Demesne Snippets 6: Medic Hobbies

There was nothing a doctor liked more than not having anything to do.

At least, not having anything to do as a doctor. All of them had little things to do when they were either waiting for people to come in or were off-shift. Many spun thread, then wove that thread to make gauze and bandages. One can never have enough gauze, especially since there was no other way to get it out here until Lord Rian went back to Covehold Demesne again.

Most would have assumed Daising would have been doing the same. Not so. Her preferred pastime while waiting for one of their Dungeon Binders to be carried in at the edge of death—it had only happened twice, but that was two more than she would have liked—was brewing. Unlike the ones using their brewjelly to make booze in little jars hidden in their house—although the children tended to find them anyway—she was using a larger jar to turn bruised fruit into booze, and from there used vitrioljelly to make vinegar.

It was something she'd always done back when she'd lived in Lomabuyar Demesne, since it was something she could leave alone and mostly not have to worry about if she had to accompany company heading out to deal with bandits or beasts or abominations.

She was looking forward to tasting what happyfruit vinegar was like. last year, there'd been so much to do, and food had been such an issue that fermenting it like this hadn't been justifiable, but with the fruits coming in and the expanded fields, there'd been fruit that could be spared.

They had more salt now too, which had let her and some other people start experimenting on brining and fermenting the formerly wild vegetables that they'd been growing. You could never tell if the dustlife in the water was going to ferment the food properly until a couple of weeks had passed, and there wasn't really a jelly for this sort of thing. Daising was hopeful it would work, though. After all, the ocean was salt water, and this dustlife could work in a brine mix, so perhaps the whole ocean was filled with the stuff…

So far, it was looking promising. Her little samples had bubbled, but she had resolutely not opened them until the time she had set herself was up. She was a medic after all, not some impatient child.

Though she was probably going to eat like one when her vinegar was done brewing. Not immediately, of course. But with that and the salt and the results of her little experiment, they could start pickling.

A younger woman would have said she couldn't wait. Daising could wait. She didn't want to, but she could. One couldn't get impatient with brewing or pickling.  Daising had heard that in the cities, vinegar was brewed in metal vats in three days by Deadspeaker, which was why city vinegar had always tasted wrong to her.

There'd be none of that here. This vinegar would be brewed the proper way, with time and not being touched.

And it gave her an excuse to not be spinning thread when it was her watch. She hated spinning thread. She hadn't done all this work to become a medic just to spin like a weaver!