Starting from zero: growing up with knowledge from another world

Chapter 8

Today will be my first time having a friend over, I'm rather excited and a bit anxious about it. Even though I have all this knowledge from another world and already have dinner planned out, I still can't shake off the nervousness. I eventually finished my morning routine, it had taken a bit longer than usual because of my thoughts wandering to dinner. It was still a bit too early to go to the marketplace and look for mustard seeds, so I walked around looking at different things, trying to think if there was anything I had overlooked.

The only thing I came up with was preparing a gift to give them, but that isn't something done in this culture and may be considered as looking down on them for not being very wealthy. Since it might be taken wrong, I decided against giving them a gift, and by then, sellers were setting out their goods at the market. Fortunately, I was able to find seeds that were close enough to mustard, so I should be able to make a good vinaigrette.

Now that I had the last ingredient, I went home to make the salad dressing and to try germinating some of the seeds so that, hopefully, I could start growing my own. Having finished making the vinaigrette, I left it in my room to let the flavors blend together properly and went out again to look for some fresh fruits. I decided to have juice for dinner, and while fruit water was a fairly common drink, fruit juice was not, so I had to make it myself.

When the afternoon came around, I went to help my mom prepare for tonight's dinner. Together, we cleaned the house, prepared some bread just in case, cut the meat into steaks, and chopped up sausages and vegetables for the soup. I roasted some Rush Boar bones and boiled them to make a stock for the soup, which is very time-consuming and not something that is commonly practiced due to the wood or mana cost. Once it got closer to dinner time, I set out the steaks to let them dry out for a bit and started preparing the salad, while Mom worked on the soup.

When Dad got home, he was immediately kicked out of the kitchen area by Mom and told to go clean up for dinner, she seemed more nervous about the dinner than I felt. After leaving the steaks out for about an hour, I prepared to cook them by frying some garlic and rosemary in butter, then straining them out of the melted butter. Next, I seared the sides of the steaks before laying them down and basting them with the flavor-infused butter. After getting a nice brown, I set them in the oven to finish bringing them up to temp.

As soon as Detailed Appraisal told me the steaks had reached a nice medium-rare temperature, I removed them, setting them on a wooden board to rest. The steaks had cooled to the proper serving temperature before Miya arrived, so I stored them in my item box to keep them hot. I also grabbed the vinaigrette from my room and shook it up before tasting the flavor, I had to add a little honey to cut the bitterness of the vinegar, so I was glad I tasted it.

Shortly after I finished my preparations, I saw Miya and her mom Maya standing on the road with Maya looking between the house and my map. Realizing why she seemed so unsure, I quickly left the house to greet them and bring them in.

"Good evening, you are at the right place," I called out to the two of them before they could decide whether to come up to the house or not, "Come on in, we just finished cooking dinner."

"So this is the right place, I thought maybe I had read the map wrong," Maya responded with an almost strained smile.

"Your house is so big! Why didn't you tell me?! We could have played here!" Miya cheerfully commented on the size of the house and property

"Ha ha, perhaps next time we can use my place instead, but it is pretty far from your place," I replied with a wry smile, taking the map that Maya held out to me and leading them inside.

Once we were inside and we finished introductions, I led them to sit at the table before pulling out a bottle of nice wine that I had gotten from Jay's store and helping my mom serve the food. I had guessed correctly, Maya brought some fresh bread she baked, and it was delicious. The dinner was a big hit with everyone. Dad was saying that he would never eat plain salad again, and Miya agreed, saying plain vegetables were no good. She also drank quite a lot of the juice I made, relishing every sip.