Food Broadcasting? Tofu, and a new way of living

"And we're done with your chiller! Hope you invite us again someday to hang out!"

Wiping the sweat off his forehead, Jenny's father, Jack climbed up his ladder and out of the our newly built chiller. Just like the one we used to make red mudcakes at Jenny's house.

After that day, in order to convince Sazzy to even talk to me again, I had to promise to recreate the red mudcakes and clam dish that I had eaten at Jenny's house. And after getting her mother's number, whose name I finally had found out was Margret, I had to ask her how to build the chiller. In response she had told me that she could get her husband to help us. But we had to wait until he got back from the interplanetary airport and trading center.

And so after two days of learning how to make Margret's family specialty clam dish, as well as finally having a breakthrough with my own personal recipe involving Jasmine milk and rain powder, we finally had their family over.

The whole ordeal was a team effort. From transporting the needed materials over, to laying them inside the hole to prevent contamination, as well as installing the trap door, every one of us pitched in to help. Jenny and I were in charge of transporting whatever Jack needed into the hole for him. Margret took advantage of this time to create some basic refreshments for us. And even Kelp pitched in, helping us keep up the light-hearted mood by being silly and cute.

Of course, I made sure to sneak some refreshments off into Sazzy's room while the others were not looking.

Then once the sun started to go down, the family of four left.

Exiting her room, Sazzy headed straight for the kitchen counter to peer at the new creation I had made. I had mixed equal parts of rain powder slowly into Jasmine milk with constant stirring, then once it reached a consistent texture, I added only a few green berries and thoroughly mixed them together by smashing the berries on the side of the bowl.

The reason why the green berries were necessary was due to the fact that Jasmine milk and rain powder were not exactly miscible. They were the exact opposite, in fact more than the exact opposite as they repelled each other, forming inedible clusters of rain powder that felt incredibly uncomfortable down the throat. Sazzy had described it to me the other day as "mixing sawdust into water and trying to drink it." Except that sawdust was not as poisonous as rain powder.

That's right, rain powder was poisonous in large amounts. As if a testament to fighting poison with poison, Sazzy had explained that rain powder was a mild poison that had the interesting side effect of neutralizing other poisons. Thus usually cuisines involving rain powder almost certainly had to include at least 1 more poison in order to balance out, or 'cancel', both the poisons.

The only rare exceptions like candy or honey sap could only be edible because the rain powder was diluted. The minimally safe dilution ratio was 1 to 1, and any more than that would actually cause another mysterious reaction that would make the solution that the rain powder had mixed with to harden.

So, in order to rectify that, I added a little bit of green berry. Previously, when Jenny was showing me the red trees with their green fruits, she had mentioned that they were edible in small amounts. This probably meant that the poison, just like rain powder, was edible if diluted. So all I had to do was react the rain powder with a diluted poison while the rain powder was mixed in Jasmine milk for the mixture to become edible.

Once this mixture of poison-canceling-out-poison was done, I added extra water slowly while mixing until the water would no longer 'fuse' with the solution and just lay on the top. Leaving this to sit for around 2 hours, and my new creation was done.

Originally, I wanted to create a sort of substitution for jelly. Since the Jasmine milk was sweet, and rain powder was kind of similar to gelatin, in my mind mixing the two together would produce a form of sweet jelly. Unexpectedly, not only did the poisons cancel each other out, they also managed to cancel out much of the taste. In the end, instead of a jelly substitute, I created a substitute for tofu.

Pouring out the excess water that had risen to the top, I took out the frying pan and turned on the stove. Then, using the substitute for oil in this world, a leaf that produces edible oil on its surface, I coated the surface with the oil and put my tofu in to fry.

Without any sort of flavoring except salt and pepper at my disposal, my tofu tasted quite plain. However, its taste reminded me of my previous world, so the nostalgia factor dyed it with irresistible flavor.

Plating the tofu into the bowls, Sazzy was obediently seated with a fork in her hand. She really enjoyed the texture of tofu, and so she always demanded a serving even if all that we have been eating recently was tofu.

And once she finished eating, she cleared her throat and announced the next step of our mission.

[Now that you know several recipes from the native minority groups from this island, we can start streaming the cooking process for your personal recipes as well as the recipes from these groups. Of course, we should probably mention the cultural significance of the ingredients, but at the same time whether people who want to eat food actually care about what we are saying is another issue. Furthermore, these recipes are not originally ours, except for this tofu that you made. So you will probably have to discuss whether you can livestream these recipes with Jenny's household in the first place.]

[And even though it may not be necessary since I don't think we will be popular off the bat, we still want to be careful and refrain from mentioning some of the ingredient's origins. We want to increase awareness of minority groups, not overtax their food sources. Another thing to think about is that there are very valid reasons why these groups and their cuisine are not very popular.]

[For our native group on this island, it's mainly due to their use of poisons. Poisonous dishes do have an appeal to those who want to 'put their lives at stake' for food, however for the average person, it is intimidating to possibly lose your life through eating. Therefore, although we might have a lot of viewers at first if we start livestreaming with these dishes, we will also have a lot of people questioning our qualifications to deal with poison. To these people, it might be best to acknowledge this fact but state that the stream is for educational purposes and for them to try them first before speaking.]

[Not that it'll kill them or anything though.]

Taking her plates to the sink, it was not the first time I was stunned by her speeches.

"Say, Sazzy. Did you have a previous life before being a system. And if you did, then was your occupation ..."

She put her dishes in the sink with a small sound and turned around to face me.

"I did have a job in my previous life as a secretary for a large company. But that was eons ago."

Heading back to her room, she paused as if a thought suddenly came to her.

[By the way, you don't have to pay too much attention to the details for livestreaming. I'll handle most of it for you. You just have to continue cooking and creating food. You'll soon get used to this new way of living after all. As they say, a new world, a new life! Well, good night! See you tomorrow for breakfast!]

Leaving with a large wave, Sazzy disappeared behind her room door.

Why does she actually seem reliable?

And why did she leave? It was her turn to do the dishes today.