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An Instructive Listing of the Street Foods of Tabat, being Pamphlet #5 of the first series of “A Visitor’s Guide to Tabat,” Spinner Press, author unknown.
The visitor to Tabat will find themselves faced with a multitude of new things, and the food of the city is no exception. Carts and food stalls in particular supply many of the daily food needs of the populace.
No matter where you go in the city, you will find the bakery carts. Most belong to the Figgis Bakery, but you will also see some from smaller and independent bakeries. They sell a multitude of breadstuffs, including several pastries unique to the city: two and twos, large flatbreads which are half one color, half another; hyacinth cookies with their distinctive purple icing; and jelly cups.
Close to the docks, particularly around the Fish Market, vendors sell all varieties of sea food, cooked on the spot and fresh from the boats that have just brought it in. Many of these use the seaweed spices Tabat is famous for: ironbite with its metallic peppery taste; summer salt; and the mix of dried fish and seaweed that forms the basis of chal. Look for kerik, the sweet purple nodules of seaweed that are harvested in late summer, for a particularly exotic treat.
Sweets are usually flavored with honey from bees or Honey-mothers, or a touch of Fairy honey for those with more expensive tastes. Of late, though, the Southern Isles have been sending sugar to Tabat, expensive and rare, and a dusting of such atop a pastry or cake is considered to render it the height of culinary sophistication.
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"(On the writing F&SF workshop) Wanted to crow and say thanks: the first story I wrote after taking your class was my very first sale. Coincidence? nah….thanks so much."
(science fiction, short story) Because mermaids lay eggs, hundreds at a time, at least that kind did. And the natural-born ones, they didn’t have human minds guiding them. They were like sharks—they ate, they killed, they ate. Most of the original human mermaids had gotten out when they found out that the seas were full of chemicals, or that instead of whale songs down there, they heard submarine sonar and boat signals. When the last few found out that they were spawning whether they liked it or not, they got out too. Supposedly one or two stayed, and now they live in the sea with their children, twice as mean as any of them.
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