Maybe Golden Carrots And Golden Apples Keep Forever, But I Have A Hard Time Believing That Steak Would.

maybe golden carrots and golden apples keep forever, but i have a hard time believing that steak would. thinking about the ways that players would preserve food for their lifestyle is pretty interesting to me, at least. since they’re constantly on the move- running, jumping, building, fighting- they need calorie-dense food, and a lot of it.

this mostly centers on preservation through dehydration, maybe i’ll make another post about fermentation. minecraft cheese real

blaze beef jerky- dried and spiced meat, it’s easy to see how this would be a common choice for players on the go. it’s tasty, quick to eat, and relatively simple to prepare (especially since smokers canonically exist). you could make it with other types of meat and spices, but beef works the best, and i imagine blaze powder would taste nicely spicy and warming. (this is what i imagine all those stacks of steak actually are.)

dried fruits- this is also a fairly obvious one. especially to players living in hot climates, things go bad really quickly, so the neatest solution is to use the heat as a friend rather than an enemy and sun-dry your food so it stays good for longer. apples, berries, chorus fruit, and yes, watermelon too, can all be dried under the sun. to varying degrees of effectiveness, of course.

dried bread- you might not know this, but handmade bread that only has salt, water, flour, and yeast as its ingredients goes extremely stale in about a day. the starch crystallizes and hardens it all into a basically inedible mass, which is why things like french toast exist to use up hardened bread. however, double-baked bread is hard in a different way entirely- the extra cooking time keeps it delicately crispy and easy to soak in tea or broth or just eat straight-up. biscotti is a really common example, but it doesn’t have to be made sweet- you can put just about anything in it.

granola/trail mix- cooked, mashed, and dried wheatberries, dried fruit, seeds, and honey, all mixed together into easy snacking fare. this isn’t a meal, per se, but something in between to keep energy up between them.

pork sausage- chop up a bunch of meat and fat, salt and spice it and stuff it into well-cleaned animal intestines, and hang it up to dry. these are the basic tenets of sausage-making, and anyone who wants pork on demand without having to kill a pig every time has probably learned it well. common spices are probably alliums (garlic / onion), blaze powder, cinnamon, netherwart (in small doses), among many dozens of “secret ingredients” which players swear by.

dried vegetables- beets, cactus, alliums, potatoes, carrots, mushrooms, pumpkins, and kelp are all eligible to be dried, spiced, and eaten. yes, not all of these are “vegetables,” but vegetables are a made up classification that don’t exist anyway. some of these would be best used by reconstituting in a stew, but you could just eat it straight up too.

oil-packed salmon- for those who run extensive meat-processing operations and have a lot of extra animal fat on their hands, packing meat in oil is an easy option. if the bacteria has no oxygen, it can’t live, so your meat is safe to store. however, this likely isn’t an option on smaller servers or singleplayer worlds, so another choice might be clarified butter- though it wouldn’t last as long. this is an option that also would require a relative amount of knowledge- don’t botulism yourself into a respawn, kids.

pemmican- let’s get a little more creative. this is a mixture of clean animal fat, dried meat, and berries, pounded together into neat little blobs of pure energy. it can be eaten raw, or melted into a stew with wild forage (plants, vegetables, fresh meat) to supplement it. this is less a storage-food and more a travelling-food, and players on long journeys would probably pack a good amount of it for when the going gets tough. it’s an extremely calorie-dense food, and someone spending their whole day fighting, walking and climbing would need those calories desperately.

(as a side note, akutaq is animal fat whipped together with fresh berries, and it looks GOOD AS FUCK. real ice cream is achievable in minecraft in a dozen different ways, but goddamn, i’d eat the fuck out of that.)

jams and jellies- the obvious choice here is berry jam, sweet and tart, and maybe rosehip jam too. however, apple and pumpkin butter are also tasty and keep basically forever, and you can actually make jelly out of any edible flower, like dandelions, cornflowers, peonies, oxeye daisies, and lilacs. i might make a separate post just for spreads, honestly.

It’s Batober, the most wonderful time of the year

Day 1: Alive

The Sheriff and his Deputies

I'm still stuck in the shadow realm so please reblog if you can

cake n cookies n more

chocolate chip cookies and birthday cake are good and all but- hey. why don't we get a little more creative with our minecraft sweets?

cornflower cookies- cornflowers are cheerfully blue, adorable, and said to be sweet and spiced like cloves. for tea with a friend, these are the clear choice- something simple enough that won't drown out the flavor of their favorite drink, but still tasty enough to eat on its own.

sweetberry shortcake- it's like strawberry shortcake, but with the berries we have instead! this is definitely a bit more involved, since not only do you have to make butter for the shortcake batter, you also have to whip cream, cook down berries to a sweet jam, and cut up fresh ones to present the final product. if you want to go beyond a regular cake, this is a good way to show a dear friend how loved they are.

melon-berry pavlova- a cloud of crispy baked meringue with a pile of whipped cream and fresh fruit floating atop. it's a dessert that really looks as good as it tastes, but also isn't as hard as it looks. if you can chop down trees with your bare hands, you can definitely whip egg whites into stiff peaks without breaking a sweat, so don't overthink the lack of electric mixer.

ice cream- now this is actually a lot of effort, unless you have easy access to ice and snow already, but... hey, it's ice cream. egg yolks, milk, sugar, and your flavorings of choice. common options include: pumpkin-cinnamon*, chocolate, shroomlight, and cookie dough.

*(jungle tree bark is cinnamon because i say so, shh)

shaved ice and sorbets- are a close companion to the above food. they're... honestly just the same thing but minus the milk and plus the water. the fruits used here are apples, melons (including glistering melon!), sweetberries, and rosehips.

lilac jelly- nearly any edible flower can be turned into a jelly, really, but lilacs really make a beautiful, strikingly purple jelly that tastes very bright, like spring in a jar. other popular options are roses, peonies, oxeye daisies, blue orchids, and dandelions. a jar of this is a jar of springtime and sunlight, and a perfect gift to anyone who lives far from flowers.

brownies- what needs to be said about brownies? what doesn't need to be said about brownies? eggs, milk, sugar, flour, and a whole lot of chocolate make some sort of unholy substance that can cure all ails, unless that ailment is a chocolate allergy.

rose shortbread- shortbread is a really easy thing to make- butter, flour, and sugar in equal measures- so it's just as easy to liven it up a little by adding rosepetals into the mix, for flavor, color, and the fun of it all. roses are a common flavor in sweets- like turkish delight, for example- and their subtle, sweet, floral flavor would shine in something as simple as a shortbread.

caramel apples- a lovely thing for a large party, or just in general, caramel apples are fucking delicious and easy to make in large numbers. it's common to see a number of stands at festivals dusting them lightly in gold and selling them as "fair gapples" to passerby, and the taste brings nostalgia to many people- remembering past celebrations.

candied peonies- i mentioned in the drinks post that some chinese cultures candy peonies to eat as snacks. actually, candying flower petals like roses and orchids and such is relatively common, and yet another way to enjoy eating flowers. they can also be used as decorations for other desserts, like cream puffs or madeleines.

Every day I learn something new about queer history.

BRO THIS LOOKS SO GOOD

I think about this landscape often