A Single Mother's Farm of the Gods
Chapter 340: Level 2 Cooking Mastery

Chapter 340: Level 2 Cooking Mastery

Because of its previous wounds that recently healed and the amount of blood she have lost, the mermaid is taking a while to wake up. According to the witch, she estimated that the mermaid might wake up around 2 to 3 days later. It will take some time before her body managed to recover fully but considering she lost quite a lot of blood, the body will naturally let the body to rest and increasing the time of sleep to repair everything and replenish what was lost is usually the main reason why one who got injured and bleed out a lot will take sometime before they wake up.

During this time, Elaina noticed what her children has been doing so far. Since the two have already been walking around on their own, they started exploring the farm on their own. Adelaide is quite an explorer and a curious one. And from time to time, she even helps out on the work of the Feys like either pulling out some weeds from the plants or gathering the caterpillars that are on some plants that would potentially eat the crops. However, most of the time, Adelaide is staying in the backyard pool and is observing the comatose mermaid with Arthur. Elaina is quite happy that Adelaide seems to like working out on the farm and for her to slowly develop some empathy as well.

On the other hand, Arthur is a different kind. He just mastered walking by himself but he is using this new skill he mastered to run around and play with the fairies, Zaza and Shardu. Although Adelaide refuses to play along with him, the two seems to have gained some understanding that they would visit the mermaid from time to time as they will stop whatever they are doing to visit the mermaid during the afternoon where it isn’t too hot to stay in the backyard.

They might still be young but Elaina is excited on what the two will be doing in the future. Sooner or later, she will need to send them to school and they will meet new friends. The growth of her babies is one of the joys she is feeling as a mother, even though she is just a single mom right now who is also acting as their father as well.

Now that she have confirmed what her babies are doing, she decided to now check the pending thing that she wanted to see ever since she triggered it back in the yacht.

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Cooking Mastery:

Level 1: Unlocked

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The First level of the cooking mastery was pretty simple. Any kind of food she cook that have only less than 5 ingredients will be guaranteed to be tasty to the tastebuds of the people who will eat. For example would be the grilled piranha. She has only used 3 ingredients to cook that fish, soy sauce, the Piranha itself, and the spices she made from dried herbs. The spices she made was made from various herbs but it was counted as one ingredient every time she cooks as she have reduced the dried herbs to their powdered form. All the dried herbs she mixed in are now undiscernible from one another now that it became a powder, making it a regular herb spices. With all 3 ingredients, the Grilled Piranha was a success and it became quite the sensation to everyone.

Although she can make any dish with less than 5 ingredients taste amazing, there are exception. Even if she cook a dish that has less than 5 ingredients as long as the dish is deemed a failure, the buff will not be applied and will taste bad like normal. Same principle also applies if the ingredients surpassed the 5 limit. She can still cook food that has more than 5 ingredients without failing but the flavor and taste enhancement buff will not take effect, making it a regular meal at most. And for cooking failure, these only affect things if she started cooking something that is beyond her skill and expertise. She will have reduced failures from those and there will be lucky chances that those food she cooked will turn out alright.

Level 1 cooking mastery isn’t much but for someone who is starting out in cooking, this is already something else and to have a guaranteed. So what does the level 2 add? Perhaps the same as level 1 but increased ingredients?

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Level 2: Unlocked - Dishes below 7 ingredients will be guaranteed to be of higher quality and taste better. Experimental cooking will have a higher chance of success and some abomination dishes that has less than 5 ingredients will somehow become palatable and will be available for consumption without getting the risks of getting food poisoning. Stale ingredients will not affect the quality of the dish. 10% chance to trigger a unique buff that will be added to the dish which if consumed by someone, the buff will be applied to them.

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Elaina was a bit shocked to see the level 2 mastery. If level 1 is great, then level 2 is something else. All of the things that make level 1 mastery great are enhanced on level 2. Not only that, but the quality of the dish will increase as well, meaning, a dish that should be a 1 star quality at best in restaurants will now be guaranteed to be a 2 star quality.

But that is not what Elaina is more than happy about. The 7 ingredients increase will now expand Elaina’s repertoire on cooking and she will no longer be constricted on less than 5 ingredients now. She wishes that it would at least be a bit larger but a maximum of 7 ingredients is still good.

What makes the level 2 more interesting is that even failed dishes will now be palatable. Meaning, even those dishes that was supposed to be thrown away because it ended up to be a failed one can still be eaten without worrying for any problems. In short, if she ends up cooking something of a failure, she will no longer have to waste food and throw the failure away anymore.

Seeing these new effects, Elaina headed to the kitchen and opened her refrigerator. Inside are various ingredients she stored after the last harvests as well as the other ingredients she bought on the store. She wanted to know how drastic the changes of her cooking now that she have achieved the level 2 mastery.

First, she wanted to see how palatable a failed dish is going to be. So even though she hates wasting food, she wanted to see how well the level 2’s effects would make a disgusting failed dish become a palatable one. As she checks the fridge for any ingredients to use, she soon found a few ingredients that are now past their ripeness and are about to rot as a result. Usually, Elaina recycles them and use them as either fertilizer or the source for the new seeds. However, this time around, Elaina have chosen to cook them. At least she won’t feel bad cooking a failed dish if the ingredients are already past their prime.

An overripe tomato, cucumber and parsnip. These three will be the core ingredients. As for the additional ingredients, it would be water and soy sauce. Once she have confirmed those ingredients, she began her preparations on it. Cleaned the tomato from its seeds, peeled both the cucumber and parsnip and chopped them to pieces. She then prepared a water to boil before mixing the soy sauce into the water. She can tell that whatever abomination she will be making, this will not taste good in any ways or form. A guaranteed failure.

She waited for the water to boil and once the water is bubbling, she mixed the overripe ingredients all inside the pot and started mixing it. It didn’t take long for the overripe ingredients to slowly become paste as she mix the ingredients as much as she can, turning what she was making into a hideous failed dish. It didn’t take long before the smell of the dish starts to waft into her nose and she can’t help but choke by the smell. It is still not rotten but perhaps because of the close to rotten parsnip, the smell was already close to bad. However, despite the bad smell, she didn’t stop and continued mixing the ingredients. The color of the paste?-looking dish she made is pitch-black with various pieces of ingredients that hasn’t turned to goop still floating. One look and this is already a disaster.

And voila! The failed dish is now complete! Putting it on the bowl, the dish is now ready for consumption. Perhaps it was talent to make something disastrous such as that, but she still can’t believe that the black goop in the bowl was the product of three overripe ingredients, water and soy sauce.

"Oh my goodness, what have I made..." Elaina couldn’t help but squirm seeing what she just made. She didn’t make a large serving but a bowl of the dish she made is already something that she can’t help but feel like she wanted to hurl her previous breakfast. However, she can’t back down now. She needed to know if the failed dish was actually palatable.

Covering her nose, she scoop a spoonful of the goop and glance at it. Her body seems to be screaming at her to not consume it, but she wanted to ensure that the mastery level is not wrong.

SLURP!

One slurp, and a surge of strange energy suddenly burst forth into her body. It energized her and gave her a new will to do some work. Not only that, but it seemed that the mastery was working properly and the buff was applied properly!

"For a failed dish...the taste was actually okay! Minus the smell, of course, it is actually something I might eat for fun!"

If one could look at Elaina right now, one might think she has gone crazy, but she is, in fact, very sane.