IC Inbox: Empatheias

[young_oldman]

[Your birds might get a little plump on bird seeds. Just saying.]

Comments

[young_oldman]

What are pancakes? I've seen that word on the dessert segment of a menu, but I'm not too fond of sweet desserts so I've never ordered it.

[Yes, he has been here one year plus and has never tried pancakes.]

[gottacatch]

[ Disgusting, Lu Meng. ]

They're not really sweet on their own. [ Ah, here we go. Pancakes! He opens up a drawer quietly to grab a knife and a spoon. ] It depends what you put with them, like a jam, or ice cream. You can eat them plain too.

[ Setting them on the side, he'll pause now to make a circle in the air between the spaces of his fingers. ]

They're flat and round, like this. You can have it at any time of the day, and some versions are packed with cabbages and onions and other things. I'm just going to make a pancake though.

[ Because you gotta start small! ]

[young_oldman]

[Wow judgy much, Red. It's not like you've ever tried red bean soup before either! Now that's the stuff.]

So pancakes are like bread? Then...why are they a dessert item, but sandwiches with jam and butter aren't?

[gottacatch]

They're a little sweeter than bread. [ A little. ] And- they're just different! You don't eat a sandwich after a meal. You eat those in the day.

[ Lu Meng that's just weird. Red will return to the ingredients, bringing the measuring tool forward. ]

Have you heard of waffles?

[young_oldman]

[But whhhhyyyyy can't you eat sandwiches after a meal? Is the question Lu Meng wanted to ask, but eventually decided against it because this might just turn out to be one of those weird cultural things.

Onto waffles!]

Yes. The honeycomb cake eaten commonly with honey and butter.

[gottacatch]

Right. They're sort of like them in how you eat them, except the waffles I tried had a more [ hmm, how to describe it ] crispy bite to them. Pancakes are more soft!

[ Yeah, that's sound ok!! He drags over the flour, undoing the packaging and taking the spoon. Okay, time to concentrate, be careful and watch the scales...!

But he can still ask- ] What desserts do you like?

[young_oldman]

Ah, I see what you mean now.

[Lu Meng watches Red pouring out the flour onto the bowl, eyes on the scales as well.]

I'm not much of a desserts person, but if I had to name a personal favorite, it's tangyuan. If I'm feeling particularly peckish for sweets, then I have it with red bean soup. But I'm not very fond of sweet foods in general.

[gottacatch]

[ Where were the mixing bowls? Time to get one to put this flour into, digging into a cupboard and bringing one to tip the flour into. The scales then get pushed back, Red taking the bowl for them over to the sink as he talks. ]

I've never heard of tangyuan--but we have a red bean soup as a dessert where I'm from. The beans are crushed up and served with rice cake in the winter. Is it similar?

[young_oldman]

[Lu Meng's eyebrows arch up.] Actually, yes. We eat tangyuan with small glutinous rice balls, normally stuffed with some sort of filling. The filling varies but black sesame seed or peanuts are popular choices. Here, let me show you through the crystals.

[And to give Red a visual of what he's talking about, Lu Meng projects the image through their amulets.

[gottacatch]

[ And a second after seeing that image, Red hums with a nod. ]

That looks close to what I'm talking about too. There wasn't anything inside the rice cakes, but they were shaped like balls too. Huh...

[ That's odd. ]