#it was actually completely fine the second i started frying the onions bc then it was just

[darkfinch]

made the horrible mistake of having quinn describe a Deep Yearning 4 potato varenyky in the quinnfic, was immediately similarly overcome with a deep yearning for potato varenyky in the real life, and (thru some unknown power) managed 2 push thru my Inability 2 Stand The Raw & Sometimes Cooked Potato Smell to make some. they. were SO good, very healing i send u all these powerful vibes

[honeymoonjin]

okAY let’s talk about namjoon learning to cook

hello it’s ur local ‘on hiatus’ writer ahhh ha ha haaa when will i learn : ) this isn’t gonna be a fic bc i still don’t have it in me to commit to a 20k beast BUT i got this idea that i shared with my friends and i wanna share it with you too so uwu buckle up (pls lmk if you would like me to do more of these concept thread thingies, it means i’ll be able to give u more content even if it’s not a full fic)

our darling yn is a famous chef

for someone so young, she’s pretty well accomplished, and she uses her Hip Young Relatability to run her own youtube series on teaching people to cook better

each week she features a budding home chef and gives them reasonable and easy tips to improve their cooking yee HAW

it’s very successful and always goes well until mister kim namjoon secures the Bag and gets a spot on the show

she’s a little sceptical at first bc he seems so smart.... in their initial interview she asks him his cooking experience and he somehow begins to discuss an ancient proverb about potatoes 

you don’t get it but it seems poignant

so the cameras start rolling and you introduce ur guest, namjoon does a cute little bow and smiles shyly

the first step is hygiene of course, and he does just fine (maybe he fumbles for a solid twenty seconds with the hand soap bottle but that can be easily cut out in post)

the menu is simple 

it’s gonna be a stir-fry, so basically all he actually needs to learn how to do is chop some vegetables and cook some noodles in a wok

technique is important when chopping onions; you need to tuck your fingers holding the onion half in and under and hold the knife on a slight angle away to be sure not to cut yourself

you explain this to namjoon, who seems a little confused as to why his knife is so much blunter than yours

that would be the plastic cover protecting the blade

“an easy mistake to make!” you say

it is not an easy mistake to make

“argh, it’s still blunt!” 

namjoon is holding the knife upside down, sharp blade pointing towards the ceiling

for health and safety, it’s better he watches while you do it for him and simply give instructions for ���next time” 

namjoon seems very amused by the perfect cubes you’ve cut in a matter of seconds

“you could make croutons out of these!” 

you in fact can’t, but you don’t think he’s in the mindset to receive this unfortunate news

one thing you can say positively about namjoon is that he is very attentive

he, much taller than you, hunches over your shoulder with rounded eyes and a mouth opened slackly in focus, fingers shyly fiddling with the edge of the bench

he asks questions and nods to everything you say, yet somehow the second the knife, mandolin or grater is in his hand he goes blank

he seems completely out of his depth, lying a grater on its side in his defense u held the mandolin on its side so how was he supposed to know the grater needed to be stood upright

namjoon is doing his best to be proactive: “do we need to preheat the oven?”

“namjoon this is a stir fry, we don’t need to cook anything in the oven”

he stammers, fumbling cutely to explain himself “no, no i meant for the oven timer”

“huh”

“when i make ramen i always preheat the oven so i can use the oven timer”

  what the fuck

“namjoon you can use the oven timer on its own, the oven doesn’t need to be on”

“um- okay. yes chef”

you can’t be too mad at him though because as you turn on the stove and place the chopped veges into the wok, he gives a little happy wiggle, immediately smelling the crushed garlic and soy sauce you’d added

“so, we don’t need this to be fancy, we just need it to be nutritious, easy, and delicious. food is your fuel, but it should also be an enjoyable activity, otherwise you’ll never want to do it. most of these techniques i learnt when i stayed with my friend’s grandmother in gyeong-gu, they’re just hearty family recipes.”

“oh, gyeong-gu is lovely,” namjoon coos

“have you been?” 

“no.”

once the veges are cooking away, you instruct namjoon to fill a pot with water as you keep stirring away

“it’s not working” he frowns

“?? how is it not working, you’ve got the tap on full blast”

“the water is just going”

you sneak a peak

he’s trying to fill up a metal colander

eventually you manage to put a pot of water on the stove to boil and tell him to grab the noodles to add

“with the wrapper on?”

“please take the wrapper off first, namjoon”

“sure thing chef. i just asked because the plastic is so thin. i thought maybe it was like-” 

he pauses to violently struggle with the seal, seemingly not having noticed the easy-tear notch. with a huff, he finally breaks it open and the raw noodles go flopping onto the table (luckily clean)

“i thought maybe it was like how dishwasher tablets have the wrapper that dissolves in hot water, you know?”

“this wrapper doesn’t dissolve, joon”

he nods sadly, picking up and laying the noodles into the simmering water one at a time, delicately. “it would be better if it was. so much plastic these days, it’s not good for the turtles. or the crabs.”

you suppress a quirk of your lips at the way his voice goes so thoughtful and soft, a complete contrast from the overpowered aggression he used to rip open the noodle packet.

“now, namjoon, we should season these noodles a bit. what do we put in, do you wanna guess?”

“cumin” he answers immediately

you blink

“cumin?”

“if i could choose a spice, it would be cumin. do you have any?” 

“that- okay, i was thinking some salt, our main spices are going in the wok, we just want something for the noodles to cook a bit better in”

“if i don’t have salt at home, is cumin okay though?”

“everybody has salt, namjoon, it’s very easy to come by-”

“i don’t have salt” he retorts

the pot of boiling water bubbles in indignance

“but you have cumin?”

“two jars”

“d-do you mean those little spice jars? why would you need two at once-”

“i repurposed some jam jars. reduce, reuse, recycle. that grocery store down the road has these massive bins. you bring along whatever container you have and fill it up and weigh it.”

you think the vegetables are on the verge of sticking to the wok, so you hurriedly turn and give them a stir, mind fuzzy

“why would you need two jam jars of cumin? i thought you said you don’t cook at home?”

“i don’t,” he answers easily, then his eyebrows twitch, eyes distant like he’s having a realisation. with a thoughtful him, he smiles and nods his head. “but if i was going to cook, i’d want cumin to be involved.”

namjoon is a genius idiot and you think you are falling for him (panic)

(part 2 coming soon if u want it blease give me and himbo joonie validation)

[cheetahtrout]

WHy hello, cheets. Where have you been? Hunting for a new job and getting my life back in order mainly, but also drawing sausages. So people can stop pretending that germany only has Weisswurst and “hotdogs”. All of the items depicted ount as sausage in germany. I will gladly go into more detail after the cut into German sausage and the curious case of the bratwurst (have fun) P.S. For all my paleonthology friends out here, I have something nice coming and for once it has nothing to do with fish.

As you can see in germany sausages get ordered into three families depending on their first preparation. raw, cooked and poached/baked. They are then organized into subfamilies depending on different properties. Rohwurst is probably the oldest variant, due to its preparation being at times nonexistant in wich case the sausage gets indeed eaten completely raw and not even smoked. I call it the standart Pen n Paper RPG sausage, cause the smoked and salted variants are extremely durable and suited for a long track through the land.

Mettwurst and Mettenden are what a zoologist would call “the most basal” of the sausages. They are raw with a bit of salt but not enough to count as salted. Mettwurst is sometimes mixed with minced onions in wich case it turns into the also well known “Zwiebelwurst”. It counts as a spread. There are almost as many regional variants of Mettenden as there are of german regional beers. Coincidentally the mettenden are a welcome addition to a beer evening.

Teewurst is the slightly more “sophisticated” brother of the mettwurst. Its smoked, slightly salted and gets exclusively produced in germany. The reason for its name “teasausage” is unknown, since tea was never an ingredient. It does however go very well with a rainy autumn afternoon, dark bread, a cup of tea and a cozy blanket.

Cervelatwurst and Salami ( or as its known in the americas “peperoni” ) are taking the salting to the extreme.Wich also gives the salami its name from the italian “saltsausage”. Cervelatwurst additionally gets minced. “Peperoni” in germany are actually a specific type of chili-like bellpepper.

Cabanossi are the other end of the extreme. Being strongly smoked. The ability to eat them with the peel and them surviving a lot of temperature conditions without much trouble makes them a very popular snack when on tours, but are also often used in creamy soups. The Kochwurst family is a curious one. with its variants being very different from one another due to their specific cooking contents of either fat, galert or bloodprotein.

Leberwurst (liversausage) is made fun of a bit. In part because with the finely minced one, you cant really be sure what the ingredients originally where, turning it into a very popular and fine spread. Its brother the Hausmacher Leberwurst is less common and many frown at it for being gray. It is only roughly minced and usually has more herbs added. Much like the Teewurst its regarded as an autumn sausage. The last one in the fat-based subfamily is the Pastete. And its a first sign that the form does not define something as a “sausage” in germany. In the end it gets baked in a dough hull. Now “hold up” I hear you, “if its baked, why isnt it a Brühwurst?” wich is a fair question. But you see the baking is only the second step after boiling the meat into a firm paste. So the baking aspect is only a secondary trait.

Gelatin is an ingredients won from boiling bones and removing most of the fat from the brew, resulting in a gooey substance when warm and a firm cutable jelly when cold. Presswurst and Corned Beef had a hight in popularity in the 60s to 80s, but presswurst in particular has still a lot of variants depending on meat used and what additional ingredients being thrown in such as bellpepper or mushrooms.

Lastly we have to get a little bloody with the Kochwürste, but only sort of. Blutwurst, Zungenwurst and Sülzwurst are all based on bloodplasma. Blutwurst in particular is considered to be one of the oldest sausages, known to appear even in Homers Odyssee at the 8th to 7th century BC. Emerged from a time when wasting even so much as a knuckle of a dead animal could mean not surviving the winter, these sausages probably received a second revival this late in germany due to the country being in complete utter poverty after WW2, making wasting blood, galert and bone almost a crime. Whilst once there was more variety, the three versions above have remained into today. The Zungenwurst is usually only sold at butcheries and does contain actual tongueslices from cows. The Sülzwurst can be eaten in slices cold like the blutwurst. But is usually fried secondarily and then peeled, turning it into a brown mush. All three are more commonly consumed by the older generations. The last family is the Brühwurst family. And it is massive.

covering the biggest amount of variants in every butchery. So I hope you can excuse me not going into enormous detail into every single variant.

Bockwurst and Wiener are only two of many regional variants. They are also the closest to what an american would call a “hotdog”. Some of them, like the Käsekrainer have additional ingredients like bellpepper or in this case cheese.

Lyoner is the finely ground but big variant of the Bockwurst. So big one slice usually covers a toast. It is also the base for all the many sliced sausage variants you see above. Meat mixes giving different parts of the sausage different colors alongside with inlets such as ham, bellpepper, pistacio and cheese open up many variants.

Jagdwurst, Bierwurst and Bierschinken only differ from lyoner by being less finely ground. All three commonly have peppergrains in them, with jagdwurst having extra herbs added and bierschinken having hampieces in it. Neither Bierschinken nor Bierwurst are made useing beer. As with the Teewurst the name merely hints at them being gladly consumed alongside a glas of beer.

we are almost done. But a list wouldnt be complete with these two oddballs. Lets start it off with the sober fact that weisswurst as you know it is entirely a bavarian thing. It is not common nor normal throughout germany, to a far northern variant exists. Despite the peel being technically edible, weisswurst usually gets zuzelt and depending on whom you ask this means something different. Some say you have to “undress” it as depicted above, others say you bite down on it a bit and suck it out of the peel and others insist that you have to cut the sausage in half along its length. Fact remains that it is a regional spciality and pretending that the rest of germany is a wild for them as bavaria is a mythos. Leberkäse on the other hand also originated in southern germany, switzerland and austria, but spread all through germany fast once introduced. And for a country this enthused about bread and sausage, it is really no surprise that a sausage getting baked like a bread in a breadform, wich can be sliced like bread making it a perfect fit for a slice of bread became as popular as it is. Its name means “livercheese” and whilst originally it contained liver, it is unclear where the cheese came from. So now where does that all leave us with the in germany so popular bratwurst? What type of sausage is it? You noticed that I left one Rohwurst out so far. The Krakauer. Originally the Krakauer can be eaten in thick slices unprepared. But much more commonly it gets secondarily fried. In a way krakauer is “a” Bratwurst “frysausage”. But in germany people go out of their way as to not call a krakauer a bratwurst due to different ingredients and consistencies. After all by that logic the Sülzwurst would also be a Bratwurst. In fact the Bratwurst brings us back to the very start of our journey. The Mettwurst. Or rather its absolute base: Mett. Mett is ground meat with specific ingredients and meats. When pressed into an unedible peel for spread consumption it is called a MettWURST, if it gets pressed in a thin edible peel with the intend of later fry-action it is a Bratwurst. And this is the sole difference between Mettwurst and Bratwurst. A thin peel.

Hope I could tell you something interresting this time! We will see each other again with inktober things and... hopefully.... some alvarezsaurs