Her Beasts

Another New Starch

As the small group of five wandered the forest, they took careful note of their surroundings. Any food sources they could find would be seen as a treasure to Iris and would easily gain the young beastmen praise.

Many oak trees could be found together in some places while others would be found alone. While the forest was home to many types of trees and plants, this forest was still home to numerous oak trees. The far bigger problem was that the wild beasts had already gotten to many of the acorns that fell from the trees.

Thus, it was a very slow process as the group crouched around each new oak tree, sorting the acorns. A small pile of broken acorn leftovers would be left at the base of the oak trees while any usable ones were stored in an animal skin tied with another strip of animal skin.

After a few rounds of gathering acorns, they came across a dense, short field full of watercress. While the watercress would not last very long, it would still be a waste not to take advantage of the opportunity to gather some. As such, the group stopped and slowly gathered up the tiny leafy greens.

While Iris was busy working on neatly organizing the watercress into a new animal skin, Quentin came over holding a bunch of plants. Iris smiled up at him gratefully as she accepted them. She was preparing to sort them, as some of the plants picked by the beast men were not actually watercress. It was important to sort out those that did not belong. Suddenly, Iris gasped in excitement.

"What? What is it?"

Caspian immediately went into high alert and the other three beast men got into defensive positions around them.

"Quick Quentin, show me where you plucked your watercress from!"

Quentin was filled with confusion but quickly led Iris over to one edge of the field of watercress. Looking around, Iris quickly found what she was looking for. She walked over and crouched down beside a green plant with dark violet flowers growing from their tops. The leaves were a bit different from the watercress as this plant had a pointed edge and grew taller than the rounded short watercress plant.

"This is a potato plant! Quick, someone. Dig up what's underneath this plant!"

Quentin, who was closest to Iris, quickly scrambled to dig up the one she was pointing at while the other two searched for a similar-looking plant to try digging up. Once the mother tuber was dug up, several other connected tubers followed suit.

Henry came back over with a similar plant while Daniel returned with a weed. Iris praised Henry for finding a similar plant so quickly, then explained to the others in more detail what they were looking for.

As there was still plenty of watercress to harvest, Iris let Quentin and Henry look for more potato plants while the rest harvested watercress for the time being. Iris sat beside Caspian and quickly pulled out a new animal skin to use for carrying the potatoes.

By this point, Caspian had seen Iris cook and describe many dishes. With a new plant on the menu, he felt his curiosity bubble up and decided to ask Iris about it.

"So what are potatoes used for? Which parts are edible?"

Iris was happy to have such a curious and handsome husband to impart her knowledge to.

"These tubers here are the part of the potato plant that is generally eaten. This larger tuber here directly under the plant is the mother tuber while these other ones branch off of it. These are the ones you want to harvest for eating. Surprisingly, as many as two tens of potatoes can come from a single potato plant. You can easily grow new potato plants by saving a few from each harvest for planting the next year.

Potatoes require very little effort to prepare for consumption, and are easily stored. As long as they are kept in a dry, dark, and cool environment they can be stored for most of the year without going bad. Previously, where I lived, we would store these in a barrel with dry grass in between the potatoes. We just fished them out for cooking when it was necessary."