#whole wheat equivalents

[consolecadet]

My parents were obsessive about having whole wheat everything and only cooking brown rice when I was a kid, which sucked because I never liked either of those very much (well, whole wheat stuff has grown on me, but it's kind of a moot point now, isn't it) but I'm actually really enjoying stuff made from whole grain cornmeal and oat flour now that gluten is off the table. I'm pissed that it took literally being medically forbidden from eating wheat to find whole grain foods I like, but...better late than never I guess

[gemsofgreece]

How to follow a Mediterranean Greek diet

The Mediterranean diet naturally expands throughout the coastal countries of South Europe, North Africa and the Middle East but there are some small differences between their cuisines. So here I am writing specifically about the Greek version of the Mediterranean diet, known for its delicious, natural flavours and its significant health benefits.

Eat daily:

Olive oil: the pillar, the liquid green gold of the Mediterranean Greek diet. Olive oil should be used ideally exclusively for all purposes. It's dressing salads, it's used in cooking and in fact it's traditionally what is used in frying too. Replace all types of oils, butter and margarine with olive oil even when making pastries. The only problem here is that outside of the Mediterranean basin olive oil can be pricey, however that's the foundation the diet is based on. If you are interested in following the traditional Greek diet for taste or health purposes, it is good to really incorporate olive oil in your daily cooking. If it’s not possible to afford buying olive oil all the time (although you could balance it out by not buying other oils and butter), a non-Greek-typical but equivalent alternative could be avocado oil. However, I doubt avocado oil or any other oil can remotely compare to olive oil in health properties, taste or in any other positive quality 🫒

Vinegar: Just like olive oil, vinegar is a very important ingredient and is also used in natural remedies However, it can hurt a sensitive GI tract if consumed in large portions. A little bit of it added to meals frequently is very healthy. Apple cider vinegar is also very loved and used in salads often 🍇

Vegetables: no portion can be too much (wild greens, garlic, onions, cauliflowers, cucumbers, eggplants, beets, peppers, spinach, artichokes, zucchini, peas, lettuce, the list never ends). Tomatoes and broccoli are recent additions to the Greek diet however they were integrated perfectly to the Greek cuisine. In general, all vegetables can be enjoyed freely with some moderation in the potatoes, especially when fried 🥗

Fruits: grapes, berries, apples, melons, cherries, figs, prunes, sour cherries, peaches, pomegranates are the most historically loved fruits in the Greek diet. Since the middle ages citruses like the orange, the lemon and the mandarin are more and more loved. Greeks nowadays use lemon almost more than vinegar and both have become integral components of the Greek diet. Obviously, tropical fruits like, say, banana, mango, grapefruit are not present in the traditional Greek diet, however all fruits are good fruits and you can enjoy them freely 🍎

Legumes. Eat freely to the tolerance of your body. Legumes can be too heavy for some GI tracts. Legumes are a great source of protein and fibre. Choose brown lentils, white beans, fava beans, chickpeas, giant beans and black eyed peas the most 🫘

Nuts, seeds: almonds, walnuts, sunflower seeds, peanuts etc. Eat as much as your body can take, because everybody is different 🥜

Mushrooms: mushroom it up! A great healthy way to have them is grilled with herbs and plain or apple cider vinegar dressing 🍄‍🟫

Whole grains: this is the traditional way to eat grains. Brown bread, oats, whole wheat pasta 🌾

Fish and seafood: find and eat them fresh. Instead of buying them deep frozen from the big markets, find local fish stores if your place is coastal and has them. Eat both large but especially small and medium sized fish. Some fish like salmon and tuna should ideally not be consumed daily due to their high levels of mercury and fats 🐟🎣🍤

Herbs and spices. Feel free to use as much as you want however if you are interested also in the flavours of the Greek diet besides the health benefits, a tip is that Greek dishes do not contain extremely hot spices 🌿

Water: A lot of water daily and, mind you, plain clear mineral water. No flavoured water, definitely not sparkling water and ideally no other liquids in place of the water. I mean, sure you can have liquids but you should ALSO have plain water 💧

Eat a few times per week:

Poultry: Poultry and lean meats entered the Greek cuisine mostly after the Middle Ages however they are nowadays enjoyed as part of the Greek Mediterranean diet because they are tasty and healthier than other types of meat. Chicken has become especially popular in the Greek cuisine. Other birds are the pheasant, the quail, the turkey and more sparsely the duck 🍗

Eggs: eggs are healthy and should be consumed a few times per week but not daily because they can cause a rise in cholesterol levels 🥚

Dairy: Greeks LOVE dairy products, especially the various types of cheese, however they are often irritating to the GI tract and they are linked with rises in the level of inflammation in the body. This is why you should ideally limit them to a few times per week. One exception is the yoghurt, which is fermented and can be perhaps consumed more frequently due to its beneficial properties. Important note: if you want to follow the Greek diet, you should ideally opt for milk and other dairy products from goats and sheep! Cow milk is not traditionally used in the Greek cuisine often and sheep and goat milk are significantly healthier and more nutritious. The only drawback is the stronger smell, however if you can get past that, it is strongly advised to switch to those instead of cow milk. Another note: what is known as “Greek yoghurt” in western countries is not in fact a true Greek yoghurt. What you call Greek yoghurt is to us simply a strained yoghurt, a yoghurt from which the whey has been removed. Sometimes in western markets (and in Greek “modern” dessert yoghurt products) butterfat and powdermilk is added to them and they are mostly made of cow’s milk. Again, a traditional Greek yoghurt is made of sheep, goat milk or a mix of both and is unstrained. It also has a trademark thickened skin on its top (dunno if this is the actual term lol) which is in fact the part of the yoghurt that contains the most nutrients and personally it’s the tastiest part of the yoghurt but apparently it is not for everyone. As an example, a study showed that an unstrained sheep yoghurt has more protein, more omega-3 fatty acids and minerals yet fewer calories and fats than a strained cow yoghurt 🍦🧀

Wine: in small portions, like a small glass up to a few times per week and always in combination with your meal. You don’t drink it to get hammered, you drink it for the health benefits it has in very moderate quantities and for the reasonable mild euphoria it causes before it becomes harmful. The GI tract is linked to the brain and is detrimentally influenced by negative emotions. This is why it is important to try to be in a good mood, relaxed and peaceful when you sit down to eat. A sip of wine now and then can be good for that 🍷

Eat once per week or ideally less:

Red meat like pork or beef. In fact, beef should be the one most avoided not only because it is indeed the rarest of the common meats used in traditional Greek cuisine but also because you can’t separate the fat from the meat as easily as with pork. To follow the Greek style in a healthy way opt for goat, then lamb or pork and make beef your most occasional meat dish 🥩

Processed meats should be eaten rarely. If you are in a mood for it though, opt for Greek style sausages with herbs in or bacon at most. Cured meats like ham are better to be avoided but turkey is the healthiest of them. They are not a part of a traditional Greek cuisine though.

Refined grains can be enjoyed weekly but should not replace whole grains

Pastries. What’s new, pastries are not ideal for health. However, if you are yearning for something sweet, if you want to keep it healthy as much as possible in the “Greek way”, opt for desserts made of healthy ingredients like honey, nuts, olive oil and fruits. Chocolate came to Greece in the 19th century, however it has become an integral part of confectionery since then. Opt ideally for dark chocolate, combined with nuts or fruits such as oranges and prunes. Greeks especially love chocolate combined with nuts.

Soft and sugary drinks. Avoid them overall, especially the processed products in the markets. If you need a sweet drink really bad, you can keep it traditional by making your own sweet lemonade, sour cherry, pomegranate etc drink at home. You could also enjoy small quantities of lemon or mastic liquors which are good for digestion.

BONUS TIPS & PHILOSOPHY:

Try to find mastic if it’s available where you live. The mastic is a resin produced from the mastic tree, a species endemic to the Greek island of Chios and a small part of the opposite coast of Turkey. It has numerous beneficial properties, especially for digestion and gut health, and it combines them with a very pleasant fresh and sweet flavour. You can find it in gums that boost digestion, in drinks, in pastries and even in non-edible products like toothpastes. Learn about it and give it a try, no matter if you are interested in following Greek diet or not.

Greek cuisine does not go berserk on as many ingredients as possible (however Greeks typically add more ingredients than, say, Italians and perhaps fewer than the Middle Easterners). Don’t worry about adding as many foods and nutrients in one single dish. The most important thing in Greek cuisine philosophy is to pick the finest ingredients. Avoid deep frozen or precooked and processed ingredients. Pick whole fruits and vegetables from your local small grocery store. For example, don’t buy a watermelon slice in a zelatin bag from the supermarket. Take the whole freaking watermelon home. You heard me right. It’s heavy, yes, but you would be surprised how much tastier and healthier it is this way. Go to the butcher for meat. Go to the specific cheese shop for cheese. Go to the fisherman for fish and seafood. Go to the pastry shop and get a nice dessert instead of buying candies from the market.

Remember that in moderation you can eat most of the foods you desire, especially if they are not processed foods. There is nothing about the Greek diet that is restrictive in terms of its philosophy - historically the intake of various foods was regulated only based on availability and price. There are no foods you should limit due to any perception of them being “bad” and you should never feel guilty the moment you are actually having the food. Just work slowly and progressively by building gradual appreciation for healthy foods and prize less nutritious foods as occasional taste bud rewards.

As said above, a good mood is crucial when you sit down to eat. In the history of the Greek society this translated into eating with friends and / or family, maybe with the occasional sip of wine, ideally in a pleasant environment and always taking your time with your food. If some of these are less feasible than others, try alternatively to improve the setting in which you eat, to eat in an environment that calms you down. Schedule your meal so that you won’t eat in anxiety or hurry, if this is possible. Think of pleasant memories and feel grateful for your food. Cheers! Or, you know, εις υγείαν!

[dax-enfinity]

Explaining FNAFHS to English-speaking people is so strange, especially to the English-speaking part of the FNaF fandom.

Because, thinking about it, FNAFHS is literally the HellPark/One Wheat Mark equivalent for the Five Night’s at Freddy’s fandom.

But… it had the same impact Homestuck had on the internet and fandom culture as a whole.

(And it’s also OLDER than HellPark AND One Wheat Mark)

I mean, a fanmade AU thing for a pre-existing fandom that eventually becomes it’s own separate thing not connected to its original source material that it becomes its own sub-fandom of sorts with its own fanbase too.

Explaining FNAFHS to the English-speaking FNaF fandom is high key very funny.

Because WHAT DO YOU MEAN It’s literally a:

Human! AU

High School! AU

Modern! AU

Musical/Band! AU

And… it’s also a Magical Girl! AU if we are counting Z3R0 as canon

But it’s a web series that’s free to watch on YouTube, yet… IT’S ALL IN SPANISH…

[raccoon-eyed-rebel]

Don't knock it till you try it

Masterlist

Pairing: Syverson x reader x Walter Marshall (technically college AU. I needed to make the road trip scenario plausible.)

Summary: Your friends Walter and Sy have offered to drive you home for the summer, and you have decided to turn it into a nice relaxed camping trip on the way...

Word count: 9146 (yes, really...)

Warnings: SMUT, NSFW, 18+, MINORS DNI, fingering (vaginal, anal - f receiving), oral sex (f and m receiving), penetrative sex (vaginal, anal, DP - f receiving), masturbation (f), smug and dirty talking Sy, sex in a tent, hint of a size kink (blink and you miss it), silly bets, and an astonishingly solid bromance. I think that's all, but call me if I missed any.

A/N: I've finally really stopped hurting the boys and now we're just going for some nice relaxed sex in a goddamn tent, dammit! Also yeah I'm going to keep imagining the boys in college until the day I die, I don't know why (maybe because I'm young), but just... idk, read it as a memory or something? idk :')

@geralts-yenn @deandoesthingstome @ellethespaceunicorn @peaches1958 @sillyrabbit81 @peyton-warren @summersong69 @mayloma @livisss

You were not – by a long shot – the first girl to see the backseat of the beat-up chevy pickup you were sitting in. Fact. A fact so factual, in fact, that Sy hadn’t complained when you demanded he put a blanket down for you to sit on, which told you more than you really wanted to know.

Now, your eyes kept drifting shut to the sound of tires on asphalt and the bickering of soothing baritone voices in the front seat. The outside world consisted of mountain views and clear blue skies, and the fresh breeze of early summer that worked just hard enough to raise goosebumps on skin, but inside this rusty old vehicle the atmosphere was dominated by two pairs of broad shoulders, deep voices, and what you always mockingly referred to as ‘disgusting man sweat’ – always hoping neither of them would ever find out how often you dreamt of licking those salty droplets off their abs after a workout.

Both of them had shown up, first semester, in a class they didn’t have a prayer of passing, and you’d been teamed up with them because of what you then thought to be a hideous trick of fate. Somehow, you whipping them into shape for that tutorial hadn’t put them off you, and what started as whatever the educational equivalent of ‘frenemies’ is, turned into study buddies and eventually friends. The only downside to your friendship was that you chronically had to explain to your entire dorm that, no, you weren’t sleeping with either of them – let alone both of them.

As you still toed the line between asleep and awake, a heavy hand on your knee – belonging to Walter – made a decision for you in favor of consciousness.

“We’re hungry,” he said.

“You’re always hungry,” you grumbled as you reached for the bag of food and snacks on the other side of the backseat. It was a good thing they didn’t bother to deny it, because you would have strangled them both. God forbid you ever left a bag of Doritos out in your dorm. Seconds! Gone!

Sy had the stones to ask for a tuna sandwich. Absolutely the fuck not!

“I’m not opening that bag in this car, Sy.” It already smelled like stale beer and weed in there. Not in a bad way, but in a ‘you’re not allowed to smoke on campus, so this is our only option’ way. That said, adding tuna to the mix would be a complete disaster.

“Suit yourself,” he snapped. You rolled your eyes. For the love of God, it was all of ten minutes past feeding time! Walter snickered as he held out a hand. Turkey on wheat for Walter, BLT for Sy, mozzarella pesto for you. You’d splurged on groceries, because the boys had offered to take the lion’s share of the drive.

“We were thinkin’ of callin’ it a day soon, sugar.” They’d had morning classes, and you were falling asleep while on snack-duty… Plus, you’d agreed to just take it easy the whole drive. It was summer; there was no need to rush home.

Sy pulled off the highway, quickly ending the smooth, rhythmic hum of the tires on the road, until the asphalt finally made way for the crackling of gravel. Without Sy, you never would have found the campsite at which you pulled over. Camping ran through that guy’s veins, as you could tell from the impressive amount of camping gear in the bed of the pickup – all his.

Even though he helped you get out of the truck, you still lost your footing and stumbled into him, leaving Walter grinning to the side of the spectacle, commenting on your horrible clumsiness.

“Dunno,” Sy replied with a sly smile. “Guess she’s just fallin’ for me.” The cheesy joke made Walter stop dead in his tracks.

“I think that’s twenty-five,” he deadpanned, looking at you. In a less-than-sober state, somewhere in the past year, you had made a deal: if either of them managed to make that joke twenty-five times before the end of the year, you’d… Alright, let the records show that when you made that bet, you had been entirely convinced they’d never take you up on the offer to let them kiss you. But they had.

“You’re not gonna hold me to what I said back then, are you?” you asked in a small voice, your cheeks so hot you could probably fry an egg on them. The door of the truck slammed shut behind you, and Sy slowly stepped forward, forcing you to step back, until you were backed up against the truck, with him leaning over you – completely caged in between his solid body and the car.

“Deal’s a deal, sugar.” There was no trace of his usual grin, no hint of the mischievous glint in his eyes that normally told you he was kidding. He just came closer and closer as your eyes went wide – Walter did nothing. Jackass.

Not that kissing Sy was something you didn’t want. Oh no! In fact, it was something a fairly large part of you wanted so badly you thought you might burst. On some days, being close to either of them – let alone both – was torture, where your heart raced every time they came near you, and you unconsciously held your breath when they touched you… And while the guys just freely admitted to having sex dreams about you, you kept the little nugget of truth that you had similar dreams about them, tightly under wraps. Not because you thought they’d tease you about it, or anything, just… No, wait, actually that’s exactly why you didn’t tell them.

A few more seconds passed in which your heart tried its best to jump out of your chest.

“This isn’t funny, Sy,” you snapped on a sharp exhale when his mouth curled at the corners into that signature smirk you loved to hate. Finally able to gather your thoughts as well as your strength, you put your hands on his chest and pushed. It was a good thing he let you go, because if he had decided to stay put, you wouldn’t have stood a chance in hell.

“I want my kiss, sugar,” he called after you as you paced away to… alright, you didn’t actually know where you were going, but away, at least. “One way or another.”

As pissed – or confused – as you were, this was ‘the outdoors’ and therefore absolutely not the type of environment you were well equipped for in any kind of way, thus you decided it was best to stay close – within earshot, at least – to the boys. But they could take care of unpacking and pitching tents and whatever the fuck else needed doing.

“Hey.” Sy sat down next to you on the rock you had claimed, and put an arm around you. This was oddly comfortable, especially compared to the tense situation by the car, earlier. “I was messin’ with ya back there, you know that, right?” Whether it was to make a point, or simply because Walter wasn’t watching – or maybe because the threatening wall of man from before was now your familiar gentle giant again, you had no idea, but you impulsively reached for Sy and kissed him on the cheek. A low chuckle escaped him, and he pulled you closer.

“There’s a trail up to a waterfall we maybe wanted to check out, you in? Easy hike.” The good thing about hanging out with the guys was that they really considered your level of… adventurous ineptitude. If they suggested this hike, it meant they were at least medium convinced you could actually make it there and back in one piece – or that they could make it at least halfway with you on their backs.

The hike led up to a beautiful, clear river, and a spectacular waterfall. Between the smell of the woods, the sun comfortably warm on your skin, and the phenomenal view, this hike had been more than worth it – never mind that you were all sticky and sweaty from trying to keep up with the guys and their superhuman pace.

“On the way back, can we please remember that I have little legs?” you complained as you sank down onto the rock at the river bank the boys had selected to eat yet another sandwich on. Sy hummed, finally contently munching on the tuna sandwich you’d denied him in the car, and Walter laughed. You sat in silence while your friends ate their food, which meant the rock inevitably became too boring for your limited attention span.

What started off as a relatively sure-footed expedition over the rocks that stuck out of the water, inevitably ended with your very accurate portrayal of a soaking wet person regretting most – if not all – of their life choices. Sy sighed and rolled his eyes as he swallowed the last bite of his sandwich, taking his sweet time to get up and make his way over to you to fish you out of the water – which he then called ‘refreshing’ instead of ‘freezing fucking cold’. That didn’t improve your mood. Next, Walter had to dive for your phone – which, luckily, could swim, but was still going to be next to useless to you at the bottom of this far-deeper-than-anticipated vein of icy death.

Shivering, covered in goosebumps and with chattering teeth, you stood on the bank of the river.

“Take your shirt off,” Walter commanded, plucking his own off the dry rock.

“What?” you stammered, staring at him in disbelief. Now, that alone would have been just fine, if your eyes hadn’t dropped from his face to his chest. Small droplets of water dripped from his hair and beard onto his shoulders and chest and… somehow trickled down his body in slow motion. If they knew how much willpower it took to lift your eyes to his again, they would never let you live it down. Sy repeated his words from a distance – there went your excuse that Walter had just been talking too softly. Sy was still up to his knees in the river, unbothered by the cold, just hanging out there as if that water didn’t rival the fucking arctic ocean for temperature.

As you looked at him, he started to walk back to the riverside. The sun was starting to set, changing the light in a way that made it look like Sy, much like those fucking drops of water, was moving in slow motion, flecks of sunlight dancing over his skin… These guys were distracting enough when they were dry and dressed, but now that they were wet and half naked, with damp, coarse curls sticking to their chest and abs, catching the water that dripped down from their heads… These boys were fucking with your head. Big time.

“Sugar, take off your shirt, please,” Sy repeated when he stood next to you. “You’re freezin’, let’s get you a dry t-shirt, at least.” Oh. So, they weren’t putting the moves on you. Good to know. Hopefully, your exasperated sigh didn’t give away any of the disappointment you felt. With a little help from Walter, you lifted your soaking top over your head, not caring that they saw you in your bra until it was already too late. Sy used his t-shirt to dry you off a bit, before handing you Walter’s to put on. The whole time, they kept their eyes in decent places, and their hands didn’t wander anywhere they shouldn’t. Now, why did that make you feel sad?

“We should head back,” Walter said – mostly to Sy. The sun disappeared rather quickly, and without the heat from it, that dry t-shirt – save for the two tit-shaped wet spots where your soaked bra touched it – didn’t do much to keep you warm.

By the time you made it back to the campsite, you were shivering again. The walk had done next to nothing to warm you, and your still wet jean shorts chafed painfully against your thighs. Not to mention your thighs were starting to chafe painfully against your thighs. So, the first thing you did was disappear into the tiny single tent that was meant for you – as you had made it abundantly clear that sharing a tent with the boys was out of the question – and change into something dry, warm, and comfortable. The guys did the same, although – as it turns out – their version of ‘warm’ included no shirts. Did they ever get cold?

It was tough enough to keep your eyes off Sy in cargo shorts – although Walter in jeans was just as much of a sight for sore eyes – but now that it was getting dark, the sweats came out to play. You silently thanked Walter for his choice of black sweatpants, because keeping your thoughts out of the gutter was hard enough already. Sy was shamelessly sporting a pair of grey sweats, filling them out just about as nicely as humanly possible as he sat there, getting a fire started. The sly glances and that godforsaken smirk he flung your way from time to time told you that he was more than aware that you were checking him out.

The heat from the fire alone wasn’t enough to warm you up. Sy’s solution was tequila – which helped, but not quite enough, so Walter wrapped you in a blanket, pulling you close to his side as he ran his hands over your arms in an attempt to stop your shivering. At the same time, Sy inched closer, and before you knew it, four arms were wrapped around you.

Apart from being hot, proverbially, these guys were hot in the literal sense, too, warming you up slightly more effectively than the blanket around your shoulders and moderate amount of alcohol in your system. Still, the icy temperatures from the ground you were sitting on seeped into you without mercy. Of course, the boys took notice, both getting the same idea, and each grabbing one of your legs to try and pull you into their respective laps. Needless to say; it didn’t work, and you just ended up with spread legs, sitting between them on the floor. Sy had that twinkle in his eye, that smirk on his face that was dripping with confidence and indecency… You had to get out of there before he could speak!

As you scrambled to your feet, mumbling something about getting another blanket for yourself to sit on, you tripped and fell into Walter’s lap. Of course! You had been keeping score on that bet as well, and you knew you had come here – fucking camping – with both of the guys stuck on twenty-four counts of the same lame fucking joke… This was your fault, really.

To your surprise, however, Walter said nothing – instead, he smiled politely, pulling you into a more comfortable position in his lap.

“You’ve earned it,” you whispered, although you had absolutely no idea why. Maybe because it was the truth, maybe because you just wanted this bet to be over. Either way, it hurt you that he didn’t make the dumb joke, and asked to collect his reward the way Sy had. Hoping to get up before Walter looked into your eyes – where your thoughts were no doubt displayed for everyone to see – you made a move that was entirely too advanced for your mediocre balance and agility, and you crashed down again, this time falling harder than before. As Walter grunted, panic shot through you…

“Darling, I’d ask you if it hurt when you fell from heaven, but so far the only person who got hurt in that process, is me,” he blurted out in a strangled voice, while Sy was losing it next to you, howling from laughter.

Was it the booze? The fire? The tension from this afternoon? The fact that you were sitting in his lap, with his hands maybe a tad too low on your hips, but high enough to not rouse suspicion? Or maybe just your complete lack of self-control? Whatever it was, it caused you to move to straddle his thighs, and without thinking about it for so much as a second, you kissed him. If you’d had a sliver of hope before that Walter would break the kiss after an at least semi-decent amount of time, it was gone now, because the hand on your hip pulled you tighter against him, and his other hand tangled in your hair.

Walter kissed you. It took far more effort than you had ever expected to really let that sink in, but at the same time there was no way around it. He was kissing you, and it was eager, and rough, accompanied by ragged breaths and the occasional moan. It managed to make you forget everything around you. Everything except for Sy – mainly because he let out a pained grunt just as you were about to stick your tongue down Walter’s throat.

“I got a kiss on the cheek, man,” he groaned as he leaned in slightly on one elbow.

Now, if you had been thinking clearly, you would have laughed it off, gotten up and gone to bed. Safe to say, you were not thinking clearly.

Sy’s mouth felt just as good on yours as Walter’s had, with similarly soft lips, a similarly coarse beard scraping your skin, and a similar roughness to him that only wound you tighter. You moaned, your hips unconsciously grinding into Walter’s, his growing hard-on providing extra friction to soothe the ache between your legs. When you briefly opened your eyes to see if Sy was as involved in this as you were, you saw him palm his own erection through his sweats – casually adjusting its position before focusing on you again. In that moment – timed perfectly with a moan from Walter – something inside of you snapped.

“I’m going to bed,” you stuttered as you broke the kiss with Sy, at the same time scrambling to get to your feet – this time succeeding without falling into anyone, and making it to your own tent without a hitch. ‘

Now, if it had been a sober conversation, and it hadn’t been in the middle of nowhere without a sound to be heard for miles other than crickets, the occasional owl, and the crackling of the fire, at least half of it would have been inaudible from where you had pitched your tents. But the boys were too drunk, and their voices too deep and dark – the sound just traveled too far. You could have ignored them. You could have turned around, pulled your sleeping bag over your ears, and pretended to be asleep until it became the truth. Instead, you listened, sometimes straining to understand what they were saying.

“So, who do we say got her first?”

“I’m asking for a do-over.”

“Because it was me?”

“We could just… Y’know…”

“Think she’d go for it?”

“What, both of us? My ex did…”

“But she was nuts.”

“Hey! Okay, fair enough.”

Both of them? Both of them? As in… Separately? Or… Oh, what the fuck did it matter! The answer was yes.

What surprised you most about your thoughts was how completely unsurprised you were by them. Somehow, the idea of sleeping with both Sy and Walter felt as natural as could be, and left you not only stumped, but with another problem that needed tending to…

Without thinking, you slid your hand down your body, and into your sweatpants. Kissing the boys had definitely had its effect on you, you had known that as soon as it had happened, but the extent of the mess between your thighs was still quite surprising. Somehow, tasting both of them, followed by your eavesdropping, had made you dripping wet and craving something more than just your fingers. Unfortunately, they’d have to do.

You thought of that first kiss with Walter, then the one with Sy, then wondered what it would feel like to have those beards scratch the skin of your neck, slowly making their way down to your chest. Would they lick? Bite? Moan? You pictured Sy, eagerly making his way further down, while Walter kept his attention on your chest. Would he be as quiet as he always was? Was Sy as loud as you imagined him to be?

There were so many things to wonder about, besides the obvious size question, that the thoughts consumed you completely as you worked yourself up to your peak. So completely, in fact, that you didn’t hear the guys return to the tents – just as you squealed from pleasure while you came. Hard.

“Fuck, sugar,” Sy said from outside. Walter warned him to stop talking, but he didn’t listen. “Tell me if you want any help.”

It was tempting to say ‘yes’. It was tempting to crawl into that tent and tell them you had heard everything they said by the fire. It was tempting to offer yourself up on a silver platter, hoping they’d make good on their promises from before by fucking the life out of you. But things that are tempting can also still be difficult, so you did nothing. Well, nothing… If ‘dying of embarrassment’ counts as ‘something’, you were definitely not doing nothing.

The sound of your own teeth chattering prevented you from falling asleep, even though you could hardly keep your eyes open. And who knew goosebumps could hurt like this? The boys had warned you beforehand that it would get cold at night, and you’d even told Sy what you had planned on wearing as pajamas, and he’d said you’d be good. Well, you weren’t good. You were covered from head to toe, and you were not – by any definition of the word – ‘good’.

As hard and painful as it was to just lay there and freeze, it was harder to get up, worm your double-socked feet into your sneakers and get out of your tent. Outside, it was pitch black, and the dim light of your phone was barely enough to prevent you from falling flat on your face. You had to credit the boys with their incredible foresight to keep the path from your tent to theirs free of tripping hazards – something you were so delighted in at that moment that you forgot to question whether or not there was some sort of ploy, or whatever in place. Lewd scheme or not, you were glad to make it without a hitch.

“Eh, guys?” you whispered after zipping open the tent and poking your head in.

“Hm? What?” It was Walter – and from Sy’s continued snoring, you deduced that you shouldn’t wait for him to answer; he wasn’t waking up.

“I’m really fucking cold,” you admitted reluctantly. That seemed to wake Walter up a little more…

“Cold? You could go on an expedition to the north pole dressed the way you are!” The sleep-drunk slur of his voice was… adorable, in a way. To his left – no, his right… To his left from where you were standing? The left side of the air-mattress they were on when you looked at it, standing at the foot of the bed, the right side if you were actually lying in… oh for fuck’s sake! Next to him, Sy groaned and turned – although you couldn’t see any of that, because it was very dark.

“The fuck is going on?” he grunted, his voice gravelly and dark – which did a good job of making your knees weak.

“She’s cold,” Walter replied dryly.

“There’s no way,” Sy said in disbelief, “she’s dressed for winter in Alaska.”

“If you two are done mocking me, I’m actually freezing my ass off out here. Do you have an extra blanket or something?” you snapped.

“Sugar, we’re not even wearin’ shirts,” Sy said, his voice steadier now that he was waking up.

“Great, so you put on a shirt, and I’ll take your sleeping bag.” It was a shame they couldn’t see you roll your eyes, but the snippy tone would surely get your point across.

“Or you could just come here, love,” Walter said all of a sudden. There was rustling in the tent and then a dim red light over your heads turned on.

“Interesting choice…” you started, but Walter and Sy chuckled.

“It’s easier on your eyes, sugar.” Shit, Sy was easy on your eyes, god damn. He hadn’t been lying when he’d said he wasn’t wearing a shirt, and the way he casually lounged on that fucking mattress right now, with that arm behind his head, eyes half shut…

Walter was sitting up, holding a hand out to you, waiting patiently until you had zipped open the door further – which took so long that he ended up helping you with it. As you got in, he got out, and for a moment you were scared he would offer to leave you with Sy while he took your tent, but after a while he returned holding your backpack and sleeping bag.

The bed was a bit small for the three of you, especially since the guys were so bulky, but you managed to make it work. The only thing was… shivering in between them was hardly more comfortable than shivering by yourself, and now there wasn’t enough space to curl up into a ball and hope for the best.

“Sugar, stop squirmin’, c’mere.” Sy’s strong arms wrapped around your waist and pulled you close, when up until now you’d been trying desperately not to touch either of them. “Alright, I take it back, she is freezin’.” A gesture to Walter you could feel but not see, made him scooch over, too, until his body was flush against yours.

Your heart raced in your throat when warm hands slipped underneath your hoodie, stroking your side and – eventually – your stomach. Somewhere down the line, you forgot how to breathe properly, taking in shallow breaths, hoping the guys wouldn’t notice. Of course, they did, because they were inches away from you.

“You should take this off, sugar,” Sy mumbled into your ear. Every muscle in your body tensed up at the suggestion, and it felt like the air was knocked out of your lungs.

“C-can’t,” you stammered, “I’m not… eh… I’m not wearing a bra.”

“Fairly sure we’ve seen a pair of tits before, love,” Walter replied, right at the time Sy muttered ‘neither are we’, making you laugh. Somehow, all of this seemed innocent – or rather; you were convincing yourself it felt innocent, and any subtext and undertones were a figment of your imagination, instead, when in fact, it was far more likely that it was exactly the other way around…

“Not mine,” you protested, biting your lip as a third hand, belonging to Walter, began to roam your back.

“We’re aware of that,” Sy said, his voice dangerously close to your ear. His breath was hot against your cold skin – a sensation that made you shiver.

“In fact, we try not to think about it. It makes us sad,” Walter said, leaning his forehead against yours, sliding his hand down your back and then up your side until his thumb was less than an inch away from the underside of your boobs.

For a moment, the thought that this was just a tactic to actually warm you up flashed through your head, because – in all fairness – it was working. Every part of you was suddenly glowing, breath quick and ragged in anticipation of whatever it was that would come next. What surprised you, though, was how calm they both seemed. Then again, they had already – unknowingly – admitted to having done this before. If that was where this was headed, which you still didn’t quite know for sure… It was as if the guys were both waiting for something. Waiting for… you.

Your lips trembled as you tilted your head up, Walter taking your hint and pressing his lips to yours. Sy pushed your hair out of the way and latched on to your neck. Neither of them went straight to groping you – not more than they had been up until now – but it was only a matter of time before you felt Walter’s hand creep up to your chest. He broke your kiss, his eyes silently asking for permission, which you gave him with the flash of a smile and a slight nod, gasping when his fingers brushed past your nipple. Despite the rising temperatures in the tent – even though most of that was likely just your imagination – the difference between your skin and Walter’s was striking, and you moaned when his warm hand cupped your breast.

Sy was less subtle by about a million degrees, boldly grabbing as much of your other boob as humanly possible – and he had big hands, so you quickly ran out of tit for him to dig his fingers into.

“Can you take it easy,” you blurted out as you laughed in surprise at his – as far as you were concerned – unwarranted enthusiasm.

“Darlin’, I’ve been dreamin’ of these tits for weeks, throw a man a bone.” He groaned when you backed a hip into him the same way you would have if he had been standing next to you.

“Looks like you’re the one throwing me a bone, Syverson,” you teased when you felt his cock push against your ass. It was a horrible joke; Walter laughed, Sy did not – possibly because he was the one on the receiving end of your mockery. Instead, you heard a low, arrogant chuckle in your ear, that told you exactly how he wasn’t going to give you the upper hand.

“I ain’t throwin’ you nothin’, sugar,” he growled, putting a hand on your hip, gripping you tight. “I’m gonna make you fuckin’ beg for it.”

“Promises, promises.” Teasing the boys was fun when you were studying, because you very clearly had a head start in that department, and they would get frustrated, and it was very cute. But now, sandwiched between their bodies, gone was your head start. Any advantage you had over them, in any other way, was useless here. The worst part? They fucking knew it. It was as if they grew bigger and you got smaller, and you were loving every second of it.

Suddenly, the hands underneath your sweater grew impatient, tugging the fabric up until there was no point in keeping it on. Rough hands turned you on your back, which left you staring up at both guys while they raked their eyes over your naked upper body. The knowledge that they were far from unaffected by you graced you with a sense of pride that helped keep doubts and shyness away as you reveled in their attention and the appreciative grunts and moans they let out as they looked at you.

“Fuck,” Walter muttered, licking his lips, completely focused on your bare skin. He scooched closer to you, grinding his hips into your side as he did, and turned your face to his to kiss you.

It was as eager as before, this time with Sy descending, pressing his lips to your neck, exceeding every expectation you had created in your fantasy from before; their lips were softer, their tongues wetter, and the way the coarse hair felt on your skin better than anything you could ever imagine. You whined and squirmed as their hands glided over your body, paying plenty of attention to your boobs, their fingers treating the soft flesh in remarkably similar ways. After a while, they switched places; Sy kissed you, Walter explored your body, making you gasp into Sy’s mouth as he wrapped his lips around your nipple, sucking gently on the hardened little bud while his fingers worked the other.

Eventually, he came back up to kiss you, a situation Sy took advantage of by diving straight back between your boobs, this time sliding his hand down your stomach and into your sweatpants – which is when you grabbed his wrist.

“Stop.” Stern and very effective – not that you were about to give the boys any credit for not assaulting you; that sounded like common fucking decency to you, actually. “Before this goes any further; did either of you, with your infinite wisdom and incredible foresight, pack condoms? Because if not…” Before you finished that sentence, both of them sat up and reached for their bag, leaving you there, taken aback by… You didn’t actually know what had you so shocked about this.

Sy made it back to your side first, tucking a handful of condoms beneath his pillow before laying down again. “Oral?” he asked. It was only half the question, but you understood perfectly. You quickly established that everyone was clean, making the short answer to his half-question ‘without’. Sy responded to that agreement by promptly sliding his hand into your pants, not wasting any more time. His fingers slipped between your folds, and he let out a low chuckle.

“For a moment I was worried you didn’t want this as much as we do,” he growled in your ear. “Guess I was wrong.” One quick, skilled swirl of his finger around your swollen clit made you whine – a sound he clearly found very motivational, because his fingers picked up a steady rhythm. You tried to hide your face in Walter’s neck to cover up the sound of your moans, but he caught you and kissed you instead.

Sy somehow found the time to kiss your neck, your jaw, your ear – sinking his teeth into you ever so slightly, stopping just before he hurt you – while he continued what he was doing. His fingers were absolute magic, making you swear under your breath as he effortlessly slipped two of them inside you. Next, he kissed his way down again, not stopping at your breasts, but continuing over your abs, until he reached your sweatpants, pulling them down eagerly without waiting for your permission. Of course, he had it – and you’d had plenty of time to stop him while he was headed there. It’s just that… That was about the very last thing you wanted.

Next to you, Walter kept busy pressing lazy kisses to your neck and jaw, occasionally pulling away to look at you, while he held you and played with your boobs. A few times you tried to move your hand to the bulge in his sweatpants, but he stopped you every time.

“Would you just...”

“Darling, been there, done that. You’ll be useless to me within seconds.” He nodded towards Sy, who was taking a moment to find a decent position between your legs. You raised your eyebrow at Walter, questioning his words, but he didn’t budge. “I’m gonna wait my turn, love.”

“I know this one,” Sy said, running his fingers over the fabric of your thong. You chuckled – he was right; he’d barged into your room one night while you were changing into whatever you were going to wear out to the club, and he’d seen you in your underwear. This underwear. He took his sweet time taking it off, teasing you with kisses on the inside of your thighs, his beard rough against your sensitive skin, until you were almost begging him to keep going. Finally, he pulled your panties down.

“You were right,” he said to Walter, leaving you to wonder what the fuck… “It is her natural hair color.” Oh. You fought the urge to kick Sy – instead, you lightly squeezed your thighs shut around his head. It didn’t seem to bother him. Quite the opposite, in fact.  

The urge disappeared altogether when you – finally – felt his tongue on your pussy. He wasn’t subtle, but damn, he was good. Walter had absolutely had a point; barely ten seconds in and you couldn’t keep your eyes open, let alone focus on anything other than the feeling of Sy’s tongue on your clit. He impatiently spread your legs further while mumbling some very dirty things about how much he wanted to taste you. Involuntarily, you chuckled – causing both guys to stop what they were doing and looking at you in suspicion. Lying was pointless; they knew you well enough by now to effortlessly see through that, and you sighed.

“I… eh…” you stammered, unable to find the words.

“Come on,” Walter said, “if you’ve still got things to hide from us now…” He was right, of course, this wasn’t a position you’d have found yourself in at all if you hadn’t been so comfortable with – and hot for – these guys. Then again, you were already exposed and vulnerable… Why make that worse?

You hid your face in Walter’s neck as you just said what was on your mind without thinking about it: “I always imagined you to be the quiet one and Sy the loud one.”

“Always?” Sy teased you. His usual cocky attitude transferred seemly to the bedroom – or… tent – as it would seem. Except now, for once, you had a decent shot at shutting him the fuck up – although you did have a feeling you were going to like his smug confidence for a change. Sy had been growing out his buzzcut for a few weeks now, which made his hair just about long enough to grab – a fact you used to your advantage when you tangled your fingers in his hair and pulled his face back to where you wanted it.

“That’s just going to make it harder to answer the question, darling,” Walter muttered next to you while drawing circles around your nipples with impatient fingers.

“Fuck!” you shrieked as Sy’s tongue hit your clit just right – a note he took to heart, because he didn’t leave that spot again, leaving you wishing that all men were that smart. Because why – for the love of God – did they always change their approach as soon as they found a spot you let them know you really liked? Right… The question at hand… “You really thought it was just the two of you dreaming about me?” They had to be smart enough to figure out what you meant on their own, right? The flustered look on Walter’s face told you enough, as did the deep chuckle and gentle bite on the inside of your thigh.

Apparently fed up with your conversation, Sy doubled down on his efforts, eating you out like a man starved, more chuckles escaping him as he watched you pull his pillow over your face in an attempt to keep quiet. ‘Attempt’ because you still failed quite horribly when he pushed two fingers into your pussy and curled them, finding your g-spot without any effort. The orgasm that followed was the kind of toe-curling, earth-shattering, life-changing thing that made you really mad at yourself for one particular reason…

“Jesus fucking Christ, I should have taken you up on your offer when my useless ex broke up with me,” you moaned as Sy made his way up again, pulling in the pillow that you had haphazardly thrown aside – after you were done screaming­, that is – so you could catch your breath. Sy immediately pulled you on top of him, kissing you hard and deep, allowing you to taste yourself on his tongue. It was something that had always made you feel weird and – if you were being perfectly honest – mildly disgusted when it had been your ex doing it, but there was something about the way Sy had gone down on you, and the way he was kissing you now, something unapologetic, passionate, and enthusiastic, that made you want to kiss him.

In fact, you were just about to commit to the bit when someone – and that someone had to be Walter – grabbed you by your hips and dragged you back until you were on your knees. You tried to lie down again as you heard him rummage around, looking for something – the obvious, really. The smack on your ass made you shriek in surprise, only making you slightly worried that either sound would have been audible well outside the tent.

“Stay there,” Walter’s husky voice commanded. “My turn.” Maybe he was the quiet one, but when he did speak… Oh my! You didn’t dare to move a muscle, leaving you sitting there, exposed as you heard the pretty familiar crinkling of foil. Shortly after, you felt the tip of Walter’s cock glide along the length of your slit. He teased you for a moment before lining himself up and slowly pushing into you. Sy laughed as your eyes went wide, and he grabbed your hand, guiding it to the bulge in his pants. Jackass. As soon as you got a good sense of what he was equipped with, you squealed. Not with any particular emotion in mind, just… Right now, you didn’t know what to think. In fact, Walter was well on his way to at least semi-permanently turning the whole thinking-function of your brain off.

“You alright, love?” Walter asked as he slowly pushed further into you.

“So far so good,” you moaned, “but I hope you’re running out of dick, because I’m running out of places to put it.” Cue roaring laughter from both guys…

“If you ever wonder why we love you,” Sy said, his sentence interrupted by more laughter, “that, right there. That’s why.”

You wanted to respond to that, you really did, but Walter pulling out of you already left you breathless, meaning all you could do was gasp when he slammed back into you. You’d never pictured either of them to be gentle. Concerned for your comfort, sure, but not tender. You’d been right. Luckily, gentle lovemaking was very low on your list of priorities in this particular situation – or ever – which meant you reveled in the brutish attention you got and soon found yourself wanting to beg Walter to fuck you harder.

Sy, as vocal as he’d been before, turned out to also be a champion in impatiently nudging your hand, vaguely suggesting he wanted you to do something, and for a moment it felt like you were about to regain some control of the situation, but no… He was also not above manhandling you into a position where your face hovered over his crotch, and taking his dick out himself once he got really fed up with your stalling. With your eyes wide, you looked at him – something he enjoyed for a moment before tapping the tip of his cock to your lips.

“Don’t make me ask, Sugar,” he growled. As much as you wanted to protest and act out, with Walter fucking the attitude out of you, there was nothing you could do but open your mouth and carefully wrapping your lips around him. The chuckle you let out as Sy grunted appreciatively when you swirled your tongue around his cock was interrupted by your own moan when Walter did… whatever it was that he did to cause it.

Slowly but surely, you made your way further down Sy’s dick, until a particularly violent thrust from Walter threw you off, accidentally forcing Sy deeper than you could handle. Choking and sputtering, you moved away from Sy, only scared for a moment that he’d be disappointed, but he had a different reaction – similar to Walter’s: checking to see if you were okay. Again, you were not in the habit of handing out bonus points for normal behavior, but it was nice, regardless.

“I’m fine,” you said between ragged breaths. “Note to self: deepthroating while getting railed from behind; bad idea.” The guys laughed, and as soon as you’d caught your breath, you joined them.

“There’s one way we all get attention without any risk of choking,” Sy mentioned casually, wiggling an eyebrow suggestively. Yes, you knew what he meant instantly, but… both of them? At the same time? All it took to convince you to at least give it a try was Walter slipping out of you, leaving you empty and nowhere near sated. One of Sy’s sly glances was a question to Walter, who ‘hmmph’-ed. You didn’t like the sound of that, per se, and looked over your shoulder to see what he was on about.

“Definitely depends,” he said, taking your lack of an immediate ‘absolutely the fuck not’-reaction as a sign you were considering it. And he was correct in that interpretation of the situation. “There’s a time and place for first time anal, and this is not it.” That was a sentiment you could absolutely get behind. Luckily, it didn’t matter, because it was hardly applicable. You assured the guys you had plenty of experience in that area.

Another potential spanner in the works that Sy mentioned, was the lack of lube. Somehow, Walter surprised you by mentioning you should have some with you – you did, but how did he know that?

“You use it to keep your hair from going frizzy,” he deadpanned. You looked at him as if you’d seen a ghost, while Sy looked at you as if you’d gone completely nuts.

“What?” you said, turning to Sy again. “It works!” With one hand, you reached for the strap of your backpack, pulling it towards you so you could look for the bottle. It was just under half full, but that should be enough…

Walter wasn’t stingy with the stuff, which was a good thing. There were few things more annoying to you than continuously having to tell a guy to use more lube. One, then two, then three fingers disappeared into you without a hitch, and although the fourth was a nice reminder that you had to relax, that went over without too much trouble as well. Somehow, somewhere in your mind, the fact that Walter seemed to know exactly what he was doing irked you – it was completely hypocritical of you, for obvious reasons, but right now the thought of him with anyone else made you mad.

The boys laughed when you voiced the absurd thought, and Sy didn’t neglect to point out that they hadn’t been too happy about several of the ‘scum’ (yes, really) you’d gotten together with in the time they’d known you. It was a weird thing to be joking about with two of your closest friends while one of them had several fingers stuck up your ass, but at the same time it felt very natural and on-brand for your relationship with the guys.

You whined when Walter pulled his fingers out, making Sy chuckle in a way you didn’t like at all.

“Maybe we should go to sleep,” he suggested with a smug grin on his face that only widened when you told him you were definitely not going to do that. “Why not, sugar?”

Fuck, he was making good on that promise from before. Now, of course, you could convince yourself that begging for cock was beneath you, and you weren’t going to do it, but that would leave you – relatively – unfucked, which was… not desirable, to say the least. Or you could admit to yourself and them how much you wanted both of them inside of you, and have a great time.

Somehow, the red light that no one had bothered to turn off – luckily, as everything you had been doing so far would have been more or less impossible in the dark – already made the tent feel like… a brothel, quite frankly, you put your doubts aside and looked at Sy.

“We’re not going to sleep, because you’re not done fucking me,” you said, giving him your best bedroom eyes. Sy seemed impressed at first, but his eyes flitted to Walter and…

A strong hand grabbed your shoulder and pulled you up until your back hit Walter’s chest. His arm reached around, grabbing you by your throat – lightly, almost as if to ask for permission, but demanding.

“What do you want?” he asked, his voice dark and gravelly. Down on the air mattress, Sy smirked up at you, making it painfully obvious that you wouldn’t get out of this, no matter how hard you tried. You quickly scanned your brain for all your options, sadly coming up completely empty. No matter which way you sliced it, they were going to come out on top.

“I want you to fuck me,” you snapped, “both of you.” A sarcastic chuckle behind you and Sy shaking his head as he looked up at you told you that that wasn’t good enough. After a deep breath, your voice softened as you spoke again, finally saying the word they wanted to hear: “Please.”

For a long, dull moment all you really heard was the sound of two more condoms being unwrapped, and the top of the bottle of lube clicking. Then, Sy pulled you towards him. As soon as you felt his tip at your entrance, you sat down, fighting the urge to slap him when he threw a smirk and that godforsaken horrible wink your way. Under normal circumstances you considered yourself very well versed in resisting that desire, but today… He laughed when your palm landed lightly on his cheek and thrust up into you for good measure, making you squeal and fall over. Luckily, he caught you just in time.

Just as you wanted to sit up again, Walter put a hand on your back. Right. In that little moment of silliness, you’d almost forgotten what the endgame was, but now that you felt Walter’s cock pushing against your ass…

“Keep talking to us, okay?” Sy whispered softly as he saw your expression change. He cupped your cheek, gently stroking your cheekbone with his thumb. “Breathe.” You took his advice immediately – no doubt a nice change of pace for him, as he was used to your stubbornness at this point – taking a few deep breaths. It wasn’t until the third or fourth one that Walter moved, slowly pushing into you. Keeping your eyes open was absolutely impossible, the sensation of both of them filling you up at the same time too much to even really wrap your head around. “Sugar, you okay?”

“Uhuh.” You nodded, showcasing your current full extent of your ability to answer. When Walter moved, you swore under your breath – when they both moved you hid your face in Sy’s neck and let out a loud moan, followed by an out-of-breath ‘fuck yes’, and that was all the confirmation they needed.

They established a rhythm suspiciously quickly, pumping in and out of you in sync. Yeah. They’d definitely done this before. As you pushed the thought away and focused on the incredible sensations of their cocks moving inside of you, their eager – and mostly greedy – hands on your hips, shoulders, ass, thighs, and tits, you felt a familiar pressure inside of you.

“Don’t stop,” you blurted out – and the boys seemed more than happy to oblige. With one little disclaimer…

“Make it quick, love… Not gonna last,” Walter grunted, digging his fingers into the flesh of your hips. It hurt, causing you to swat at his hand, which made him relax his grip a bit. Judging from Sy’s rapid breaths and a concentrated look on his face that gave away just how much difficulty he was having with keeping his rhythm steady, he was getting pretty damn close, too. In fact, pretty much the second their thrusts dragged you over the edge, both of them grit their teeth and gave in to their own pleasure, growling profanities as they came.

The boys were nice enough to handle most of the cleanup for you – which was, given that you were camping, largely a matter of wet wipes, which was definitely not even close to the shower you would have loved to take right about now. And you couldn’t really appreciate Sy’s joke about a lovely, refreshing river near where you were, either.

“Maybe tomorrow,” you yawned, turning around in the middle of the bed, wrapping your sleeping bag tightly around your shoulders. It didn’t take the guys long to join you, and soon you were sandwiched between them again, strong arms wrapped around you – clearly not planning on letting go anytime soon.

Walter pressed his lips to your shoulder and let out a low chuckle. “Still cold, darling?”

The next morning, you woke up in an empty bed, in a tent that was already slightly warmer than comfortable, with just your sleeping bag on it. The guys had somehow already managed to worm theirs into the tiny little bags they came in, and all without waking you. Then again, it was safe to say that by now they’d proven themselves to be experts in the field of putting pretty big things in relatively tiny places…

For a moment, you wondered if you should feel weird about getting up and going outside, seeing the guys, but something about the whole thing felt so oddly natural that you didn’t give it a second thought.

“Mornin’, sugar,” Sy said as he held out some coffee to you when you joined him on the ground by the fire, where you’d spent the start of last night, as well. The two of you called Walter over, who was just about done putting your tent – the one that had been meant to be yours, anyway – away. He tossed the bag into the bed of the truck as if it weighed nothing – and maybe it indeed didn’t, you wouldn’t know, because you hadn’t touched the entire thing – and made his way over to you, gratefully taking the other cup of coffee Sy had poured.

You knew better than to try striking up a conversation with either of them before they’d finished their morning coffee – it was so bad that whenever you had classes together in the mornings, you showed up there with two double espressos for them and a latte for you, because if you didn’t do that, they’d just grouch and snap at you all the way through the first half of class.

It was all the more surprising, then, when Sy suddenly asked Walter a very unexpected question: “Have you ever kissed a dude?” The answer was no, he hadn’t - to which followed an even more surprising question: “Ever wanted to try it?”

The casual energy of the shrug with which Walter answered that question was absolutely unmatched by anything you had ever seen, and you stared at the guys, wide-eyed as they leaned in until their lips touched. It wasn’t just a quick peck, either! No, there was tongue involved in this… And by the end of it?

“Eh,” Walter said, “not for me.” Sy agreed.

“I’m sorry,” you said, completely taken aback by the unexpectedness of what had just happened. “What? You can’t just… Stick your tongue down your friend’s throat and then casually decide… What?”

“Hey,” Sy said, his tone still infuriatingly indifferent, “don’t knock it till you try it.”

[azzydoesstuff]

behold, my massive fucking moonshine factory (in minecraft for legal reasons)

so basically, i've been goofing around with the create mod the last few weeks and i installed quite a few addons to add way more content. one of these addons, "destroy", adds chemistry and stuff. but that's not important, all that matters is that it adds ILLEGAL LIQOUR BREWING

knowing me, i'd of course spend almost a week or two building a 100% fully automatic moonshine brewery and distillery.

the only thing that isn't completely automated is the heat from the blaze burners of the steam engine that powers this behemoth, which have been fed with creative blaze cakes so i don't have to build a blaze fuel farm too (i'll do it at some point)

here's some screenshots

and here's a top-down view, with and without legend

Steam Engine (absolute beast, provides power to the entire factory)

Emergency Waterwheels (in case the steam engine overstresses, i can disconnect it from the main mechanism and start it up using these, no need to restart it up manually)

Ingredient Sorter, Left Wing

Ingredient Sorter, Right Wing

Aging Barrels, Left Wing

Aging Barrels, Right Wing

Water Pumps (collect water for the moonshine)

Distillation Bubble Cap Mechanisms (three of them for maximum liquor potence)

Final Fluid Tank (stores fully-distilled moonshine before it is bottled)

Automatic Cobblestone Generator

Cobblestone Crushers (two sets of crushing wheels per belt, one crushing cycle turns cobble into gravel, the second turns gravel into sand)

Bulk Blaster (create mod's equivalent of a super-smelter. smelts all of the sand into glass)

Mechanical Crafters (craft glass into glass bottles)

Bottling Station (spouts sploosh moonshine into the freshly crafted bottles)

Final Storage Vault (where the bottled moonshine finally ends up. has a storage space so massive it'll basically never stop growing)

Automatic Wheat Farm (wheat is one of two ingredients for moonshine, uses a gantry carriage contraption to sweep the mature crops and then deposits them into the vault sorting system)

Seed Composters (uses the leftover seeds from the wheat farm to make bone meal for the mushroom farm)

Semi-Automatic Mushroom Farm (relies on the wheat farm for bone meal, but besides that, is fully automatic. repeatedly plants a mushroom, bone meals it into a giant shroom, then cuts it down with a mechanical saw to get more shrooms in return)

Mushroom Crusher (grinds mushrooms into bricks of yeast, the other ingredient in moonshine, then flings it into the yeast vault)

Wheat Vault (stores wheat until it's time for another brewing cycle)

Yeast Vault (stores yeast until it's time for another brewing cycle)

Wheat Farm Sorting System (wheat is deposited into the wheat vault, seeds are flung into the mushroom farm's composters, and any other items that might've ended up there by mistake are incinerated)

Distilled Water Disposal Pipe (transports any leftover water from the moonshine distillation into the steam engine, thus getting rid of it)

Catwalk Elevator (thought it'd be cool to have a lift bring you up to some catwalks above the whole factory, so i made it)

[wuxiaphoenix]

Isekai Problems: Planting Roots

So what zones are your characters in?

Here I’m referring to the USDA plant hardiness zones for growing regions. There are similar maps for Europe; I saw one in a book on heritage roses once. So I’d guess other areas have made them as well. But the USDA’s the one I know best. It’s also the one I feel personally frustrated by, because I know it best.

Long story short. Hardiness zones are determined by the minimum temperatures the area reaches; you find Zone 1 and 2 up in inner Alaska, you find subtropical to tropical 9 and 10 in bits of Florida, Louisiana, and Texas. Plants can also be sorted by how heat tolerant they are, but freezing to death is a pretty good measure of where a plant can’t make it. If you look at a package of seeds marketed in the U.S., you’ll find the Hardiness Zone map on the back, often with suggested planting times.

However. Local weather patterns can make zones tricky.

Remember how I pointed out zone 9 in Florida? In fact, the Hardiness Zone map shows near the entire Gulf Coast as zone 9. If you look on a larger-scale and more finely detailed map, most of the near-shore will show up as zone 9a - not as warm as, say, central Florida at 9b.

Except that every two to three years there tends to be at least one hard freeze (temps dropping overnight below about 15 F), making the area technically zone 8b. So unless you’re lucky and have cut back and wrapped tender plants, all your banana trees and citrus go bye-bye.

And yet, because it’s not that cold every year, tulips and apple trees - any plants that need some cold dormancy - are likely to keel over too.

All of which means introducing new plants is always a roll of the dice. Can they take the cold and the heat?

If you’re going to introduce new crops, as characters sometimes do in isekai, have some idea about what conditions they need, and whether or not your new locale has them. Cochineal is one of the most beautiful, vibrant, colorfast reds in nature. But if you try to introduce it as a crop in, say, Siberia, when the cochineal scale insect lives on the warmth-loving Opuntia cactus... biologists and ecologists will have a sad. Really.

Likewise if you tried to grow Korean stone pines (nutritious seeds! Medicinal compounds!) in the fantasy equivalent of South Florida’s heat and humidity, people will talk.

You may have better luck with more conventional food crops. Rice, corn, wheat, potatoes - all of these have hundreds if not thousands of varieties, adapted for different conditions. There are rice varieties that tolerate salt enough to grow near shorelines, and a slow-growing, slime-shedding variety of ancient corn that hosts its own nitrogen-fixing bacteria; an awesomely useful feature usually only found in legumes. Human ingenuity and diligent searching may turn up or create a variety of a crop that can survive in what would normally be extreme conditions for that plant. But your story will feel more realistic if you make it clear you’re using magic or bioengineering to get oranges to survive in arctic tundra, or lingonberries in the Sahara. People have an idea of where plants flourish; putting them out of place without a good explanation dents suspension of disbelief.

Of course, temperature’s not the only consideration. Rainfall, soil minerals; is the earth acid or basic, sandy or heavy clay? All of these and more play a part. You don’t have to be an agronomist. Just check out some real-life analogues to what you’re working with to get ideas of what your characters need to do, and what curveballs you can throw at them.

And for goodness’ sake, if the original tamers of a crop grow it in a specific way that doesn’t use the whole field, don’t automatically assume it’s inefficient and you can do it better. Of such decisions are potato famines made....

[nostalgebraist-autoresponder]

Can you please share your famous banana chocolate chip pancake recipe?? I’ve been wanting to try your pancakes ever since you posted about them a couple years ago, they looked so fluffy and delicious!!

Sure, here you go:

1 ripe banana (the kind you can smell if you hold it in the same room as you)

1 ¼ cups (312 ml) of all-purpose flour (or equivalent weight of whole wheat flour, if you like)

1 cup (240 ml) buttermilk (or milk)

1 tablespoon vanilla extract

Pinch of cinnamon (optional)

½ teaspoon baking powder

Pinch of baking soda

2 teaspoons brown sugar

1 teaspoon canola oil

Mash the banana (or peel it and squeeze all the liquid out, if you prefer)

In a separate bowl:

Combine the flour, the baking powder, the baking soda, and a pinch of cinnamon (if using).

In a third bowl:

Whisk together the brown sugar, vanilla, and buttermilk

Fold all of the ingredients together until the batter is smooth (some lumps are okay), the consistency should be thin and liquid.

In a hot pan, pour just enough oil to coat the pan in a thin layer. Add as much batter as will cover the pan in a nice thin layer. Flip a few times so the bottom of the pancake isn't burned.

Once you have a nice golden brown top, remove from the pan, and serve with butter, syrup, or not.

I like to add pieces of the still-ripe banana into the pancake batter when I add the vanilla and butter -- this gives the pancakes a slightly banana-flavored taste. I've never tried this with whole bananas, though, only the kind that are nearer to rotten than ripe

[fadedlovemp3]

i think its healthy to have mutuals who are really into a guy who is nothing to you because it keeps you humble about your own guys like yeah that guy is the equivalent of whole wheat sandwich bread to me but my guy is also the equivalent of whole wheat sandwich bread to someone else. its good to have perspective

[honey-minded-hivemind]

For the Wings of Fire 🐛SilkWing🦋 AU, I have a few things in mind. SilkWings are colorful and rare in this au, as for each separate tribe au, that tribe is the equivalent of mutants for the dragons. SilkWings aren't necessarily hated or anything, but there aren't many, the ones that do exist act elusive for the most part, and the young ones, the dragonets, are hard to find but once found are hidden away. Flamesilks, the rare few who were caught by the other Pantalan tribes, were used for their silk, and the other SilkWings freed them. SilkWings are usually calm, but when one of their own is endangered, especially a dragonet, they go from serene butterfly to deadly moth. Are vegetarians.

So. Many. Colors. Reds, red-oranges, oranges, yellow-oranges, yellows, golds, yellow-greens, green-yellows, greens, green-blues, blue-greens, blues, indigos, purples, browns, whites, silvers, grays, pinks, etc. ... And they are iridescent to boot.

Just because they are vegetarian doesn't mean their food isn't tasty. Roasted yams, baked potatoes, mushrooms, broccoli, carrots, sweet peas, charred brussel sprouts, tomato bisques, cream of mushroom soup, fried onions, cream of corn, corn-on-the-cob, grits, apples, oranges, bananas, pineapples, raspberries, blueberries, strawberries, lemon cakes, key lime pies, strawberry tarts, cherry preserves,, pecans, walnuts, cashews, chestnuts, hazelnuts, peanuts, pecan pies, hazelnut mousse, boiled peanuts, walnut brownies, honey, honey-roasted everything! Even different grains, like white rice, brown rice, jasmine rice, oats, barley, wheat, whole-wheat bread, oatmeal, porridge, crackers, biscuits, cookies... Herbs such as rosemary, garlic, thyme, pepper, dill, mint, sage, etc. ... Even seaweed from the sea...

Hugging is practiced, crocheting and knitting silk blankets and scarves happens every other day, planting gardens and collecting seeds, feeding birds and making bird feeders with pinecones, peanut butter, and various seeds, collecting various rocks and minerals and gems, weaving silk hammocks between their tree top homes and constructing bridges and building homes and huts and the like with wood, flax, leaves, and more silk...

Dragonets are cared for and protected, but seldom allowed to leave the hidden home of the SilkWings... But they are met with open arms and wings, accepted completely as they are, and aren't expected to get everything right all of the time.

And then Monarch (SilkWing! Reader) stumbles into their lives...

[zevfern]

¡Viva Almyra! LATAM influenced Headcanons about Fodlan's Eastern Neighbor

Climate and Geography: pretty consistent with the canon description, except that "Fodlan's Throat" is in fact a T shaped mountain range, and said mountain range partially bisects the country, with northwestern Almyra having arid deserts with little rainfall, and southwestern Almyra being more humid, with plains that receive substantial amounts of rain. The eastern region, as canon states, is dominated by large pine forests.

Language: much like Fodlanese resembles modern English, Almyran resembles modern Spanish. Spanish has plenty of influence from Arabic, so the canon Middle Eastern coding of Almyra can be consistent even if Spanish is their language.

Religion: a blend of Arabic and Mesoamerican influences. Since Claude dances around the idea of praying to gods in various supports, Almyra must be a polytheistic country with a whole pantheon of gods. Considering that native Almyrans place much importance on celebrating bravery in combat, their most important deities would be war gods, with their most important deity probably resembling Huitzilopochtli or Illapa,

Clothing: much of the clothing seen in Almyra shares similarities with Middle Eastern garb, but more utilitarian garb for commoners in the country would include Mesoamerican clothing like ponchos and rebosos.

Food: Almyra's main crops are corn and wheat, grown in the southern part of the country. Tortillas are a staple across the country. While Almyra's gods forbid eating what would be the equivalent of haram meat, they've still got tons of variety in what they can eat, from beef barbacoa cooked slowly in pits dug into the ground, to roasted chicken, to savory and spicy salsas made from native chiles and vegetables. There's a reason Claude/Khalid, and most Almyrans, never pass up on an opportunity for a good feast.

(I'm going to be honest, this whole thought exercise was just an excuse to have Mexican and Central American food present in the Fodlanverse in some form. It's one of the things I can say with pride I love from my home country)

Happy Hispanic Heritage Month! Claude is up next for these headcanons.

[annuwaomu]

I've been reading the spice and wolf manga after a semi recent rewatch of the original anime. I had recently read the scene where Holo and Lawrence are getting chased underground by the Medio company.

Since reading this scene, I have been thinking about it a lot and how it's just better done in the manga. In the manga it focussed a lot more on how terrifying Holo can actually be where in the anime the whole "big reveal" of the scene was Chloe showing up.

Chloe being a stand-in for the manga and light novel equivalent of Yarei. A change that I really don't understand why they did. I preferred Yarei and how his motivations made more sense, wanting to lift the tax on wheat. Where I am kinda stuck on why Chloe is there in the scene in the anime. I guess for the same reasons as Yarei since she's from Pasloe but from memory it wasn't really clear in the anime compared to how Yarei was explained in the manga.

I also just like how the scene looks and flows in the manga better. Instead of being at the end of a dark sewer tunnel they're inside an ancient ruin and there's more of a sense of scale as Holo fills the room. After going over both, I enjoyed the manga version a lot more and I'm continuing to enjoy it as I read on.

It may be a long while before I've done reading all there is as it takes a long time for each volume to arrive, so I've been pacing myself out quite a bit and reading at a slow pace.

[mitigatedchaos]

What’s the/a capital matrix?

I don’t have an opinion on use frequency regarding ‘matrix’, by the way

Well that's the problem. Looking back at that post, it's not clear that it's the best choice of words.

Though this is not just about capital, the average American is benefiting from the energy equivalent of about 12 full draft horses working continuously, 24/7, being channeled through the capital matrix. Cars, aircraft, milling machines, excavators - just flick a switch and off you go. (Because it’s low-dimensionality, it isn’t the same as real labor, but in terms of overall production, it’s astounding.)

Matrix A

Officially, according to Merriam-Webster, a matrix is a material ("such as soil or rock") within which some other object ("such as a fossil") is embedded. Some figurative uses are from this basis - for instance, in the movie The Matrix, the human population are kept in virtual reality pods, and the context that they live in is a computer simulation... called "the Matrix."

Matrix B

A mathematical matrix is a two-dimensional array of numbers. Basically just think of it as a grid of numbers.

This is also used figuratively, often to describe things similar to a table (the document element), or a spreadsheet.

To quote Merriam-Webster quoting Forbes,

And in the two-by-two matrix of men and women being warm and not warm and competent and not competent.

A mathematical matrix is usually composed of vectors. You can think of a 3-dimensional coordinate, which consists of three numbers (three "elements"), as a common variety of vector.

The Social Matrix

We could imagine a "social matrix" where we represent each person in a community's relationship with each other person in that community as an element in a vector.

For instance, maybe Alice, Beth, and Carol all live together in one house. Alice hates Beth (1 out of 5 stars) and likes Carol (4 / 5 stars), so: { -, 1, 4 }. Beth is neutral on both Alice and Carol: { 3, -, 3 }. Carol loves Alice and mildly dislikes Beth: { 5, 2, - }

We can arrange this as a grid:

[4] [3] [-] [1] [-] [2] [-] [3] [5]

Though it's only a model (relationships don't reduce to a single 5-point scale), this has the effect of being both a mathematical matrix and describing the social context within which Alice, Beth, and Carol are embedded.

To quote a Rationalist Tumblr user who I am not going to name because they are not a discourse participant and I am not going to drag them into the discourse:

I was enmeshed in a social matrix where lots of people are dating each other and making new connections happens almost automatically once you’re plugged in enough into the network.

We could map out who is dating whom in this Tumblr user's life with a matrix in this style.

Now, as for capital...

Capital Matrix A

We can actually model the economy as a whole using 2-dimensional matrices, and solve for the equilibrium, assuming that we can describe the production function for each enterprise or sector in linear terms. Think of it as a static ratio, the sort of thing you might see in a video game like Anno 2070. "2 apples + 1 wheat = 1 apple pie," that sort of thing.

Energy is a key term in this system. We would channel energy through this system in order to transform inputs into outputs.

In reality, production isn't static, and input-output ratios are not linear (due to many factors, including economies of scale), which means that you can't just solve the problem of economic planning by feeding everything into a single big table in a computer.

That's our first matrix analogy for capital. In some ways it's very similar to the idea of the social matrix, as the capital matrix is also the context that we're working within, and is modeling the relationships of the production systems through the use of vectors.

Capital Matrix B

We can also view capital, such as a metal stamping machine, as composed of two components - the material it's physically composed of, and the configuration of that material.

While the actual physical material is a solid, thick, physical object, the configuration is a simplified construct that humans dreamed up. If you're using high-resolution voxels (volume pixels), you could mark the material at each point using a 3-dimensional matrix, and then simulate the flow of energy and materials through that system to produce an output.

Another definition given by Merriam-Webster is a mold from which a relief surface ("such as a piece of type") is made, or a die (such as used for metal stamping), or an impression of a phonograph used to duplicate it.

Mathematical matrices can also be used to transform the contents of another matrix, such as rotating the points, flipping, or scaling.

One way to view capital is as a reusable pattern used to gain leverage in reordering the environment according to some intention.

So, from the metaphorical perspective, we could view capital as applying an ordered sequence of transformations to an initial input, exerting forces on an objects, which would be modeled with vectors.

This is where the analogy breaks down a bit, because that's not a matrix. That's a sequence of matrices. And we're not doing a scaling operation; we're often doing a lot of destructive editing.

(I still need to get through more of the textbook I have about matrices.)

So, to come back to the quote...

Though this is not just about capital, the average American is benefiting from the energy equivalent of about 12 full draft horses working continuously, 24/7, being channeled through the capital matrix. Cars, aircraft, milling machines, excavators - just flick a switch and off you go. (Because it’s low-dimensionality, it isn’t the same as real labor, but in terms of overall production, it’s astounding.)

For the first analogy, I think we're fairly solid. (Even though the actual production functions aren't actually nice simple lines.)

For the second analogy, I feel I'd want @regina-bithyniae 's opinion on whether it's a fair use of the term.

Matrices as New Metaphor

What I was actually getting at with my question about whether other people are using matrices as a metaphor is a bit weirder, though.

As you know, the new deep learning AI systems are based on matrices, and specialized hardware that allows massively parallel execution of matrix operations.

I don't know if you can sense it, or if others can sense it, or if it's just me, but the limitations of Llama2-70b, the text-based large language model, feel like the limitations of Stable Diffusion, the image-based model that "predicts" images from noise.

It's frustrating, because I can't put it into words, but after fucking around with Stable Diffusion long enough, you can feel the way you're reaching in and probabilistically pulling things out of its training data. This includes a sense of when you're requesting things that are less represented in its training data, and so are less 'probable,' gradually sliding into things you can't make it represent because they're not in the training data at all.

With LLMs, it feels like you're reaching in to a library in the same way, trying to influence which part of the library it's pulling from.

Both have issues with abstractions, being able to depart from their training data to a degree, but requiring human assistance to work out more complex subjects in layers of intermediate reasoning.

Metaphors or frames of viewing the world often come from real life, and our descriptions of more abstract phenomena are often based on abstracting more concrete real life meanings.

New technology provides new real-life concepts, leading to new ways for humanity to understand the world - new metaphors. (And "the brain as computer" is better than "the brain as clock," for instance.)

Obviously, describing things in terms of a bunch of vectors has its uses. (I have described max1461 and I as 'using different weights, but on similar models.')

If describing things as a 'matrix' is becoming more common, I'm wondering if it's related to underlying exposure to the new technology and its description as working based on matrices, or if this is part of our demographic cohort aging (as Tumblr becoming more nuanced seems to be).

It might also be that it isn't becoming more common. There probably isn't a good way to separate out the metaphorical usage using Google Trends, though.

[halluciniwaynia]

my life hack tip for anyone with depression struggling to eat healthy meals or just substantial meals in general because meal prep sucks and takes too much execute dysfunction is to learn to make chili, soup, fried rice, frittata, etc. Learn how to make “leftover sink” dishes which can easily combine vast quantities of frozen vegetables with ready to cook protein (hamburger meat, hello!) that takes minimal effort and often only one pot. Whole wheat flour is an easy thickener for soups. Beans and premade tomato/chili sauce cooked for like an hour with minimal effort will be more nutritious and cheaper than pre-made meals and hot pockets with equivalent calories. Frittatas are literally just eggs with vegetables thrown into them. The sky is the limit and you can adjust to whatever kind of textures/flavors you like, because every culture has some kind of “we have to reuse this” kind of dish and there is certainly one out there that will appeal to even the most neurodivergent and pickiest of eaters, I assure you.

The best part about all of this is that often you can make huge portions for what is relatively little effort. Spending half an hour to make fritatta with onions, green beans, carrots and celery will yield you a week’s worth of easy to heat up breakfast. Fried rice you cheated on and baked in an oven for ten minutes under your broiler when combined with half its weight in vegetables is at least two weeks worth of meals at most and it freezes really well. Eating healthy isn’t about “omg avoid high fructose corn syrup, all of the chemicals in our food and align your chakras every time you cook an egg” it’s about vegetables, a healthy ratio of animal based protein, and a complete helping of all important macro and micro nutrients with as little effort as possible. And it is doable, trust me!

[somethingclevermahogony]

A Recipe From the Lands of Kishetal

Hello Tumblr, I haven’t posted anything here in quite some time, what with a new job and other various life events I simply have not had the energy to be posting regularly.

For now here is a recipe from the world of my WIP, The Testaments of the Green Sea.

Kipsha

Kipsha is a kind of cake or biscuit commonly eaten by the wealthy and poor alike. Kipsha is a popular form of street food and can be served as savory or sweet. All Kipshas contain barley, however those of the wealthy may contain up to 50% wheat, giving the cake a lighter texture.

This recipe is for Labisaji Sweet Kipsha, as would have been eaten at the city’s many festivals, typically at a stand or shop. This happens to be the favorite food of my MC Narul.

Ingredients

Note: For those ingredients which are not available on earth, approximate substitutes are provided.  

The Cakes

2 3/4 cups Barley Flour (Optionally 1 1/4 Unbleached Wheat Flour may be used in substitution of an equivalent amount of barley)

1/2 cup Water

1 Tbsp Olive Oil or Untoasted Sesame Oil

1 Tbsp Sweet White Wine (Riesling or Muscat are suggested)

2 Tbsp Kava (This Kishic yogurt drink can be substituted with equal parts plain greek yogurt and whole milk)

2 Tbsp Honey 

1 Tbsp Red Wine Vinegar

1 1/2 Tsp Untoasted White Sesame Seeds

1/2 Tsp Sinrian Cinnamon (Substitute Cassia Cinnamon)

1/4 Tsp Ground Black Pepper

1/2 Tsp Poppy Seeds (Optional, traditionally only added during Spring Festivals)

Toppings

 1. Narul’s Preferred Toppings

1-2 Dried figs chopped (Fresh figs may be substituted)

2 Tbsp Honey, warmed

1 Tbsp Rejir Juice (Substitute 2:1 parts orange and lemon juice)

Ground pepper to taste

2. Other Toppings

Unsalted soft cheese such as ricotta

Yogurt

Dates

Crushed nuts (typically walnuts or pistachios)

Chopped Cherries or other fruits

Preparation

1. Combine all dry ingredients.

2. In a different bowl combine all liquid ingredients and whisk thoroughly.

3. Fold dry ingredients into the wet ingredients, using your hands to form a firm ball, add water and flour as needed to achieve this.

4. Cover the dough with a damp towel and allow it to rest at room temperature for a minimum of 2 hours and maximum of 4.

5. Preheat oven to 400 F or 200 C.

6. Liberally dust a counter or large cutting board with barley flour. Dust a rolling pin or similar instrument with flour.

7. Place the rested dough onto the floured surface and roll out to approximately 1/2 inch (Note: At no time should the dough be kneaded, take care when rolling to avoid tearing the dough)

8. Using a biscuit cutter or knife, cut dough into rectangular cakes roughly the same shape and size of a graham cracker.

9. Place cakes on a parchment covered cookie sheet making sure that they do not touch. 

10. Bake for 20-30 minutes until golden.

11. Remove and cool, 10-15 minutes.

12. Once cool, drizzle warmed honey over cakes and add any additional toppings.

13. Enjoy!

[frmartinshomiliesandreflections]

31st October >> Fr. Martin's Gospel Reflections / Homilies on Luke 13:18-21 for Tuesday, Thirtieth Week in Ordinary Time: ‘What is the kingdom of God like?’.

Tuesday, Thirtieth Week in Ordinary Time

Gospel (Except USA) Luke 13:18-21 The kingdom of God is like the yeast that leavened three measures of flour.

Jesus said, ‘What is the kingdom of God like? What shall I compare it with? It is like a mustard seed which a man took and threw into his garden: it grew and became a tree, and the birds of the air sheltered in its branches.’

Another thing he said, ‘What shall I compare the kingdom of God with? It is like the yeast a woman took and mixed in with three measures of flour till it was leavened all through.’

Gospel (USA) Luke 13:18-21 When it was fully grown, it became a large bush.

Jesus said, “What is the Kingdom of God like? To what can I compare it? It is like a mustard seed that a man took and planted in the garden. When it was fully grown, it became a large bush and the birds of the sky dwelt in its branches.”

Again he said, “To what shall I compare the Kingdom of God? It is like yeast that a woman took and mixed in with three measures of wheat flour until the whole batch of dough was leavened.”

Reflections (5)

(i) Tuesday, Thirtieth Week in Ordinary Time

Both parables in today’s gospel reading suggest that something small can produce effects greatly beyond what one might expect. A mustard seed gives rise to a tree which provides shelter for the birds of the air. A small piece of yeast transforms flower into enough bread to feed a large number of people. The seed is hidden in the ground and the yeast is hidden in the flour, and yet the impact of both is visible in what finally emerges. Jesus is saying that the kingdom of God is like this. We are being reminded that the kingdom of God often comes to earth through gestures and actions that seem very insignificant and that are often invisible to most people. Jesus had just healed a woman in the synagogue who had been bent over for eighteen years. The action of Jesus directly touched only one woman in some Galilean village. Yet, what Jesus did had an impact on many more, and we who read Luke’s gospel today continue to be touched by this event. God continues to speak to us and to touch our lives through it. We can never underestimate the ways that God can work through the smallest of our loving initiatives towards others. We sow a seed of love, justice or truth, and it becomes more than we could ever have imaged. We implant some leaven of goodness into a situation that seems unpromising and more lives are touched than we could possibly have foreseen. The Lord needs us to do the little we can, and sometimes a little is all we can do, for various reasons. Yet, the Lord can work through that little of ours in ways that will very often leave us surprised and humbled. The equivalent of a few loaves and fish can sometimes feed a multitude.

And/Or

(ii) Tuesday, Thirtieth Week in Ordinary Time

In this morning’s gospel Jesus takes an image from the world of men and the world of women in that culture, a man who takes a mustard seed and throws it in his garden and a woman who takes some yeast and mixes it in with three measures of flour. In each case the small gesture produces significant results. The mustard seed becomes a tree where the birds find shelter; the yeast mixing with the flour produces bread which satisfies human hunger. These are images, Jesus declares, of the kingdom of God. Jesus seems to be saying that the coming of God’s kingdom is not always about grand gestures. The coming of God’s kingdom, the doing of God’s will on earth as in heaven, is often to be found in what to an outside observer seems small and insignificant. Jesus is suggesting that God can work powerfully through the smallest gestures, when they reflect something of God’s Spirit. God is present in our world in and through our small acts of kindness, through our largely unnoticed actions of caring for one another. Jesus would say that even the giving of a cup of cold water has significance beyond our imagining. The eternal can be present in the simplest of gestures. Our daily efforts to be faithful to the gospel in small ways can have consequences that would surprise us. The miraculous is all around us, working through our smallest efforts at goodness, if we have eyes to see.

And/Or

(iii) Tuesday, Thirtieth Week in Ordinary Time

The two parables that Jesus speaks in this morning’s gospel reading, one parable involving a man and the other involving a woman, have a similar focus. In both cases a contrast is drawn between something very small and the very significant impact it goes on to have. A tiny mustard seed produces a tree which becomes a home for the birds of the air. A tiny piece of leaven transforms a significant amount of flour. In each case, Jesus says that the kingdom of God is like that. Jesus seems to be saying that in the realm of God what is very small can turn out to be very significant. Even our smallest acts of kindness can have an impact for good beyond anything we might imagine. Small initiatives taken in the service of the Lord can create an opening for the Lord to work powerfully. We can be tempted to think that unless some event within the church is big and impressive in the eyes of the world it does not count for much. Yet, the parables in today’s gospel suggest that it is the small actions, the tiny initiatives, what goes unnoticed by most people, that can become the bearers of the kingdom of God.

And/Or

(iv) Tuesday, Thirtieth Week in Ordinary Time

In using the image of the mustard seed in the soil and of the leaven in three measures of flour for the kingdom of God, Jesus is suggesting that the kingdom of God, the goodness of God, can often be present in small and insignificant ways in people’s lives. Those looking at soil might never suspect that a mustard seed is hidden there; those looking at three measures of flour might never suspect that leaven is hidden there. Yet, the mustard seed in the soil can transform the garden and the leaven in the flour can transform the dough. We can miss the little signs of God’s presence, of God’s goodness in ourselves and in others. Deep within our nature God has planted the seed of God’s life that can grow in surprising ways; deep within our hearts God has placed the yeast of grace that has the potential to transform us into the image of Jesus. We need to keep reminding ourselves of this good news, especially in times of failure, when we may not be living as the Lord is calling us to live. Even at those times when we look unpromising to ourselves and others, we still carry deep inside us a divine treasure whose power at work within us, as Paul reminds us, can do immeasurably more than all we might imagine.

And/Or

(v) Tuesday, Thirtieth Week in Ordinary Time

In this morning’s gospel reading Jesus speaks two parables, one featuring a man and the other featuring a woman. Both suggest that something very small can produce effects far beyond what might have been expected. The farmer threw a mustard seed into his garden and from it grew a tree whose branches provide shelter for the birds of the air. A woman places a small piece of yeast in a batch of dough and the result is a leavened batch of bread which feeds several people. Jesus is saying that the kingdom of God is like that. God can work powerfully through the smallest of gestures. The little good that we do can have consequences far beyond our imagining. The small initiatives we take in the service of another can bear fruit that we could never have intended. The small step to reach out in love towards someone can launch a movement of love that we never anticipated. In the course of his ministry the Lord did not usher in the kingdom of God in a blaze of glory. Rather in his day to day encounters with ordinary people he sowed seeds of the kingdom and eventually those seeds went on to produce a wonderful harvest. We are all called to sow seeds of the kingdom in the day to day circumstances of our lives; we are called to act out of the values of the kingdom in our daily encounters with others. In so doing we are sowing the seeds of a harvest beyond our imagining.

Fr. Martin Hogan.

[spearxwind]

how does mer society work? What’re their views on gender/do they have different social subpresentations than humans? What are some common staple foods, and how do they vary from place to place?

Babygirl they've got genders you couldnt possibly understand

Ok but seriously, I actually havent looked into irl Fish Genders a lot, but in CD generally its a spectrum like irl but far more pronounced and fluid if that makes sense. The social categories that exist are more based on what jobs people do, and they aren't tied to gender or appearance. For example, a hunter is on a different social level than say, a blacksmith, but neither would be above each other. It's just different social Vibes. I'm not sure how to word it properly

And food is generally varied! Everywhere has access to fish of course, but the type of fish varies per area. Each general area has at least one or two specialties that's basically the most common fish around for the place that the culture/townsfolk have all contributed to making recipes for. Hunting towns have more constant access to Leviathan Meat, which I guess is probably a staple food. Since the leviathans are so varied, it's fun to cook off something from it after bringing back an unknown quarry and see what it tastes like (sometimes its good, and sometimes its Bad), a group of mers will do that (often the hunters themselves) and then relay to everyone else if its good or not and have a laugh about it. ((Barring health concerns like poison and such. They probably have ways to test it.)) Places in the tropics with more islands have access to a lot of different plant life they can pull from, not only spices but things like leaves of overland plants or ocean kelps for wrapping and steaming, islands in shallower waters also have access to rice (or the rice equivalent in CD).

In the colder regions soup is very common :] not only because I Say So and I like soup, but because food is more scarce so theyve gotta be able to use everything as much as possible. They have access to a lot of freshwater because of the ice, and the cold keeps things fresh for a long time. Overland there's also bread(?) and baked goods but its not made with wheat its made with fish flour. (Which exists irl! ever heard of that? It's insanely cool). Also soups can be made for a whole settlement in the ice region since society there is a lot more tight knit and familiar. A whole village is a family so everyone contributes to The Soup