Here's a story! I worked on it a lot longer than its length might suggest. Poking affectionate fun at wordy recipe blogs is easy, and parodying the Lovecraft Mythos is also easy, but properly balancing BOTH, while attempting to have some emotional punch in the end....

 ----------------------------

Pages Recovered from a Partially Burned Volume, Bound in Goat Skin, Discovered in a New Hampshire Cave

Tim Pratt

Taste of the Woods #484: Fruits of the Sea

Hi there, friends of the forest! I know updates have been sparse lately with all my travels, but I’m back from my recent surprise trip to the coast with a host of new recipes (and more than a few stories!). 

To hear them tell it, the kids spent my absence living off nuts, berries, mushrooms, and unwary birds they foraged in the woods, so they’re eager to have mom’s home cooking again. They’ve been scrubbing out the cauldrons with salt and gathering herbs from the sacred garden and sniffing around the saltwater tank I carried back through the [star-road?]. At times it seems like all thousand of my young are crowded into the kitchen with me. Talk about too many cooks!

I’ve got what the locals at the far end of the [star-road?] called “fruits of the sea” but they all look like animals to me, and a few things with tentacles like funny little imitations of my in-laws, and some soft spiny creatures that wave and contract and expand in a pretty way, and some delicate shells that crack under hoof or between bone plates just fine. I just scooped up what the tank would hold on my way out, but as usual, fecundity and variety are on my side—reality has a way of presenting me with bounty of plenty, at least when the stars are right. 

Because of the variety of ingredients, this rich and flavorful stew has a lot of steps, but it’s worth the trouble! I know most of you aren’t cooking for a thousand mouths (well, more than that, really—you know how mouthy some of my kids are), so I’ll cut down the quantities to something more suitable to feeding your average worship circle.

Sea Fruit Medley, serves 10-12

2 sidescuttlers, medium [crabs?]

2 sidescuttlers, small (the blue ones are best)

1 dozen whelks

Salt

1 dozen spinycrawlers [crayfish?]

1 dozen sea spiders

2 dozen mixed cockles and mussels

Half bottle [sacred pale wine?]

2 dirt bulbs [Onions? Shallots?]

2 pinchclaws, small [lobsters?]

1 coarsely chopped Deep One, jewelry removed

1 dozen oysters, raw

1 dozen clams, raw

4 sour-fruit [lemon or local equivalent?] cut into wedges

1 cup [herbal slurry?]

Place the whelks in a small cauldron and the sidescuttlers in another. Cover both with cold water, dash salt, cover, and boil. Remove from heat and set aside until cool. Plunge into snowbank or cooling torrent until chilled. 

Boil two cauldrons of salt water, and drop in the spinycrawlers and sea spiders respectively, covering and boiling for as long as it takes to chant the first verse of “Veneration of the Goat of the Woods.” Remove from heat, cool, and plunge into snowbank or torrent. 

Put cockles in one cauldron with half the [wine] and [dirt bulbs], and mussels in a cauldron with the rest of the [wine] and [dirt bulbs]. Cover and steam until they open, about as long as it takes to chant first two verses of “Veneration.” Remove shellfish and place in separate bowls, and cool as above.

Drop pinchclaws into salted boiling water, cover and cook for as long as it takes to chant the whole of “Venerations” (longtime worshippers know I made the verses equal lengths in all languages as an aid to cookery). Shells should be bright red and tails curled. Split them lengthwise, and cool. 

Butcher the Deep One as you would any edible being from a rival [sect?], but be aware that Deep Ones like to wear jewelry, and you don’t want to crack your teeth on a pearl earring. Put the coarsely chopped pieces into a cauldron with salt, bring just to a boil, and cool.

When the time comes to serve, arrange the cooked seafood on platters along with the raw oysters and clams, with [sour fruit] wedges at each setting. Serve with your favorite [herbal slurry]. Then: Stand back, because your kids are going devastate it! 

[This fragment was presented first, despite its later number, because it is more complete than other portions of the manuscript. The remainder are presented in chronological order. –A.P.]

Taste of the Woods #267: Mushroom Surprise

I know your [ones who are [given/made pregnant with] visions] usually keep allll the mushrooms for themselves, but some varieties are tasty even if they don’t induce a hypnagogic state that allows you to connect with me mentally across the [star-road?]. (Shout out to the [ones who are [given/made pregnant with] visions] and their scribes for transmitting my little scribblings and musings across all the [worship circles?] in all the worlds. It means so much to me that you like (my teachings) and subscribe (to my wise counsel).)

Send out your foragers to gather all the mushrooms in your local wood. It can be tricky to tell which ones are poisonous or not, so I recommend feeding samples to members of any rival [sects?] you have captive. Once you’ve got a good, non-toxic medley, you

[portions obscured]

throw away the toxic mushrooms, oh, no! That’s where the “surprise” comes in. You bake those up into the same sort of savory pasty you made for your kids, only you leave these on the doorsteps of

[remainder destroyed]

Taste of the Woods #318: Lamb Three Ways

Iä Iä my darling devotees! My DHWINTBN [Dear-Husband-Who-Is-Not-To-Be-Named?] brought home a flock of black goats from his last [receiving-of-sacrifices?] either as a joke or a gift—it’s so hard to tell with him sometimes! As you all know, he’s the strong silent undulating squamous type. 

Either way, the soothing caprine bleating of the goats in the clearing next door does remind me of a time I cooked for a visitor from the Great Race who had a misfire in their transference—instead of swapping into the body of one of the villagers at the bottom of the valley, they ended up with their mind in the body of a sheep—and they didn’t even realize the difference for a whole week! 

DHWINTBN thought it would be good for us to make nice with the visiting indignitary so we hosted the smelly son-of-a-yith for a little feast. I wanted to make a traditional meal of their people, but, well, you can probably see the problem. The Great Race is famed for many things (erudition, logic, sending their minds en masse into the bodies of a species in the distant past that isn’t about to die in some cosmic cataclysm) but they are not known for their cooking. That’s no surprise, since they probably don’t know what kind of bodies they’ll be inhabiting from one millennia to the next, and why spend all that time mastering the cuisine of the cone-shaped slug monsters if you’re just going to possess the bodies of giant beetle people with entirely different dietary requirements in a few hundred years?

In the end, I made lamb three ways: belly, loin, and brains. Our sheep-for-brains visitor didn’t realize we were making them into a situational cannibal, but me and the kids had a good laugh about it, and I thought I detected a quiver of mirth in DHWINTBN too. Moreover, it’s a delicious spread even without the personal element. 

Place the lamb brains in cold water for 

[remainder obscured]

Taste of the Woods #413: Roasted [penitent judged wanting?]

What a sad bunch of offerings this time! You distant devotees know I try to be sympathetic to the local human population, since most of the dwellers in the valley didn’t come here by choice—they were transposed in a ritual, sacrificed by their elders, or just read the wrong book in a dusty old library—but really, we do our best to ease their transitions and keep them in comfort here in the forest at the center of the dark. You’d think they’d be a little grateful. My thousand young routinely patrol the borders of the valley, and while the kids do act up and engage in a little horseplay from time to time, they also keep out the [hungry outsiders?] who would otherwise devour all the fragile humans in a single night! All we ask in return is the kind of devotion that you, my beloved readers, offer us willingly, even though you’re thousands of [world-miles?] away!

So there’s a limit to my sympathy, and I think it’s reasonable to expect a bountiful sacrifice when the blood and bile moons converge and the ice fogs begin to descend, don’t you? Imagine my dismay when I went to the clearing of devotion and projected just the barest sliver of my presence into the gathering there and saw what a paltry bunch of cast-off leavings I’d been offered. Two children, and those not even firstborn! One barrel of best ale, which isn’t even enough to get DHWINTBN through one of the days of ten thousand sorrows. A single cart full of cabbages, and when I sent a couple of kids to dig down, they found a bunch of moldy ones with weevils at the bottom! (The kids actually like the weevily ones best, but it’s the intent to deceive that upsets me.) 

Well, it couldn’t stand, of course. I hated to do it, but I had to make an example, so I took the leader of the village and her spouse and a random tenth of the remaining population and told the kids to put them in the pen where we used to keep the edible carnivores. Then I forced the artisans of the village to cast a statue of huge hollow iron goat with a hatch in its back. 

We built a fire under the goat, then opened the hatch and poured in the

[portions obscured]

so wonderful that I encourage you in all your [cells? branches?] to consider doing the same with any devotees who fail in the proper veneration of me, your spiritual mother and 

[remainder obscured]

Taste of the Woods #777: Toasted Marsh Mallows

Just a short one today: two-thirds of the kids have been snatched along the [star-road?] by a nascent [group of adherents to a rival?] seeking foot-soldiers to devastate their enemies, but I think we all know my kids don’t discriminate when it comes to devastation! I’m sure they’ll be back soon, and since they love their mother (as much as all of you do!) they’ll probably come bearing delicious gifts. They know my hunger is endless and, in the end, all-consuming. Especially if I miss breakfast!

Me and the kids who are still here are having a little campfire time since the villagers were nice enough to light a giant pyre (they had a plague, but that’s what happens when you don’t properly propitiate the powers of the forest—hello, have you even met me?). 

We went down to the swamp and collected all the marsh mallow roots we could find. Back in Taste of the Woods #141 I gave you a recipe for frying those up in butter with [dirt bulbs] for a savory treat, but they can also form the basis for a wonderful sweet confection! It’s amazing how with you can transform a humble swamp flower root into a tasty treat just by beating in some eggs and adding some gum and tossing in a generous helping of sugar! First you 

[portions destroyed]

like to take the resulting paste and smear it on the sweet crackers I gave you a recipe for back in #666, then add some chocolate (picked up on my last trip down the [star-road?]), and cook the whole thing over the campfire until you’ve got a sandwich of melty goo! The pestilential smoke adds a special note of umami that really lingers on the tongues. The kids always say “More, Mother! Give us some more! MORRRRRRRRE” (That’s why I call the whole concoction “moremothers.”)

Stay warm, devotees, and snuggle with your [fellow cultists?]. I don’t know how the weather is on your worlds, but here, the ice moon is writhing its way across the sky, and 

[remainder destroyed]

Taste of the Woods #968: Winter Stew

Darlings. Devotees. Dwellers. This may be my last post for a while. It’s been a rough winter, in a lot of ways, for a lot of reasons, and I may have to step back from providing you with stories and wisdom and, of course, my recipes while I deal with more pressing issues. Besides, the aperture is nearly closed, and I lack the strength to force it wider. The stars are wrong, wrong, wrong, and communicating with all you [ones who are [given/made pregnant with] visions] is really wearing me out lately.

The ice moon has devoured the green moon, which means another six [intervals?] of winter, minimum. My DHWINTBN was recently banished by the villagers in the valley, and is somewhere in the outer wastes, making his slow procession back to us.

Of course the kids were outraged at the loss of their father—they don’t have the same long perspective I do, being so young—and they ate all the villagers in their rage. I can’t blame them, but now we don’t have anyone toiling in the fungal caverns for us, and that’s our main source of food when times are lean. Most of my young can’t even fit into the caverns, and they’re not exactly nurturing cultivator types anyway. My kids have always been more... boisterous... than industrious. 

We’ve gone through everything I canned, and the kids have stripped the forest of everything edible. With the [star-road?] closed we can’t bring in more to eat. I’ve been in this situation before, and I know what I have to do, but it’s never an easy decision. The simple arithmetic is, we’re not all going to make it through the winter. Now, it’s true, there’s no such thing as a starving thousand young—instead, pretty quickly, you get five hundred young with full bellies. But that approach has diminishing returns, too, as they devour one another into nonexistence. When the last surviving one of my young inevitably succumbs to starvation, where does that leave me? Alone, and hungry. My appetites only grow greater as time goes by, as you all know.

So. I’m forced to face the choice that so many mothers have had to face over the millennia. The fact is, if die, my children die, and my whole line dies with me. Whereas, if I live, well... I can always have more children, can’t I? 

Here, then, is the last recipe I’ll be able to share with you for a while, you who dwell in the dark woods of my heart. I never like making this dish, but it’s seen me through more lean times than your mayfly minds can imagine. 

This is my special winter stew, a concoction robust and filling and nurturing enough to sustain a mournful old mother through the cold aeons until the stars come right again. 

Step one: Take a thousand young, or more

[remainder destroyed]

—Translated from the Aklo by Dr. Aldous Pyne, formerly of the Department of Esoteric Linguistics at Miskatonic University, Arkham MA