"I suppose now that you mention it I am accustomed to knowing more about how the food around me is made."

Then he can watch people cook.

The heating mechanism for the cooktop isn't obvious. Pans go on top of some kind of glassy black surface and water sure does boil but there's no visible flame. The oven has thick wires in it which do glow but there's still no flames.

People handle salt and cinnamon without significantly more care than they use when handling flour.

The somewhat fluffy flat bread ('pancakes') that gets served in the 'mornings' sometimes has its batter made entirely by mixing a single powder ('pancake mix') from a bucket with water. The weird scrambled eggs are also a powder mixed with water.

Fruits and vegetables, on the other hand, tend to come from bags of frozen produce whose contents are basically recognizable.

The stove is probably magic electric.

Maybe it's not real cinnamon; certainly it is not in full sticks you could light for a spell.

That explains why the eggs are so weird, though they are still Not Worldwound Stew.

"The stove's electric, yeah. I think they do use real cinnamon, if we got you sticks would that help you? And when it's summer we'll get fresh eggs. They reserve the early batches of fresh food for the people who were here in winter."

"I'm not powerful enough to cast Commune and have been advised not to do it without training I don't have even if I come by the ability, that's just my association with cinnamon."

"Ah, okay."

"It does also smell nice and some people have the superstition that that's why it's useful in the spell, that gods want to smell it and require assistance in this for some reason, but it's just a spell component."

"Huh. Earthlings burn incense too, sometimes for religious reasons, but it's usually specialized sticks or such."

"Maybe there used to be clerics here and some vestiges of the practices survived?"

"Maybe? What do your gods think about animal sacrifices? Some religions did those. Some also did human sacrifices but I assume Iomedae wouldn't like that."

"I'm not aware of any spells that call for animal or human sacrifice but there are non-spell practices that do, and there's... animating the undead, though you can do that with a corpse that died in an unrelated fashion. - it's Evil."

"It certainly doesn't sound good."

"Which is why I'm not going to demonstrate. But it's the sort of reason someone might have for going around killing people for magical effects. Wizards can also do that."

"The lack of demonstration is appreciated." Chris laughs awkwardly.

"...I literally can't cast Evil spells, clerics can't prepare or cast against their god's alignment."

"Makes sense, I suppose."