#sustenance

tbf... it's not like I post it, or anything. so i only have myself to blame. oh don't mind me, just ranting lmao.

When was the last time you sat down to read something? Was it before or after you saw red? Are you ready to take a green path after you reflect? https://youtu.be/Lfx-g-J-gaQ* a library offers time, space, and opportunity — dhali old guy #stop #sustenance #textiles #occupations #purpose

“Abundance isn’t having more food—it’s knowing how to use less of it well.”

In an age of rising grocery bills and endless food options, it’s easy to assume that eating well requires spending more. But that assumption confuses abundance with excess. True abundance isn’t found in overflowing carts or constant variety—it’s found in understanding how to transform simple, affordable ingredients into nourishing, satisfying meals.

Consider a modest pantry: rice, beans, oats, canned vegetables, a few proteins, and basic spices. On paper, it looks repetitive. In practice, it becomes a system. With a handful of cooking techniques—boiling, simmering, frying, reducing, scrambling—and a few inexpensive spices, those same ingredients can become fifteen or more distinct meals. The difference isn’t in what you buy, but in how you use it.

This approach echoes older traditions: Depression-era kitchens, military rations, and global peasant cuisines. These systems weren’t built on luxury—they were built on efficiency, creativity, and necessity. And yet, they sustained health, energy, and even comfort.

The real challenge isn’t cost—it’s monotony. People don’t abandon simple diets because they lack calories, but because they lack variety. Solve that, and you unlock sustainability.

The bottom line is you can eat:

• Good

• Healthy

• Consistently

…on $200–$300/month for two people, even today.

But only if you:

• Think in systems, not meals

• Use technique as a multiplier

• Treat food like a resource, not entertainment

Eating well on a tight budget is not only possible—it’s practical. It requires shifting perspective: from consumption to composition, from convenience to capability.

WOODHEARTH — Complying with the strict religious tenets of the Green Pact has always posed logistical hurdles for modern Valenwood residents, particularly when it comes to the grieving process. Under the ancient Meat Mandate, a fallen relative or slain enemy must be entirely consumed before three days pass. For smaller families, completing this feast before the humid jungle climate triggers putrefaction is a daunting chore.

Enter Marrow & Mastication, a new local catering service that takes the pressure off mourning relatives.

Founded by Woodhearth native Merthor, the company's "Nothing Wasted" initiative provides a full-service butchery, slow-roasting, and banquet-hosting package designed to process an average-sized Bosmer adult within a strictly guaranteed 48-hour window. Since the start of Evening Star, the business has seen a 20% rise in bookings, successfully modernizing an archaic tradition under the nose of deeply uncomfortable Dominion observers.

"People are grieving. The last thing a widow wants to do is spend her afternoon calculating the proper marinade-to-muscle ratio for her late husband," Merthor explained while sharpening a set of boning knives. "We handle the entire mandate. We render the fats for tallow candles, we smoke the tougher cuts over imported ash-wood, and most importantly, we pick the skeleton entirely clean."

This thoroughness is crucial for local burial customs. Because Bosmer architecture relies on shaping living trees rather than quarrying stone, monumental tombs are nonexistent. Bodies are not left to rot; instead, the fully consumed skeletons are deposited in local ossuaries or quiet forest groves. Merthor's service guarantees a pristine skeleton ready for the grove by sundown on the third day.

Last Turdas, the company catered the widely attended wake for Uncle Ollin, a local fletcher who succumbed to rockjoint. The event was largely deemed a success, though culinary purists in the tribe had minor complaints. Critics argue the seasoning on Uncle Ollin was "a bit heavy on the nightshade," leaving several guests with numb tongues.

Merthor defended the recipe, noting that Ollin's advanced age and the lingering rockjoint required an aggressive flavor profile to mask the gaminess. Furthermore, the prep work was handled by the family's newest adopted member: A bruised, exhausted Bosmer who had been taken captive during a recent Mourning War raid. As per tradition, the captive was tortured, officially adopted into the clan to replace Ollin, and subsequently put to work in the kitchens to help cook his predecessor.

Local attitudes remain thoroughly pragmatic about the reality of the business. When asked if handing out family remains to a catering service might attract local necromancers, one Woodhearth local simply laughed.

WHITERUN — For the seventh time since the frost broke, Commander Caius of the Whiterun City Guard has ordered the forced removal of two Hammerfell mercenaries found face-down in the hearth-ashes of the Bannered Mare.

The men, draped in the traditional garb of the Alik’r desert, maintained through heavily slurred speech and violent hiccups that they were conducting a highly classified, time-sensitive manhunt for a treacherous fugitive. Tavern regulars, however, suggest the only thing the warriors were hunting was the bottom of a Honningbrew Reserve cask.

"It’s the exact same routine every Morndas," sighed Hulda, proprietor of the Bannered Mare, while scrubbing a patch of regurgitated venison stew from the floorboards. "They push through the doors looking grim, ask the room at large if anyone has seen a Redguard woman, and when nobody answers, they requisition a corner table and order four pitchers of Sabjorn’s finest. By midnight, they’re arm-in-arm, loudly weeping to Mikael’s lute renditions of Ragnar the Red."

The ongoing disruption has become a major headache for Jarl Balgruuf the Greater, who officially barred the Alik'r from entering the city limits last month. Despite the Jarl's decree, the mercenaries continually bypass the main gates.

"They just keep paying the 10-septim gate tax and telling the fresh recruits they’re here to 'buy armor from Warmaiden’s,'" Commander Caius told this publication, massaging his temples. "When my men dragged them out of the tavern last night, one of them tried to intimidate us by shouting about their curved swords. Curved. Swords. I had to remind him that we impounded their scimitars three weeks ago. He was threatening us with a half-eaten leek."

The political friction stems from the mercenaries’ unwavering claim that they are agents of a captain named Kematu, supposedly operating out of a covert forward base in Swindler’s Den. They allege their target is a high-ranking traitor to the noble houses of Hammerfell who sold out the city of Taneth to the Aldmeri Dominion.

Locals remain thoroughly unconvinced by the espionage angle.

Sinmir, a Whiterun resident who spends fourteen hours a day standing in the tavern complaining about the city guard, scoffed at the Alik'r's professionalism. "If this Kematu is running a crack intelligence ring, he chose the worst spies in Tamriel. I watched one of them try to interrogate a wedge of Eidar cheese."

Ironically, witnesses note that the warriors' drinks were served throughout the evening by a quiet, unassuming Redguard barmaid named Saadia. According to patrons, the Alik'r interrogators failed to give her a second glance, completely ignoring her save for one instance where the taller mercenary tipped her three septims and asked if she knew how to pronounce 'Belethor.'

At the Honningbrew Meadery just south of the city, owner Sabjorn was highly unsympathetic to the Jarl's security woes, instead viewing the repeated arrests as a triumphant market victory over the Black-Briar monopoly in Riften.

"You think Maven Black-Briar has foreign operatives risking jail time just to get a taste of her swill?" Sabjorn gloated, counting a stack of coin. "When a man travels all the way from the Alik'r desert, tastes my Reserve, and decides to abandon his military obligations just to sleep under a table in the Plains District, that’s quality you can’t fake."

As of Turdas morning, the two mercenaries are currently sweating out their intoxication in the Dragonsreach dungeon holding cells. Proventus Avenicci, the Jarl’s steward, has dispatched a courier to Swindler's Den formally requesting Kematu come collect his men and pay their outstanding 142-septim bar tab.