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Re: Rest and Recuperation [self; L]

Postby crow » 09/30/2017 8:43 PM

Cooking felt like one of those skills he ought to pick up, but there was just never time. That was what it came down to, in the end. The amount of time and effort he'd have to expend just to improve... He didn't have it.

Even ‘quick and easy’ recipes that promised to be fifteen minutes or less actually turned out to be more like an hour, when he took into consideration the time it took to prep the ingredients. Those chefs always had diced onions in a neat little bowl on hand, already measured, but the real world didn’t work like that.
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Re: Rest and Recuperation [self; L]

Postby crow » 09/30/2017 8:44 PM

Not to mention, they seemed to expect a level of expertise and technique that he had yet to achieve, so all his attempts either ended in disaster, took much longer than they were supposed to, or both. The number of times he’d nearly set something on fire in the kitchen, including himself, didn’t really bear thinking about.

And Melanie would never let him hear the end of it, as was typical of her. These days he avoided cooking as much to avoid Melanie’s mockery as to avoid injuring himself in the process. It was better for everyone involved if he didn’t try to make his own food.
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Re: Rest and Recuperation [self; L]

Postby crow » 09/30/2017 8:45 PM

One would think the stuff you’d take on picnics wouldn’t be that bad--- just sandwiches and stuff, right? But it wasn’t just the techniques. He never did get the hang of figuring out what things went well together. He could have opted for some safe and classic options, like ham and cheese, but if that was going to be the case anyway, he’d rather just buy it, and save himself the time.

About the only thing he’d prepared himself was the fruit salad. Wash some fruit, cut it up; he could manage that much, at least.
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Re: Rest and Recuperation [self; L]

Postby crow » 09/30/2017 8:45 PM

It was a little sad, but baby steps! And it wasn’t as if he was aiming to become the top chef in town or anything. Store-bought food was fine, whatever Finch’s opinions on the matter. At least he wasn’t like Ruby, who as far as anyone knew, pretty much lived entirely off sodas. Her codename had been, in retrospect, a bit too on the nose.

Unwrapping a sandwich, he took an absent-minded bite. It was pretty good. Ham and cheese... They were classics for a reason.
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Re: Rest and Recuperation [self; L]

Postby crow » 09/30/2017 8:57 PM

It tasted no worse than anything that could possibly have come out of his own kitchen, and a good deal better than most, he wagered. And if it as full of preservatives and all that jazz, well, so be it. He wasn’t really thinking of living past sixty anyway.

There were two bottles of juice in the basket, and he took one and unscrewed the cap. Orange--- another classic. He liked orange juice well enough, though he’d drank enough of it as a kid that it brought back some strange memories sometimes.
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Re: Rest and Recuperation [self; L]

Postby crow » 09/30/2017 8:57 PM

The other bottle was one of those newfangled blended flavors that he had spotted on the shelf and bought on a whim because it was the same brand, and there had been a deal on if you bought two at a time. What had it been again? He turned it so he could see the label.

“Tropical Explosion”, it said. That wasn’t very indicative, and the cartoon fruit on the front wasn’t as helpful as it could be. He hazarded a guess--- that was a strawberry, wasn’t it? And the kiwi was pretty distinct.
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Re: Rest and Recuperation [self; L]

Postby crow » 09/30/2017 8:57 PM

And those green things in the back, were those limes? And what was that orange stuff?

No, there was a faster way to do this, He flipped it over so he could see the back. The text for the ingredients list was small enough that he had to hold the bottle closer to his face to read it. Apple juice concentrate, citric acid... Carrot concentrate?

Oh gods. This was one of those health flavors. Who had started that veggies-in-juices trend anyway? And what about carrots was 'tropical' whatsoever?
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Re: Rest and Recuperation [self; L]

Postby crow » 09/30/2017 8:58 PM

He’d need to have a nice long chat with that guy. This wasn’t acceptable. If he wanted to drink carrots, he’d have gone for one of those all-veggie smoothies, the ones that didn’t make any pretenses about being fun or tasty or anything. This was false advertising, was what it was.

“Ugh,” he said, putting it back into the basket with a visible grimace of distaste. But, well, at least he’d found out before he actually got around to drinking it. That was better than being surprised with a mouthful of carrot.
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Re: Rest and Recuperation [self; L]

Postby crow » 09/30/2017 8:58 PM

One bottle of juice was enough for him, especially since he had a couple of bottles of water in there too. Good ol’ water, which never failed him, or tried any funny business with surprise flavors.

He finished off one sandwich and started on another, idly unpacking the rest of his lunch as he did. A sushi roll from the deli section, which was probably a lot less authentically Japanese than they tried to make it sound... But fake sushi was still tasty enough for someone like him.
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Re: Rest and Recuperation [self; L]

Postby crow » 09/30/2017 9:11 PM

When you lived off take-out and convenience store food and things like that, a refined palate wasn’t something you had--- or if you had it, you lost it pretty quickly.

He couldn’t imagine living like Finch. He didn’t know if Finch just cooked at home or went out to one of those fancy places every time she needed to eat, but either way, it sounded like a real pain to him. Sure, if you had the money... but finding the places, and going out to them, and doing all that...
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Re: Rest and Recuperation [self; L]

Postby crow » 09/30/2017 9:11 PM

Especially since Finch was--- what--- vegetarian? Vegan? Wait, no, he’d seen Finch eat meat before. It was probably just that she was into the whole all-natural multi-grain free-range stuff, which probably didn’t make the process of vetting a restaurant any easier.

It was a funny thing about picnics. The food he had wasn’t actually that great, even by his standards. Completely edible! And not too bad either. But nothing to write home about. And yet, it tasted better than it usually did.
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Re: Rest and Recuperation [self; L]

Postby crow » 09/30/2017 9:12 PM

He’d heard somewhere that food tasted better when you ate it outside. Maybe that was true, though he imagined being relaxed and able to appreciate it had something to do with that too, because he’d eaten outdoors plenty of times before, and barely noticed the food then.

Of course, those were the times he’d been on a mission, and his priority was just to get something down his throat so he could get on with what he was doing. That didn’t leave him the room to appreciate anything but the need to get things over with as quickly as he could.
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Re: Rest and Recuperation [self; L]

Postby crow » 09/30/2017 9:12 PM

Or maybe it was just because this was a special occasion. When was the last time he’d gotten to go on a picnic at all? Certainly long enough ago that he couldn’t remember it anymore, or maybe he’d never been able to go.

That was why he was so eager for one of those ‘stereotypical picnics’. It was a luxury, in a lot of ways, to be able to live one of those stereotypes. Besides, he was having fun, and that was all that mattered. Who cared whether he was being subversive enough for Melanie's tastes?
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Re: Rest and Recuperation [self; L]

Postby crow » 09/30/2017 9:13 PM

He took his time eating his way through what he packed before finally arriving at the fruit salad. He opened the container carefully, still half afraid that it had managed somehow to ruin itself while he wasn’t looking, but everything looked fine. Thankfully. Was it too much to breathe a sigh of relief?

He’d contemplated some sort of yogurt dressing, like he sometimes saw included in the ones he bought in stores, but he figured that was probably pushing his luck a bit too much. It seemed like a sound decision, in hindsight.
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