"You know, at home no one would ever try putting all those together. How're you going to do it? Can I help?"

"Sure, you can help. I'm gonna use some herbs as seasoning too. They've got a cookpot outside the general store that they let everyone use, but it's polite to buy something if you do, so how about rice with meat sauce and veggies on the side?"

"Sounds good. I'm still wary of your... oh, is it cooking that makes mushrooms safe?"

"Nah. Well, for some of them. Most of the mushrooms in Hyrule are just safe even straight out of the ground, long as you wash 'em. Taste sort of like a starchy plant, like a potato or something. The ones I found are literally the most common species."

"Do other animals eat them too?"

"Yep! Cuccos will eat them, even if they don't go looking for 'em. Pigs really like mushrooms, especially a particular kind called 'truffles'."

"I think your mushrooms are just different. If you ever find yourself in the Hari Empire, don't eat any of ours, you'll probably die."

"So noted. I might be harder to poison than your average Hylian, but it really doesn't sound fun."

They reach the store and go in. Link heads for the rice. There are a variety of other food products around, including eggs, butter, carrots - and also some monster parts.

"Are those from monsters? Why haven't they turned into smoke?"

"Monster parts, yeah. Usually at least one bit stays solid. They're good for making magic elixirs."

"That's... nothing I shouldn't expect by now. Is that fat?" Valanda points to the butter. "Where does it come from?"

"It's goat butter, miss," the old lady keeping shop interrupts. "Make it from milk 'cause milk doesn't keep long. Good for cakes 'n such."

"Thank you. We don't have that where I'm from. Do the goats mind you taking their milk?"

"They're livestock, miss. The first ones might have minded, but goats've been bred for milk and meat for ages. Some of them will actually get sick if nothin' takes the milk, be that baby goats or us hylians."

He's going to be moving on soon, he blew months, years even, of his not-feeling-horrible-about-his-sex budget on the new clothes, he should really just ignore it.

"Thank you for explaining, sir. Do you sell cakes here?" he says, smooth enough and quick enough she might not notice he's said anything odd.

The old lady gives him a quizzical look. "I'm afraid not. You'll need flour, sugar, and something for flavor along with the butter for a cake. I've got sugar, but no flour or wheat."

"Oh, I've got wheat," says Link. "Do you want to try a cake, Val? They're usually pretty good. I'll need a proper oven, not just a cookpot, though."

"You can use mine if you buy the butter 'n sugar, miss."

"I'd love to. I can pay for the sugar and butter, how much are they?"

The shopkeeper measures out some butter and sugar suitable for a medium-size cake and requests 12 rupees for them.

He pays up.

At this rate if he doesn't find a door within a couple weeks he'll have problems, he didn't make literally infinite money in Milliways. But he'll have bigger problems than cashflow if that happens anyway.

Cake making is fairly fun, if a bit messy. Link has strongly-flavored fruit preserves to provide the 'flavoring' portion of it. Eventually thick, goopy batter with a slight red hue gets poured into a little mold. "Don't really have the stuff to make icing, but that should be alright."

"It smells good. I wonder if there are enough people at home who can eat any Hylian-style food to be worth selling to, it'd be nice if we could have this kind of stuff at home but I'm not sure there's a market for it bigger than a couple thousand people in the entire Empire..."

"Maybe some of it keeps well enough to go in a bag? Biscuits do, but they're not as good because of that. Hmmm..."

"I can keep things from spoiling, I just can't get home to stash anything before I have to go interview a death mage. So I couldn't carry much back with me. Maybe with recipes I could make my own... in all the spare time I don't have anymore. Guess I'll just hope for more doors."

"Bar'll sell you cookbooks. We can't have everything. The cake's gonna take a good hour to be ready, anything you want to do while we wait?"

"I thought about visiting that archery shop while I was waiting for you but I didn't get to it before you came back. Want to come with me?"